Near Misses Thread Volume 2 (So close you can feel it)

We all know there are idiot car drivers, idiots on bikes, idiot lorry drivers, idiot tractor drivers, even idiot pedestrians, but today I had a close enough call with an idiot on one of those unicycle segway yokes.

Out for a spin in NCD along a narrow lane way and coming across a guy strimming in the verge so I naturally move over slightly to the middle of the lane way. Right as I'm next to him this idiot with his full leathers and full face helmet on his powered unicycle passes me out at what seemed like flat out speed.

Who would've thought you could have a close shave with a unicycle segway on a Saturday afternoon rural bike spin...

I had a similar experience - terrible driving, thought I was a goner - reported to Garda and said I had video. Video was never sought, I never got an update. After a few months I got onto GSOC, they got onto the station or local inspector, and it turned out the Garda had spoken to the driver and issued a FCPN. He was very apologetic about not updating me.

I'd have preferred something more severe, but have to trust the Garda's professional opinion (and I didn't really have a say in the matter anyway).

This.

As others have said the fact that it hasn't been dealt with by the court and therefore isn't in the public domain would bring it right under GDPR. My day job is writing software for European funded research projects and, since GDPR came into being, every dataset that we are given has to be first and foremost looked at from the perspective of GDPR implications.

GDPR is a bit unusual in that it's the individual handling the data and not the organisation that is considered the processor. Under it, data can only be stored on a strictly "is it necessary?" basis and should be deleted when no such cause still exists, so in the case where X gets 5 penalty points there's a perfectly valid reason to store that data so that the next time X does something stupid and accrues more points, they may lose their license. In the same vein, the record of the 5 penalty points should hypothetically be deleted altogether after they expire (is it 2 years?) - unless of course there's some other justifiable reason to hold onto it, which there may well be.

So with all that in mind, from the point of the legislation, a 3rd party - @Schorpio in this instance - has no legal right to know how many points X has as they have no legitimate reason to process that data and the individual guard would breach GDPR by giving it. It sucks, but I think as others have pointed out, this is the nub of it.

As regard reg numbers, they are considered as data that can identify an individual under GDPR and there have been test cases around it. I personally think it's a bit of a stretch as you need access to the vehicle reg database to link it to somebody, and that should be pretty well restricted. There's also an explicit exclusion from GDPR regarding breaches of the law - which this undoubtedly is, but it's probably only the guards who are exempt from the point of view of investigation.

GDPR is without doubt widely used as a smokescreen - the new "Helt 'n' Sayftee' as it were - and because it's so complex and the penalties so onerous, it can be hard to argue with.

OP, it'd be no harm following up with whoever you did report it to - the worst they can say is no, but on the other hand you might get somebody willing to give you an update - even unofficially

I've cycled in the city for years so I'm used to a close pass. I'm not sure what was so bad about this as the images and video are not exactly terrifying. I think maybe it was that he moved out at the last moment so even though there's enough space as he passes, as I heard him approach he was much closer.

^^Dripping with sarcasm.

Certain people won't ever heed speed limits until there's a consequence such as penalty points or fines*. Without enforcement any change in limits won't make a blind bit of difference.

*An even smaller subset won't care about points or fines.

Couple of near misses today, one down to error the other to aggression.

The first, I was heading north on Cardiff Lane towards the river. A left-hand-drive truck turned right coming from Beckett Bridge into my lane by mistake. Luckily the driver copped his error (my wild gesturing might've helped) and moved back into the correct lane in time. No harm no foul, plenty of time for evasive manoeuvres.

The second incident, I was turning right at the Ward Cross roundabout (from St. Margaret's towards Ashbourne). A car coming from my left yields to me as I'm already on the roundabout, but the car behind that car takes it as a personal insult and blasts them, moving to overtake. More horns and high revs as the two of them battle it out behind me on the roundabout as I try and take my exit as quick as I can. The second driver took the racing line and was off up the road ahead of the first.

I know the road rage aggression wasn't directed at me, but I still could've ended up another statistic over some needless impatience. I spotted the aggressively driven car a few minutes later in a petrol station, whatever the rush was.

I wouldn't think so. To use an extreme example, if somebody shoots you dead, you're still the victim of a crime, but you're not going to be much use as a witness

I saw a quote from GoSafe that "The general rule of thumb that we would use is that if you can see the van, you're generally in range." though the y probably would say that.

I'm not 100% sure how the cameras measure speed, and Google isn't providing anything concrete, though I imagine it's radar based. Given that they have to have an image of the offending vehicle as well, I reckon they'd need to have a relatively narrow field of view, which would limit the range somewhat as it'd need to be focused somewhere on the road and if the FOV is too wide, then the plate is likely to be unreadable as it'll be tiny in the image and thus more susceptible to motion blur/noise etc

Ah, the other right :-)

As a pedestrian crossing correctly at the local mini roundabout, I regularly can be 3/4 of the way across (inbound lane and halfway across the outbound lane say) and some car comes along "nothing on my right (actual)".

When they see me in the middle of "their" lane I either get driven at and berated, driven at and eventually stared at with the astonished "where did you come from" look, or occasionally, they see me and stop correctly and allow me to finish crossing.