An open and shut case

[steve2006]

Whilst on a local shopping trip I was suddenly confront by an oncoming impatient driver who decided to overtake another car turning left, drove onto my side of the road causing me to have to break sharply to avoid a head on collision.

OK we all make mistakes and with a hand up in apology or a flash of the hazard warning lights the matter is soon passed, the guilty party forgiven and you carry on with your life.

On this occasion however the response from the other driver after I sounded my horn to warn him of my presence was to give me the 2 fingers as he passed.

Glancing through my rear view mirror I noticed he turn right 100 yards further on into a residential property.

Returning via the same route and sure enough the vehicle was now parked on the driveway and having gained the registration number, owner’s presumed address and his attitude decided on this occasion to report the matter to the police.

After providing all the information requested I received the following response 2 hours later.

“Making Derbyshire Safer together” mmmmmmmmm.

“Please find above the crime reference number for a public order incident occurring whilst driving.

 

The investigation into the matter will be closed, with no further action to follow.

 

From the initial report it states there is no CCTV available to document the other persons actions.

 

Even if there were to be footage of this happening, the incident would not pass the threshold of being in the public interest to seek prosecution.

 

Kind regards

 

 

Ray Hill

Sgt 14353”

 

CRIMt:

Group 3

FCR

Tel: 101 (Internal 7373687)

E-mail: ray.hill@derbyshire.police.uk

Web: http://www.derbyshire.police.uk

[Spock66]

Some of the YouTube compilations from Dashcams are pretty horrendous.

[Mincey]

Too much trouble to "pursue".

Back in the very early Nineties, I remember answering a knock on the door. It was the local Plod. He said that a woman had "nearly been knocked over by my father as he reversed off my drive". I was watching him leave and I presented a very different version of events which were in fact the truth - she had waited until he had finished his manoeuvre before crossing the road - after which Plod bade me farewell and no more of the matter was heard. These days you can call the Rozzers after having someone plunge a knife into you and they're not the slightest bit interested in coming out to look for, let alone track down and arrest the felons. 

[Linas.P]

Sorry but in my experience police do not pursue such matters. Guy literally crashed into me going trough the red and did not stop. I had dashcam, I called police to report hit and run and they advised me to call the insurance. There was actual damage to the car, I had dashcam footage - responded after 2 weeks - "not in public interest to investigate". Hit and run is not in public interest to investigate! If there is no damage what exactly you expecting? Whatever they could do would need do go to the court, because private dashcam footage does not automatically count as evidence, they can't issue fine based on it, that means they need to go trough entire process of suing him and even then only assuming you can very clearly make out the person in the speeding car from dashcam footage it will go nowhere, will not be proven beyond reasonable doubt it was even him...

Yes I understand you want to do right thing and I commend you, but from practice I know police does not give a shait, all they care is collecting £100 for from stationary camera when somebody was doing 60MPH on the empty motorway at night on 70MPH road, because there was temporary roadworks limit of 50MPH and obviously nobody working. That is sort of thing they like - 0 investment, 0 time spent, 1 automated letter for £0.10 and £100 in the pocket. Spending actual time, calling the person into police station to give statement, filing everything to court, just to be laughed out in the court is not their cuppa.

Just found an old e-mail exchange - note the investigate only "where death, physical injury and major damage is a factor." How about that?! 😄 

[Spock66]

Even the cases that do go to court and result in a guilty verdict the sentence is usually a joke.

[NemesisUK]

2 hours ago, steve2006 said:

OK we all make mistakes and with a hand up in apology or a flash of the hazard warning lights the matter is soon passed, the guilty party forgiven and you carry on with your life.

On this occasion however the response from the other driver after I sounded my horn to warn him of my presence was to give me the 2 fingers as he passed.

Perhaps the horn sounding was perceived as aggressive, rather than just a warning? He was in the wrong but nothing other than you having to take avoiding action, happened, for the Police to pursue. An educational word from a traffic officer would achieve little other than cost the force time ....

[Linas.P]

51 minutes ago, Spock66 said:

Even the cases that do go to court and result in a guilty verdict the sentence is usually a joke.

They kind of are and they aren't - and this is huge problem. Because the law and order is based on premise of everyone being equal against the law, but lack of actual enforcement and lottery like odds is what undermines the whole system. 

As you said the sentencing could be joke, I would argue 90% of the time case would be lost, but if certain police officer takes it personally, then it could be "driving without due care and attention" - 6 Points, £1000... not small... or it could even be "dangerous driving", which is 6-12points, driving ban for a year and in some cases even prison sentence. And again that is huge issue, because police officer have NO RIGHT to treat it personally, but they do and if one would have done this for officer in plane clothes who has a bad day, it could be "dangerous driving" charge.

In my view - sending a warning for 98% of offenders without fine achieves more than putting 2% in the jail and specifically UK police is horrible at it.... they let people go because of ignorance, laziness, maybe lack of resources, but at the same time they let many people to develop very bad habits which one day end-up killing somebody. And it is not very good for offenders either, instead of getting petty punishment for petty crime, they get nothing nothing nothing jail.

So I wish the burned of evidence would be lower, that police could warn people without going to the court, sort of adding 0.5 point on the license which does not mean anything, but second warming will take it into consideration... sort of create atmosphere of responsibility. Because now what we have - burden of evidence is so high that only most egregious crimes are prosecuted, so as it happens police basically ignores the issue until it becomes big. 

[Guest]

If there’s no cctv or dash cam footage what are the police supposed to do ? It would become he said/you said and as there is no damage etc no actual physical crime, annoying definitely.

[Spacewagon52]

Quote:

........because private dashcam footage does not automatically count as evidence, they can't issue fine based on it, 

 

I do not think this is correct. Video evidence is used by the police to issue fines.

[LenT]

17 hours ago, steve2006 said:

Whilst on a local shopping trip I was suddenly confront by an oncoming impatient driver who decided to overtake another car turning left, drove onto my side of the road causing me to have to break sharply to avoid a head on collision.

OK we all make mistakes and with a hand up in apology or a flash of the hazard warning lights the matter is soon passed, the guilty party forgiven and you carry on with your life.

On this occasion however the response from the other driver after I sounded my horn to warn him of my presence was to give me the 2 fingers as he passed.

Glancing through my rear view mirror I noticed he turn right 100 yards further on into a residential property.

Returning via the same route and sure enough the vehicle was now parked on the driveway and having gained the registration number, owner’s presumed address and his attitude decided on this occasion to report the matter to the police.

After providing all the information requested I received the following response 2 hours later.

“Making Derbyshire Safer together” mmmmmmmmm.

“Please find above the crime reference number for a public order incident occurring whilst driving.

 

The investigation into the matter will be closed, with no further action to follow.

 

From the initial report it states there is no CCTV available to document the other persons actions.

 

Even if there were to be footage of this happening, the incident would not pass the threshold of being in the public interest to seek prosecution.

 

Kind regards

 

 

Ray Hill

Sgt 14353”

 

CRIMt:

Group 3

FCR

Tel: 101 (Internal 7373687)

E-mail: ray.hill@derbyshire.police.uk

Web: http://www.derbyshire.police.uk

 

Irritating though this encounter may have been, Steve, I think you’ve just presented an excellent case for the fitting of a dashcam.  At the very most, the Police might have interviewed the other driver and possibly issued a Police Caution.  

But in the absence of independent evidence of this incident, a Prosecution would most likely fail.  As such, it would indeed be deemed as not being in the public interest.

I have personal experience of this in that I did have occasion to report an incidence of potentially dangerous driving and was able to supply corroborating video evidence.  A PC took the trouble to pay three visits to the driver’s address before finding him in and then presented him with the evidence, before issuing a Police Caution.

I was then contacted to see if I was satisfied with that outcome - or did I wish to persue it further.  As it happens, I thought the other driver seemed sufficiently contrite and might be more considerate in future.  Or at least aware that their actions could be being recorded!

So that ended the matter.

There is a facility for supplying video clips to Police Authorities to support prosecutions and I think they welcome valid contributions.  After all, they can be a very easy way to improve their conviction figures!

[MrTrendizzle]

3 hours ago, Spacewagon52 said:

Quote:

........because private dashcam footage does not automatically count as evidence, they can't issue fine based on it, 

 

I do not think this is correct. Video evidence is used by the police to issue fines.

Issue fines yes, enforcing them if the recipient wishes to contest it in court. Now the dashcam submitter has to attend (If they turn up) and the footage scrutinised by the defence with a possible outcome of court fee and case dropped etc...  
Outside of court tho... Now the submitter has been clearly identified with name and address plus possible vehicle owned they become a target for the "disgruntled" motorist. Recently in the local area someone posted on Facebook about a bad driver and submitted it to the drive safe website the police use and that person has since lost their car and had to replace multiple windows on their home mysteriously. And guess what! Police handed them a reference number for insurance and that was the matter closed.

Police rely on the public for safety only to then let them down by not protecting them from repercussions.  

Submitting dashcam footage should be used to build a case against a driver so when the police do catch them they have a long list of offences they can use to convict them rather than just dishing out fines over the slightest mistake.

[Spacewagon52]

You make some interesting points Mr T.

[The-Acre]

19 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Sorry but in my experience police do not pursue such matters. Guy literally crashed into me going trough the red and did not stop. I had dashcam, I called police to report hit and run and they advised me to call the insurance. There was actual damage to the car, I had dashcam footage - responded after 2 weeks - "not in public interest to investigate". Hit and run is not in public interest to investigate! If there is no damage what exactly you expecting? Whatever they could do would need do go to the court, because private dashcam footage does not automatically count as evidence, they can't issue fine based on it, that means they need to go trough entire process of suing him and even then only assuming you can very clearly make out the person in the speeding car from dashcam footage it will go nowhere, will not be proven beyond reasonable doubt it was even him...

Yes I understand you want to do right thing and I commend you, but from practice I know police does not give a shait, all they care is collecting £100 for from stationary camera when somebody was doing 60MPH on the empty motorway at night on 70MPH road, because there was temporary roadworks limit of 50MPH and obviously nobody working. That is sort of thing they like - 0 investment, 0 time spent, 1 automated letter for £0.10 and £100 in the pocket. Spending actual time, calling the person into police station to give statement, filing everything to court, just to be laughed out in the court is not their cuppa.

Just found an old e-mail exchange - note the investigate only "where death, physical injury and major damage is a factor." How about that?! 😄 

"Not in the public interest to investigate " However, if you were a woman on her own named Isabel Vaughan Spruce, praying silently in her head outside an abortion facility in Birmingham, without banners or anything else but her thoughts,  you'd find yourself arrested twice in the space of three months and taken away in a patrol car. I guess this is an easy one for the police, less investigative work involved! 

[Cotswold Pete]

IMHO the police are more than likely all attending some incident where 2 officers would do, but 15 seem to be in attendance. 

That is the impression I get from watching those trashy shows on Channel 5.

I am sure my late father who was a station sergeant and then a motorway patrol officer would be appalled at the number of officers it seems to need to drive at high speed to all gather around while not solving other crimes.

Or am I just being cynical??

[Spock66]

One thing for sure is you don't see many (any?) Lexus Police vehicles.

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, The-Acre said:

"Not in the public interest to investigate " However, if you were a woman on her own named Isabel Vaughan Spruce, praying silently in her head outside an abortion facility in Birmingham, without banners or anything else but her thoughts,  you'd find yourself arrested twice in the space of three months and taken away in a patrol car. I guess this is an easy one for the police, less investigative work involved! 

You can bet I didn't let them get away with it... my response to that was - "you investigate or I sue YOU". They did investigate in the end, but as I said managed to lose in the court somehow... I have no idea how, but they managed. 

[The-Acre]

1 hour ago, Linas.P said:

You can bet I didn't let them get away with it... my response to that was - "you investigate or I sue YOU". They did investigate in the end, but as I said managed to lose in the court somehow... I have no idea how, but they managed. 

I think we've been conditioned to just roll over and accept it. It's hard to find the energy to pursue an injustice, but unless we try, the ones who think they rule, they simply win!

[steve2006]

Thinking back maybe 10 years ago I was involved in another incident where when following another vehicle a glass bottle was thrown from it.

The bottle landed just short of my old LS400 shattering as it hit the road.

I reported that incident too but on that occasion the police did visit the registered keeper, apparently a recently qualified young lady.

After being spoken to she was asked to write a letter to the victim apologising for the incident and distress caused which I duly received, the police also asked if I was now satisfied with the outcome which I was.

I would bet that having a police officer knocking on your parents’ door in connection with a driving offence ensured it never happened again.

Ten years later and how things have apparently changed!

[Linas.P]

46 minutes ago, steve2006 said:

Thinking back maybe 10 years ago I was involved in another incident where when following another vehicle a glass bottle was thrown from it.

The bottle landed just short of my old LS400 shattering as it hit the road.

I reported that incident too but on that occasion the police did visit the registered keeper, apparently a recently qualified young lady.

After being spoken to she was asked to write a letter to the victim apologising for the incident and distress caused which I duly received, the police also asked if I was now satisfied with the outcome which I was.

I would bet that having a police officer knocking on your parents’ door in connection with a driving offence ensured it never happened again.

Ten years later and how things have apparently changed!

And that was my point above, no court, no fine, just simple verbal warning reminding that one has to behave like a human being achieves the most desired outcome - people respecting the law and feeling like they can't get away from responsibility.

The current way police is working - let people do small crimes and ignore them, making it feel like there are no consequences and then putting then in jail when they commit something serious... and this is bad for everyone, because this basically "grows" criminals. I forgot who did this experiment, but in summary they found that most important thing for compliance is not severity of the punishment, but likelihood of being caught. If there would be death sentence for speeding (maybe bad example as I don't believe speeding is a crime), but no enforcement then people would still be speeding, however if the fine for 1MPH over the limit for every second you go over the limit would be 10p and enforcement would be 100%, then nobody would speed, because there would be no getting away from it. Imagine that - you go for overtaking and in the end of the month you get £6.70 bill... nobody would be like - "yeah sure overtaking this one car is worth £6.70". Well I guess some very rich people wouldn't mind, but 99% of drivers would stick to the limit. Again maybe speeding is wrong example, but we can use any literally anything as an example the point is the same - not severity of the punishment is what bring compliance, but likelihood of enforcement. 

For that reason apology letter was such a good idea, no lasting consequences for the person (no points, no increase in insurance etc.), but her world view has completely changed, now she feels like she can break even minor laws because somebody will knock on the door.

I will go on the tangent here, but in my opinion the biggest problems in UK comes from parenting and protections for minors. Kids under 14 are untouchable, like literally... they can smash your car window in front of police and police will stand and do nothing, because they can't do anything... growing up like that can ruin anyone. I personally don't believe anyone is born evil, but growing-up without any responsibilities and without any consequences can ruin the best person.

P.S. - consider installing dash cam. This time there was no damage, but next time you may lose mirror or something and without evidence don't expect police to do anything about it, even with evidence they still going to try to wiggle out of it. Although it works well for insurance and claims management companies.

[Malc1]

On 3/7/2023 at 7:08 PM, steve2006 said:

Whilst on a local shopping trip

Steve, just expect a fine in the post for wasting police time .....  fine might be halved if you pay it in 30 days . if you don't pay it at all you will definitely go to jail  and NOT pass Go and Not get a Free Get out of jail card either ...........

c'mon Steve, wake up, smell the coffee .  take more caffeine ..  it helps at times of stress .......... 🤣

Malc

 

[steve2006]

20 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

Steve, just expect a fine in the post for wasting police time .....  fine might be halved if you pay it in 30 days . if you don't pay it at all you will definitely go to jail  and NOT pass Go and Not get a Free Get out of jail card either ...........

c'mon Steve, wake up, smell the coffee .  take more caffeine ..  it helps at times of stress .......... 🤣

Malc

 

I know Malc, it was awful she gave me a “list” and I had to go to multiple shops for various items, 2 cash machines as the first one was broken and walk over 100 yards from the nearest car park.

I’m convinced it was this that stressed me out more and I snapped. 😀

[dutchie01]

Sign of the times i guess. How things have changed in 50 years. Going back in memory i can remember my bike ( i was 10yrs old) disappeared when i was climbing the apple trees. My father went to the police and they immediately sent an officer so both of them roamed the streets in search for the bike the entire afternoon. Fast forward to 2023. Car broken into you are not even allowed to visit the local police station ( if it still exists) but have to report all through internet and of course just for insurance purposes only.

By the way i still remember the summernight when i was speeding heavily on my motorcycle decades ago and all of a sudden a policebike was next to me i did not see him coming at all. The only thing he did was wave his hand to slow me down. An impression still with me later to be repeated by the Swedish police doing exactly thesame. All speedingtickets i forgot.

[LenT]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

P.S. - consider installing dash cam

Good advice, Linus.

Personally, I think these could be the single most effective way of improving driving behaviour.  As you rightly suggest, if drivers are aware that the chances that their deliberately bad behaviour is increasingly likely to be recorded by the vehicles around them, it is also increasingly likely that it will deter all but the most determinedly stupid.

And greatly improve even their chances of being caught.

I’m sure that Lexus is not alone in offering dashcams as an accessory.  It’s a relatively trivial cost when lost in the purchase price.

 

[Linas.P]

What bother me the most is that in UK they not even pretending to do anything, in other countries they at least come to the crime scene, check the evidence and is there are some obvious leads they do absolute minimum to investigate it, but at least they do that... and surprise surprise 50% of the cases only needs absolute minimum. But in UK they are so blatantly not even pretending, I had several cases of burglary, one arson etc. they don't even come to look at CCTV... and sure CCTV may not show anything, but it may show something, it may show registration number of the car... pay them a visit and it turns out even thought you didn't find the biky stolen on this case, you find another 28 bikes reported on other cases... but in UK they absolutely do nothing. Make report online, they send you crime reference number and 2 hours later you get another e-mail - your case closed "no leads to investigate" or "not in public interest to investigate". This last one is so funny for me... how the hell they know what is in "public interest"? We are the public - NOT them? It is clearly in public interest for all cases to be investigated... sometimes I understand that it is not in public interest to prosecute all the cases, but I can't see any reason why it would not be in public interest to at least investigate.

1 minute ago, LenT said:

Good advice, Linus.

Personally, I think these could be the single most effective way of improving driving behaviour.  As you rightly suggest, if drivers are aware that the chances that their deliberately bad behaviour is increasingly likely to be recorded by the vehicles around them, it is also increasingly likely that it will deter all but the most determinedly stupid.

And greatly improve even their chances of being caught.

I’m sure that Lexus is not alone in offering dashcams as an accessory.  It’s a relatively trivial cost when lost in the purchase price.

 

For police most of the time even that doesn't work, because they have unique ability to be useless. But I have used it for insurance several times with great results. Without dash cam it would have been 50/50%, not only that I wouldn't get anything out of it, but my insurance would have gone-up... with dashcam I was able to prove in minutes that it was 100% non-fault accident and I had my case "pre-approved", meaning I get pay-out even before other party insurance agrees with it. Without dashcam it may take literal months of backwards and forwards to get even straight forward cases dealt with, talking with witnesses, waiting for other party to respond, negotiating the price and all that non-sense. With dashcam - video sent, money in the bank account within 2 weeks. So definitely good investment and not even that expensive anyway!

[GMB]

The system does not work.

Many years ago I stumbled into an incident where a policeman was being attacked in a shop and "asked" to help out, and I mean the policeman and the shop manager were crying out " help us ". The policeman was losing the fight. The shop manager ran away.

I helped restrain the ( very large ) attacker and the policeman got up and took control with his truncheon.

Police arrived in a van and took the guy away.

The policeman was very grateful.

A week later I got a letter from chief constable's secretary.

I thought "  It must be a thank you or something, maybe a nice letter or a medal even😇 ".

WRONG.

It was a threat that if I did not appear in court to testify I would be prosecuted.

Fortunately the aggressor pleaded guilty, BUT the point is that my name and address were given to the defence team, so the well known nasty type with a bad family  knew where I lived. It turned out that he also had a knife on him! He was from a notorious gang of peripatetic itinerants.

Conclusion: The shopkeeper fled the area never to be seen again, and probably because the offender pleaded guilty I did not have to appear for  the prosecution, so no known consequences for me, luckily.

However, I would probably do the same again to help a person in distress and have to suffer the consequences.