Good News: 2.25m minimum cyclist's lateral space enforced by West Midlands Police

[Andre Jute]

Good cycling in the West Midlands, soon as the police put the worst close-pass offenders off the road.
https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/latest-news/news.aspx?id=4942

[Duane]

On 21/09/2016 5:36 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
> Good cycling in the West Midlands, soon as the police put the worst close-pass offenders off the road.
> https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/latest-news/news.aspx?id=4942
>

Looks like you're already to step B. We're still at step A here in
Quebec where they passed the laws. Still doesn't seem that they're
being enforced yet. We have recently seen a minimum passing law enacted
and an increase in fines for dooring. But:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-bike-dooring-car-door-1.3743999


I contacted the mayor to ask why the police would have the latitude to
not issue a ticket in this case and the police responded that their
officers always have the discretion as to when to issue citations.

With the no-fault insurance here, in the absence of a citation the
victim will have to go to small claims court and fight over this rather
than having the damages automatically covered by insurance.

People are complaining so we'll see what happens. The good thing here
is we have a lot of voters that ride bikes.

[Andre Jute]

Unfortunately this isn't where I live. It's in the English West Midlands, across the Irish Channel from me. But that illustrates another point: various police forces in England are independent of each other, though theoretically linkes to the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) through the Home Office. Each decides individually which laws they will enforce...

Same here; the Police Commissioner can unilaterally decide some law is unenforceable and give up on it. An example is jaywalking laws in Cork, which have not been enforced for as long as I can remember, certainly not in the last 35 years. We don't have enough cyclists where I live for the police to make a concerted effort on their behalf, though even on the minor roads on which I ride, police cars are often enough seen to act as a calming influence.

According to a pedalpal, the 1.5m distance appears to be a European Union initiative (one of the goolebugs can look it up for us and report). I'd be delighted to have it enforced -- goes without saying! That would bring some roads on which I now simply will not go back into a sensible cyclist's map.

Andre Jute
Ride wide