Our latest Near Miss of the Day submission comes from a reader in south London and raises yet more questions about the way video footage reported to the police is dealt with.

road.cc reader Allan was cycling out of Sutton on the Carshalton Road when he was left "shocked" by this motorist overtaking a bin lorry despite him riding towards them with priority, forcing him towards the kerb to avoid a head-on collision.

"I was so shocked I just carried on riding and only looked at it that evening," he recalled. "The next day I decided I should submit this to the police and investigated how. I assumed as it's well within Surrey that it would be Surrey Police."

Having submitted the footage to the force Allan then heard back from an officer who said the incident had actually happened in an area covered by the Metropolitan Police. The officer asked Allan to resubmit the footage to the relevant force and said he had "viewed the footage, along with my colleagues" and "we are of the opinion that this is a particularly bad piece of driving."

On trying to submit the footage to the Met, the reporting portal "kept erroring out". Allan continued: "I responded back to Surrey Police explaining that with screenshots and they said they would submit it with still photos to the Met on my behalf as I was going on holiday the next day.

"Since that point I have heard nothing from the Met Police and so I went back to Surrey Police and received no response asking what had happened with the case.

I assume as it was close to the 14-day window that they need to inform the driver of intended prosecution that the Met Police missed it or it was not reported on from Surrey Police to them."

When road.cc approached Surrey Police for this story we were told it "has been passed to the Metropolitan Police [...] unfortunately we would not have information relating to their investigation".

On contacting the Met, we were told that as the initial incident report had a Surrey reference number "there doesn't appear to be a way for us to trace this".

https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-871-303337

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

> road.cc reader Allan was cycling out of Sutton on the Carshalton Road
> when he was left "shocked" by this motorist overtaking a bin lorry
> despite him riding towards them with priority, forcing him towards the
> kerb to avoid a head-on collision.

> https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-871-303337

So cyclists *do* know about priority, at least when it applies to them.

So (rhetorical question) why don’t they concede it when others have it?

--
Spike

England's unluckiest cyclist?

Although Allan contacting the wrong police force didn't help matters, the incompetence of the Police is staggering. Surely cases get referred between forces all the time for various reasons and there is a process to do this? The Surrey Police say they did forward it on; is the Met saying they never received the case? Or that they received it but because it had a Surrey reference number it got filed into the bin?