Where's the best place to enagage with these drivers? They're not on here as far as we know, the EEN comments pages do not suffer logic nor reason and I don't know of a local branch of that organisation of shouty drivers which occasionally supplies EEN-style comments to other media in relation to stories tangentially touching upon cycling. Some people on here have tried engaging directly with them, where they can be caught and when they wind their window down. Where are they getting their attitude and opinions from at the moment? Their parents? Newspapers? Driving organisations? Should we assiduously collect the number plate every time someone does something which looks anything more than entirely accidentally risky and feed them to the police, chasing them up, keeping our own records so that we can see for ourselves when someone crops up repeatedly?
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
Beeped and Swerved at this morning
(39 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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"Please feel free to ignore me"
OK gembo but you and wingpig (above) and ant (and others) on other threads are raising important issues and looking for 'a way forward'.
Starting new thread shortly.
Posted 12 years ago # -
As kind of alluded to above, I'm wondering whether some kind of online database of 'incidents' would be of any benefit. It would be an absolute doddle to set up, and would potentially give some vaguely interesting statistics about repeated incidents (a certain company, a certain type of road feature, a time of day, whatever). Google forms in particular work nicely on smartphones.
Downsides would be it would only be of use if completed by a decent number of cyclists, it potentially fosters a bit of an 'us and them' philosophy and doesn't in any way actually change the attitudes of the minority of drivers causing concern.
Posted 12 years ago # -
@Darkside, this would be usefull as if incidents were placed on a map we could see 'hot spots' and potentially any repeat offender's route may be predicted.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Yes I think a database would be useful as I always wonder when I read of similar road rage incidents that I have had, if it was the same person.
I managed to catch up with the last roadrager I had for a chat but of course, they were right and I am in their way and no gauntlet of potholes and parked cars is big enough to justify the the fact that for a few seconds she wasn't able to accelerate as hard as she liked before stopping at the next queue of cars a few yards away.
I don't really see a way round it except that perhaps a whole list of cyclists targeted by the same few drivers presented to the Police might make them do something about it?
Posted 12 years ago # -
Related thread - Engaging with the enemy
Posted 12 years ago # -
From other posts and stuff elsewhere the problem with taking anything to the police is the "Were there any witnesses?" thing, without which nowt seemingly ever happens. I've tried Crimestoppers a couple of times for non-road-idiocy matters but the extreme disinterest of the person on the other end of the phone made me somewhat dispirited. The few times when I've seen something I considered 999-worthy (or, if it was nearby, calling St Leonard's) there was a similar "unless someone was actually wielding a knife, we can't do anything" sort of attitude coming across.
Raging Bike with accompanying map sounds perfect, Darkerside.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"Yes I think a database would be useful as I always wonder when I read of similar road rage incidents that I have had, if it was the same person."
We are not alone...
http://www.myroadrage.com/report-bad-driver
http://www.roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/1536.html
http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/secure/how-to-report-bad-drivers
Posted 12 years ago # -
Incidentally, it is worth reading through a few driver reports of bad/dangerous driving. You quickly find that drivers will report absolutely everything. Things that we would probably never consider reporting! Interesting.
Posted 12 years ago #
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