Another visit to the Magistrates’ Court

Despite being asked I wasn’t sure I was going to write this blog. I attended Worcester Magistrates’ Court on 6th January 2025 to give evidence as a witness following a submission to West Mercia via the Operation Snap portal. The experience was interesting and normally something I’d write up, particularly to other people I know who report similar events to West Mercia, however I was hesitant, but I’m not sure why.

So what’s changed, that I’m now tapping away on my keyboard? Well, the Worcester News covered the case, which seemed pretty balanced, but on the back of the article everyone is free to post their thoughts in the online comments section, and on other social media platforms where the article is shared. Many of the comments were supportive of the reporting and the outcome; some less so. Now, I appreciate such platforms are not always the best place to go looking for reasoned conversation or debate, but there have been a number of common threads by commentators which I thought I’d pull together in one place (here), including countering them with some of the information that was presented in court.

The incident happened on the 27th March 2024 on the A443 between Hallow and Grimley, heading north. It’s a section of road which is national speed limit, and is on my commute to work, where a number of us travel to the office by bike. The defendant was David Merritt, and he was driving the vehicle that looks like a police car (but isn’t).

The video below is the evidence submitted to West Mercia, along with a statement of the incident (which I don’t have a copy of, but was available to the defendant and prosecuting solicitor).

After hanging around in the witness room for a bit chatting to the amazing Citizens Advice volunteers, my name was called and I entered the court and was directed to the witness box, and asked to describe events by the prosecuting solicitor. In short, I was cycling to work, could see approaching vehicles and could hear another vehicle approaching from behind. I knew there wasn’t space to safely overtake (leaving the required 1.50m in the Highway Code) and expected to hear the vehicle slow down. This didn’t happen so I swerved to the left just before the driver overtook. I shouted something, which is usually a good indication I thought the driving was dangerous. That’s it, all over in a few seconds, scary for me but of little consequence to the driver.

Mr Merritt had decided to represent himself, and as such had the opportunity to cross examine me as witness. He asked a number of questions and made a few statements; whether I had a driving license and owned a car, whether I was in fear of my life during the incident, we discussed the exclamation I made and that he didn’t think I sounded scared (more like I’d spilt some coffee), he raised the definition of the word ‘swerve’, and there was some confusion about how fast I thought he was driving (both my written and verbal statements were consistent; most likely travelling at greater than 30 mph). We discussed the width of the lane and his car (more on this later), my road positioning, the position of the camera, and the fact I’d swerved to the left just prior to the overtake. He also tried to make the point that some unspecified law didn’t actually apply at the time of the offence.

Mr Merritt then took the stand as a witness. The prosecuting solicitor asked a series of robust questions, along the lines of:

It was not safe to overtake, was it?

You should have waited shouldn’t you?

You passed too close to the witness didn’t you?

To which Mr Merritt repeatedly answered ‘No’.

Mr Merritt took the opportunity to state the width of the road, the width of his car, and his calculation that the space left was therefore 4 feet (which was then evidence he’d provided that he hadn’t left the required 1.50m; 4 feet = 1.20m).

So there’s a quick summary, the Magistrates then retired to make their judgement, and came back to find Mr Merritt guilty of the charges:

Drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road / in a public place without due care and attention

The sentence was as follows:

Driving record endorsed with 3 penalty points, fined £103, court costs £400, victim surcharge £40.

What the law says about close passing a cyclist

My understanding of the law in this regard (happy to be corrected) is that this is covered under Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, the image below from the Crown Prosecution website, see ‘driving too close to another vehicle’:

So what is considered ‘too close’? This was clarified in the Highway Code in the update of January 2022, under rule 163 (there are other bullet points, removed here for simplification):

So how can you tell the video provides evidence of a close pass?

In the first instance, reasoned judgement.

To provide a bit of background, I regularly use a bike as a mode of transport, particularly for my commute to work, and for short journeys in and around Worcester, covering about 8000 km each year, most of which is sharing roads with people driving. The vast majority of interactions I have with people driving cars are absolutely fine, but about 5% of drivers are close enough to make me feel uncomfortable (stats here). This is dependant on the size of the vehicle, the speed, the weather conditions, and of course, the space left by the driver, but on the whole 1.50m is enough that this feels safe.

The camera I use is positioned in line with my right arm, and has an event button, where it writes a 20 second video to memory. Of the 5% of close passes only a few will be close enough for me to press the button. I then review these at home, and again, only a few will be reported to West Mercia. The police officers reviewing the footage will then make a decision of whether the driver meets the threshold, and then is passed to the Traffic Processing Unit who may overturn this decision. If this eventually goes to the Magistrates’ Court, the final decision of careless driving is made by the Magistrates. I mention all of this because if it’s got as far as the driver receiving a letter there are multiple layers of reasoned judgement that would suggest they’ve passed at < 1.50m.

Not enough for you Pedro? No worries. Using the example of the video above, lets see what we can find out. Wikipedia states we’d expect the lane width on our roads to be 2.50 to 3.25m wide. Google Maps also allows you to measure distances, and in roughly the location of the incident the road is about 3.00m wide. I’ve also been and measure it, and 3.00m seems about right.

OK, so next…how wide is the car? The image below is from the Skoda website. We can quibble over the exact model of Octavia it is, so I’ll be generous and we can call it 1.80m (despite the wing mirror smacking my arm being the first point of concern).

Next step, looking at this still from the video you can see the car doesn’t cross the central white line (this was also not disputed by Mr Merritt in court). So we can now do some simple math, and the open tarmac in front of me is 3.00 - 1.80 = 1.20m wide.

Lawks a lordy Danbo, 1.20m isn’t far away from 1.50m is it? You’re right, it isn’t. But it is LESS than 1.50m. Oh, and there’s something we haven’t considered yet, aka ME (and I consider me to be important enough to be factored into these discussions). If we take a look at the next image, it’s me on my bike, and I’m about 0.60m wide. Given half of me is overhanging the white line on the left, we can deduct 0.30m from the space between wing mirror and arm, so now at 0.90m. Close enough yet?

Finally, the image above is after I’ve taken evasion action, so we need to take a look at my road position before that, when Mr Merritt took the decision to commence the overtake. See below:

Based on this image I would estimate the line of the camera (and my right arm) is about 1/3 of the way across the carriageway, so 1.00m out from the white line, so the wheel centre line is about 0.70m out (the Highway Code says to ride in the middle of the lane, or when vehicles are overtaking at least 0.50m away from the kerb; see below).

Again, to provide a bit of leeway, lets say I’m 0.40m out from the line, added this to half of me (0.30m) and that gives 0.70m from the white line. So of the 1.20m of tarmac left by Mr. Merritt, had I not taken evasive action the space left is likely < 0.50m, a third of the space required by the Highway Code had he been travelling at 30 mph (again, most likely travelling at a speed faster than this, so should have left more space).

In conclusion, that is enough reasonable judgement and evidence to find a driver guilty of driving without due care and attention. Given the impact an incident like this has on the the person riding the bike (a hefty spike of adrenaline, and combined feelings of fear, anger and frustration), I think this is perfectly reasonable, given I was a combination of inches and seconds away from a potentially fatal collision.

You’re a grass, a snitch, a dirty rat

It’s pretty common for some bright spark to wade in to the comments with a remark such as these, so I’ll provide some feedback here, as it’s my blog and all that.

My opening gambit; it’s pathetic, and I would say it’s the stuff of school playgrounds, but it’s equally unacceptable there.

If we have a think about what’s trying to be achieved by making such statements, it’s basically to create a situation where I feel uncomfortable about my actions (reporting illegal drivers), presumably, at some level, to intimidate me enough to change my behaviour and stop reporting. Or I’m overthinking it and it’s people conditioned to make such comments without thinking about why they’re making the comment; aka idiots.

Either way, what’s the benefit to other people of creating a situation where I stop reporting illegal driving? Honestly, I think I’m providing a civic duty, and over a long enough time period with enough people doing the same I think it’s reasonable to hypothesise that we will improve driving standards, reduce near misses and therefore incidents, and reduce damage, injury and death, currently caused by illegal driving. Which is why it’s recognised by police forces and decision makers as a incredibly cost effective and efficient method of achieving this.

So parking the comments made by people who don’t think, I suspect other comments are made by people from an entirely selfish perspective. Rather than thinking of the benefits to all road users of reducing road danger, they’re focussed on how reporting affects themselves, that is they’re concerned about getting reported for driving illegally. Or they’ve already been reported for driving illegally, and rather than reflect on their own actions and change their behaviour, they haven’t accepted their wrong doing and instead take aim at the person recording and providing evidence of illegal activity (something that is legal and encouraged by the police).

I wonder if they were the victim of a crime would they expect witnesses to come forward to help them receive justice? Or are there other crimes they consider to be acceptable, and not worthy of reporting?

So what do I when presented with the comment ‘snitches get stitches’? I reach for the camera, and make sure I report all illegal activities I’ve got evidence of. So bad luck chaps; your attempt at intimidation is actually an encouragement.

Conclusion

I might add to the blog at a later date depending on any comments, but I think I’ll wrap it up here.

Driving is inherently dangerous; we travel around in 2 tonnes of metal capable of speeds way in excess of legal limits. In 2023 there were about 130,000 injuries on our roads, 30,000 of which involved serious injury or death. If you’re not driving to test standard your actions are antisocial, dangerous and illegal. You may have never been involved in a collision and have a clean driving license, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t been involved in multiple near misses, or that you’ve negatively impacted other road users.

As someone who regularly travels by bike, and particularly in and around Worcester, there is so little good quality segregated cycling infrastructure it’s almost non existent, so most of my journeys are sharing space with drivers. I’d like to thank the vast majority of drivers who do say legally and with respect for other road users, but negative interactions are unfortunately common (similarly for pedestrians, but typically they have segregated space).

Given concern about road safety is a concern and a notable barrier to people choosing to travel by bike it’s essential driving standards improve, if we want to increase rates of active travel. 3rd party reporting of illegal driving is something all of us can do to make an impact, which is why there are increasing numbers of people doing it.

In short, drive to test standard. Simples.

More information on road danger can be found on the Bike Worcester page here.