Friday 2 December 2011

No Further Action "NFA"

An expression I am getting used to.  Applied by the Met Police in this case to the driver who ran into me on 20th September, while I was stationary, and buckled my wheel when he emerged from a side road to turn right.  Had I not anticipated his poor driving and come to a complete halt to let him out well before the junction, it could have been a lot worse and it is massively inconvenient to have your bike put out of action half way to work.
I knew he was most unlikely to be charged, notwithstanding powerful evidence handed over on a plate in the form of a video, an extract of which I have put back up onto youtube.  (Forgive my swearing I initially thought it was going to be worse than it was).

Why not send him, and other drivers like him on a bikeability training course (the full cost of which they would of course pay) as an alternative to a prosecution?
On the bright side I did get a full prompt payout from his insurers, so credit to them.

EDIT: I do not want to get too bogged down in this but in deference to those who have expressed the view that I was wholly or partially to blame for this collision I attach a google earth aerial view of the location.  On any sensible view I stopped well short of the junction.  Perhaps the film does not clearly show this.  It seems obvious to me but then I was there.  The camera is attached to my head and so is moving about a bit even after I have stopped with my foot on the ground.  I am a bit sceptical of those who claim that if it had been them they would have stopped even further back, or who claim that it was not safe to use the hatched area to overtake.
I know this will not convince some (nothing will because I was on a bicycle).  I have made some people cross by deleting their comments.  I regret this but the one that remains is a reasonable representation of their views and there is no point in having it over and over again.

This is just about where I stop, just short of the zig-zags

9 comments:

  1. Incidents like that are effectively proof of a person's inability to appropriately and safely control a motor vehicle. It is a shame we have moved into such a state of car-dependence that the idea of preventing someone who very obviously lacks the skills needed to safely operate a motor vehicle from being allowed to do so has become unthinkable, even in some of the most extreme cases.

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  2. My sympathies...I think some motorists automatically assume they have priority over cyclists even when they clearly don't. I regularly encounter motorists entering a rounabout from the left when you are already cycling round it and have right of way.

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  3. When the Insurance Company pays out promptly do they allow for your lost income , inconvenience ,etc ? Or do they mostly try to discount the replacement value of the destroyed bike parts ?

    Seems to me the CPS think that " No Injury/ No fault/ NFA is a satisfactory way to encourage Drivers to be more careful on the roads ! How many more Truck drivers killing V R U before the CPS decides to do their job ? Surely the Police must realise that the evidence you produced was sufficient to convict and thus send a message to other careless drivers ?

    Located a source of a mini video camera and found a site that encourages more users : http://croydoncyclist.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/video-camera-cyclists/

    @anonymous drivers think you cannot catch them so they are flustered when you do so and challenge their abilities . Of course they are unlikely to tell their friends about how they got ticked off for their deficiencies

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  4. I think you need to take a hard look at yourself and take more responsibility for your riding.

    Its no wonder it was a NFA. The driver's view was restricted in addition to you being in his blind spot, you should have easily seen the driver trying to come out and acted accordingly. In my view you let that accident happen!

    To be honest, looking at the footage over and over, you were more at fault in letting it happen. Cycling without consideration of other road users" would it stick?

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  5. Skippy, they paid out the full amount I asked for the damaged wheel and tyre. I did not ask for any other compensation.

    I have had a lot of comments along the lines of the last one and have decided to prune them as unduly repetitive. Fortunately I am well used to anticipating poor driving and saw this one coming in time to come to a complete halt at the start of the zigzags with plenty of room for him to come out. Since I did anticipate and did stop, I disagree that I 'let it happen' or wished it to happen or otherwise contributed to the collision.

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  6. The 3rd Dec at 13:29 comment is nothing more than trolling. There was nothing wrong with your riding and EVERYTHING wrong with their driving.

    NFA - typical story. The evidence is building up online, youtube and other sites are a public record of this type of bad driving (and bad riding too), and yet the Police appear to be not only failing to deal with the issues, but actually deliberately ignoring many of them.

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  7. Drivers (and pedestrians) doing this is all to common unfortunatley, they see a line of sationary cars they don't bother to check for bikes or motorbikes overtaking and just constantly look in the other direction. I had it last week, wasn't even a line of traffic driver had made a cursory glance right didn't see and traffic (cyclists don't count) and started to pull across me constantly looking left.

    Nowt wrong with your riding IMO, looks like you *might* have left it a *little* late stopping initially due to the high camera angle but when you look to the side it shows you are stopped before the zigzags, plenty of room for the driver to pull out (oblivious of oncoming traffic) assuming he had turned properly instead of cutting the corner.

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  8. It was the drivers fault. But it was a minor slow speed accident with no injuries. There are hundreds of those every day where no police action is taken.

    When I was in the police I stopped reporting non injury careless driving cases after they were continually thrown out with no action by the prosecutor. Even injury cases needing hospital treatment where there was good evidence were sometimes thrown out.

    It seemed to be a matter of policy with the prosecutor that no non injury RTAs with minor damage were proceeded with.


    Should the court time be used to deal with non injury, slow speed, bad driving cases or with assaults, thefts, drink driving, etc?

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  9. Thank you for that. It is a valuable insight. My own experience very much corresponds with your own, which is why I was always fairly sure that no action would be taken. (There are exceptions which I would be unwise to talk about at present).

    However, it is often a matter of chance whether some poor driving has resulted in injury or not and my view is that where there is clear evidence of bad driving some action (prosecution, training or even just a stern warning) should follow.

    It would be good to get bad drivers to change their ways before they cause injury. Furthermore, even if they are not causing injury, bad drivers are contributing to a subjective fear of danger which inhibits the growth of cycling.

    So I do consider that court time should be used to deal with bad drivers as well as the thefts, assaults etc you mention. Drivers can afford cars and should therefore be paying the costs of Court proceedings. We should not let budgetary constraints prevent us from dealing with a problem that costs 1,000s of lives a year.

    You have put your finger on something I would like to see changed.

    Thank you and others for making a contribution directed to what this post is about.

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