Since being pioneered in Wales and the West Midlands in 2017, Operation Snap – an online reporting system for video footage gathered via dashcam, bike camera or smartphone – has been put in use by a variety of police forces in the UK. As West Midlands traffic officer Mark Hodson put it, it operates on […]
Author Archives: ClosePassesCdf
The ‘A’ Word
When people complain about rule breaking by cyclists, it’s common to see a response that goes something like ‘24000 people are killed or injured by drivers in the UK every year – what about drivers?’ And then it’s equally common for those who began the conversation by complaining about cyclists breaking rules to accuse their […]
Cyclists, goths and football fans
Imagine opening a paper (yeah, I know, harder & harder to imagine), or following a link, and reading in the first paragraph you see something along the lines of: ‘God, what is it with drivers? Don’t they sometimes make you want to just drop a breeze block off a motorway bridge and listen for the […]
The Unacceptability of Cycling
This tweet at the beginning of March 2021from Jezza Vine ‘started a conversation’, as high profile media types like to say. It wasn’t, however, just an attempt to stir things up. In fact, it was a reasonable question to ask following an incident that Vine had experienced earlier (being called a ‘cunt’ for doing exactly […]
Blackspot: Cathays Terrace
Strap yourself in. This is the big one. This is Roath’s grand-daddy paradise for close-passing enthusiasts. Another part of the utterly unmourned Enfys network, superseded after the 2013 Active Travel Act by a concerted move toward a new strategic network, which has recently been bearing fruit, the Council having taken opportunities presented by successive Covid […]
Who are ‘The Drivers’?
You might be forgiven for thinking that there are two tribes out there on the roads, motorists and cyclists, given the ‘war on the roads’ rhetoric that we keep being treated to by apparently reputable media outlets (as its sometimes pointed out, if it’s a war, it’s a tad one-sided). The rhetoric is, of course, […]
Blackspot: Lake Road West
Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad (Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House) Or roads, Shirley. Some roads are just…evil. Lake Road West is one of them. Running parallel to Allensbank […]
Blackspot: Fairoak Roundabout
Way back in the mists of time there was something called the Enfys Network. This was Cardiff Council’s plan to develop a cross-city cycle network, using mostly paint-on-the road cycle lanes, of the kind that runs alongside parked cars on Cathays Terrace (which was part of this network). Fairoak and Monthermer Road in Cathays were […]
With no power comes great responsibility
The trope of ‘sharing’ comes up a lot in the road safety industry. Way back even before the embarrassing and actually borderline insane Niceway Code, this has been the established way of framing messages on road safety. Share the road. And above all, share responsibility. We all have a responsibility to each keep each other […]
Blackspot: Allensbank Road
The (sweary) sound of (cycling in) the suburbs. Allensbank Road runs up from Whitchurch Road through the Cardiff suburb of Heath, all the way to Heathwood Road, which runs west to the A469 and A470 and then on to Merthy Road through Whitchurch. Travelling south from Heath it’s a major transport link to the city […]