After sitting on my hands on this for a while, I shot off 2 letters last week and had my first response today.
First letter was to the Assistant Commissioner for my area, and I was phoned today with a response by an Inspector from that office, who did his time in traffic branch, and we spent quite a long time (30 minutes I think) discussing it. Soon I'll get done for wasting police time
This letter was solely about Rule 146, although we did end up discussing all the related issues. I'll quote from my letter here.
An example situation (see image to the left):
1. I am cycling on a road that has 2 lanes going each way
2. I am in the middle of the left most lane travelling at 40kmh.
3. A car approaches from behind in the same lane as me at 60kmh
4. The car moves partially into the right hand lane while going past, straddling both left and right lanes (lane splitting) for quite some distance (60+ meters in order to overtake)
5. The car then moves back into the left hand lane
Applying Rule 146 to the situation:
So a driver must drive completely within a lane unless
(a) no – they are not moving from the shoulder to the road
(b) no – they are not entering or leaving the road
(c) no – they are not changing to another lane because they never move into it
(d) no – a bicycle is not an obstruction (from dictionary in the road rules: “obstruction includes a traffic hazard, but does not include a vehicle only because the vehicle is stopped in traffic or is travelling more slowly than other vehicles”)
(e) no – not applicable
(f) no – see above
As none of the exceptions are applicable, the driver must drive completely within a lane. There is no exception for passing a bicycle.
Note that the inspector had not viewed my videos so they were not really discussed in that context. In no particular order, things discussed included:
- Police have discretion about giving infringements, the courts have discretion about upholding them if challenged
- Giving an infringement for rule 146 for this kind of thing is a pretty technical & minor breach and i sense its just not going to happen
- At first I think he was saying he had discretion to class a bicycle as an obstacle so there wouldn't be a breach of 146, but I argued that the definition of an obstacle in the rules didn't seem to allow discretion when its very specific about slower moving vehicles not being an obstacle
- There would be a stronger case for some kind of infringement if something was thrown at me, or the car loses control, or was speeding at the time etc etc. But I then asked how would you prove the car was speeding, and he said if an officer had a speed trap there ... but thats kind of not going to happen very often at all is it...
I don't think I'm going to get any further with the 146 bit. Not that I really want to or care about it, it was just a way of providing a punishment to be remembered and show things are taken seriously, when a close pass cannot be "proved" by video evidence.
We went on to discuss videos and evidence. In summary...
- Yes a video *could* be used as evidence, but it isn't done very often and may not be given a lot of weight
- It would need to be very obvious, and I would need to provide original out of the camera video (not edited/cut)
- It would be much better to have both front and back and maybe side cameras, as otherwise the defence could claim that the car got further away when it was beside me
- Any claims about distances would be very difficult to hold up in court so really it would need to show something else, that made it worse. I would need to be a witness and the first questions the defense would be asking me would be what my qualifications are as an expert witness on distances, what training I have had, how far away is that seat over there and then measure it and so on.
- To prosecute something, it has to be for the public good, and this includes considering the seriousness of the crime, the likelihood of success and the costs involved in taking it to court (if found not guilty apparently the police have to pay defense costs)
He called me back later on after speaking to the senior sergeant I have talked to at the local station, and said to still submit the videos. If the driver does admit to something, its all good, but other than that its very touch and go as to whether anything can be done, which is kind of the same situation as before.
Feeling kind of powerless/deflated at the moment, because I don't know what the next step is - don't even know what I want. I don't have a problem with the level of proof required in a criminal case being high, its better than the alternative police state we'd end up with. Should video evidence be somehow legislated to have more weight? Don't see how this could happen or even if its a good idea. Strict liability laws? I'm not sure I agree with them. There's so many idiot cyclists and pedestrians around it doesn't seem fair, and there's enough of the wrong kind of idiots here to take it as a license to do what they like. Much tougher driving tests, repeat tests when renewing license, make it much easier to lose your license and lose it for a long time (start with less points)? I kind of like that idea (the police probably do too).
I've been living in this fantasy world where I thought if a lot of road users had cameras, and dangerous behavior was called to account, that pretty soon everything would be great and even my knicks would smell like roses at the end of a ride and my chain would never need cleaning again...
The inspector was telling me a story about one of his cases where he had an audio recording of an incident where he heard motorbikes in the distance (out of sight) revving really hard from some lights, and had run for his speed camera, and then had the 2 motorbikes come flying into view around a corner. He got the speed camera onto one bike and you can hear the sound of the radar gun locking on - 172kmh. The other motorbike overtook this bike going even faster. He pulled them over (the 2nd bike not able to stop in time, stopped 300 meters down the road before being able to turn back). First guy got shown speed on gun and knew he was done. Second guy asked if he knew how fast he was going. Rider: "70kmh". "What is the speed limit here?" Rider: "70kmh". Officer: "No its 60kmh". So it goes to court, officer is a court accepted expert witness about speeds, an experienced traffic cop, he has the audio recording which he has used to calculate their average speed as 160kmh from the last set of lights. He has the bike overtaking the other one which was doing 172kmh. End result? A ticket for 172kmh and one for 70kmh
To rub salt into my wounds, in the last couple of days I've had nothing but great driving, even considerate drivers letting me in after a shoulder check ... and a "cyclist" doing 30kmh+ overtaking through a non existant gap between me and an oncoming pedestrian on a narrow path, 2 cyclists almost mowing me down after I stopped at a stop sign (dumb of me!), and another guy on the way home overtaking me while I was obviously overtaking another pedestrian, forcing me to brake to avoid a collision. Bloody (AT)!#(AT)%^#! cyclists