Close pass by police car

May 29, 2017 at 23:00 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
Tags: bicycles, bikes, close pass, cycling, police

Every day on the way to work, I ride up Burns Bay Road. It’s the place I get the most close passes. In part this is because of the layout; the council have in their wisdom decided to stencil bike symbols in the parking area, right in the door zone. Needless to say, I don’t ride in the door zone. If you want to know why, click here.

However, this creates conflict with motorists, who think you should be in the the ‘bike lane’. So they pass quite close. I’ve had a lot of close passes on this road. (For a short while, the council removed the white line. It was much better, as I said at the time. Then they put it back.)

However, this one was rather unexpected. Not very close, but definitely inside one metre (the legal minimum), and not very comfortable. And it was a police car.

What to do? I asked my friends at SydneyCyclist, and subsequently went into the police station to complain. It was interesting. For one thing, when I mentioned that car involved was a police vehicle, I immediately got the Duty Sergeant, rather than the usual constable.

He took the still images I had taken from the footage, but oddly declined to take the video file. A day or so later, I got a call from the officer in charge of the traffic division. He went through the scenario with me, and was sympathetic, although I did have to educate him on the difference between bike route symbols (the painted bike symbols, which have no legal standing), and a Bike Lane, which is defined in the Australian Road Rules (and which Burns Bay Road does not have). I would have hoped a senior traffic cop would have known the difference, especially as it has legal implications as to where you should ride your bike.

He ultimately apologised, and asked me what action I wanted. I was happy with an apology and the driver being spoken to about his obligations around cyclists, although some of my cycling friends were not impressed that the cops did not charge the driver with the offence.

This is the same police station who have been absolutely unsympathetic to these types of issues in the past. Somehow I doubt this will be a turning point…

(You can see the video footage here).