Deliberately targeted by white tradie ute (nsw

[il padrone]

Failing to give way should be prosecuted with as much diligence as speeding is. SMIDSY should be disallowed as any sort of defence (excuse), as is the case with "my speedo is not working".

[il padrone]

But just by reporting concerns to the fuzz, insisting no more than that they receive your complaint, you do the whole riding community a favour. It gets added into their base of knowledge and serial offenders get noticed.

I am not so sure that just a complaint, with no action requested, will lead to the required paper-trail that enables aggro or incompetent drivers to be traced in event of later incidents. I would have expected that an official warning would be the minimum that would lead to any record of an incident. To get this you would need to make a statement to police about the incident, probably with an independent witness, with a request to take action.

I did this a few years back when a Gippsland local blasted his horn at us from several hundred metres back on a straight road clear of traffic, then flew past at ~100kmh with < 4" to spare (a fellow rider behind gave me the distance he saw). I am confident this was a direct case of assault. Police were willing to follow this up, visited the driver, took our statements, and sent the file to the DPP. Nothing resulted AFAIK, but that's fine - this driver may well be on notice now.

[Undertow]

From an alegation of dastardly driver behaviour the thread now seems to now be a place to pummel police. So, about police...

I read a lot of self serving arguments that do not always make much sense without giving an undue benefit of the doubt.

There is a wide variety of what people see as dangerous.

Some people seem to be primed to see faults and rush to report. That just makes it harder for the cops to bother with other legitimate complaints.

There are some alegations supported by video footage that doesn't look anything like the description.

There are many cyclists themselves who very publicly demonstrate a disdain for their own safely while expecting others to value their lives more than they do.

And anyone who complains to the local plod but then is unwilling to go to court is wasting the time of those public servants that are being paid for by my taxes. Talk to cop and ask about that and you will hit a raw nerve.

And finally And there are heap of other things that cops need to do as well. The cops have to somehow juggle all these complaints and demands while filtering out the trivial, the vexatious and the plain wrong to arrive at the few that they can afford the time to deal with properly and sufficiently to get a conviction.

I don't think cops are anything special. But they have my sympathy.

Name one area that the police have jurisdiction over that has more deaths or injuries or property damage than traffic? I doubt you can.

I put it to you that seeing as this is the area that has the most harm caused by illegal activity (including driving without due care and attention which covers SMIDSY) then this is the area where police should spend most of their time.

[jules21]

I did this a few years back when a Gippsland local blasted his horn at us from several hundred metres back on a straight road clear of traffic, then flew past at ~100kmh with < 4" to spare (a fellow rider behind gave me the distance he saw). I am confident this was a direct case of assault. Police were willing to follow this up, visited the driver, took our statements, and sent the file to the DPP. Nothing resulted AFAIK, but that's fine - this driver may well be on notice now.

that's a cop out - the police have their own prosecutors. i imagine the DPP took one look at that 'handball' and thought or said "prosecute it yourself you lazy sods".

[ColinOldnCranky]

Name one area that the police have jurisdiction over that has more deaths or injuries or property damage than traffic? I doubt you can.

I put it to you that seeing as this is the area that has the most harm caused by illegal activity (including driving without due care and attention which covers SMIDSY) then this is the area where police should spend most of their time.

You could have selected a more targeted grouping. In which case on your implied criteria, would have to be on other areas of trafic deaths, the majority of which are NOT related to cyclists.

The cops are charged with a host of other matters. Drugs, organised crime, sexual and other assaults. The fact is that a cop does not get to choose - he has to also attend to other matters that are important to others in the community. You and I do nto get to decide.

However it is neither here not there as far as the points I made. The issues I raised were along the lines of the boy who cried wolf.

[Undertow]

Name one area that the police have jurisdiction over that has more deaths or injuries or property damage than traffic? I doubt you can.

I put it to you that seeing as this is the area that has the most harm caused by illegal activity (including driving without due care and attention which covers SMIDSY) then this is the area where police should spend most of their time.

You could have selected a more targeted grouping. In which case on your implied criteria, would have to be on other areas of trafic deaths, the majority of which are NOT related to cyclists.

I was purposefully including all traffic problems in my criteria, as they should all be treated equally, it shouldn't matter what vehicles are involved. But at the moment when you report things (not just to the police) cyclists don't seem to be treated equally.

The cops are charged with a host of other matters. Drugs, organised crime, sexual and other assaults. The fact is that a cop does not get to choose - he has to also attend to other matters that are important to others in the community. You and I do nto get to decide.

I would like you to be correct on this point, however it doesn't seem to be the case. Cops do get to choose, this is evident by the number of complaints seen on this and other forums about the police not following up on there complaints.

[GraemeL]

Don't blame the cops, blame the government. They keep cutting and cutting until there is nothing left. I think the police do the best they can with what they have.

Graeme

[ColinOldnCranky]

I was purposefully including all traffic problems in my criteria, as they should all be treated equally...

Is that so? You have implied earlier that they should treat whole classes of issues LESS equally but that all VEHICLE related instances should be treated equally.[/quote]

I would like you to be correct on this point, however it doesn't seem to be the case. Cops do get to choose.

Sorry, careless choice of words on my part. They do not get to choose carte blanche not investigate, say, burglaries, out of control parties, family assaults,etc. Thatis policy and priority set from on high and varies from time to time acording to the demands of society/politicians/changing trends.

Cops do get to choose, this is evident by the number of complaints seen on this and other forums about the police not following up on there complaints.

And this is my point. They will work on some matters and dismiss others, for the simple reason that there are only 168 hours in the week and considerably less in a working week. And if they experience too many less than worthy complaints from a group then the outcome is likely to be that they will spend less time looking at the merits of that group of compalint. We can affect how un-equally we are treated.

[Undertow]

I was purposefully including all traffic problems in my criteria, as they should all be treated equally...

Is that so? You have implied earlier that they should treat whole classes of issues LESS equally but that all VEHICLE related instances should be treated equally.

[/quote]
I did not imply that, you inferred it.

I would like you to be correct on this point, however it doesn't seem to be the case. Cops do get to choose.

Sorry, careless choice of words on my part. They do not get to choose carte blanche not investigate, say, burglaries, out of control parties, family assaults,etc. Thatis policy and priority set from on high and varies from time to time acording to the demands of society/politicians/changing trends.

Cops do get to choose, this is evident by the number of complaints seen on this and other forums about the police not following up on there complaints.

And this is my point. They will work on some matters and dismiss others, for the simple reason that there are only 168 hours in the week and considerably less in a working week. And if they experience too many less than worthy complaints from a group then the outcome is likely to be that they will spend less time looking at the merits of that group of compalint. We can affect how un-equally we are treated.

I'm not saying other issues should be ignored so more resourced can be spent on vehicle related issues. I'm saying that as a whole vehicle related issues have the greatest impact on our society and therefore the police should take this into account when allocating their resources.
Here is what I have found so far on the cost of traffic issues.
"In this paper, we obtain detailed data on road traffic crash (RTC) casualties, by severity, for each of the eight state and territory jurisdictions for Australia and use these to estimate and compare the economic impact of RTCs across these regions. We show that the annual cost of RTCs in Australia, in 2003, was approximately Dollars 17 b, which is approximately 2.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."
source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797462" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Also "The total recurrent expenditure on police services around Australia in 2009–10 was approximately $8.5b"
source: https://aic.gov.au/en/publications/curr ... urces.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Surely if we as a society are spending over twice as much per year to clean up road traffic crashes as we are spending on police in total you would have to agree that the police either aren't treating traffic issues seriously enough, or they are grossly underfunded.

[biker jk]

Don't blame the cops, blame the government. They keep cutting and cutting until there is nothing left. I think the police do the best they can with what they have.

Graeme

I don't know about WA but in NSW the size of the police force has increased. It's often an attitude problem, not a resourcing issue.