Police Scotland have said that while they run close pass operations with officers riding bikes, they don’t “tend to operate” on A roads — where many people ride their bikes regularly — as there’s a “safety element involved towards police cyclists”, after a cyclist, who was close passed by drivers several times, raised it with the police and asked them what do they intend on doing about the dangerous driving on such roads.
Michael Harrison, a club cyclist and member of the Montvelo CC, had emailed Police Scotland after having an “especially bad ride” between Inverbervie and Montrose on the A92, that is also a part of the National Cycle Network, with a driver close passing him as another was coming from the other direction, forcing the oncoming driver to brake heavily.
He told road.cc: “I regularly ride that section of the road and often get close passes. This time, I put in a complaint on the Police Scotland website about the standard of driving and asked for action as I had an especially bad ride involving 10-20 close passes.”
In his enquiry to the police, he asked what action were the police planning to take to protect vulnerable road users from motorists who don’t understand or care about basic road rules, adding: “Could you not run an operation to catch these people breaking the law? I would expect you would find dozens of motorists in a single day breaking the law and putting cyclist life a risk.”
Police Scotland responded, saying: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We do run Operation Close Pass between April and September, which is designed to educate drivers about the safe passing of cyclists on the road.
“We don’t tend to operate these on open A class roads due to the safety element involved towards the police cyclists. We do however have the A92 as a priority route and have dedicated patrols on it several times a week. The Camera Safety Unit also operate on this road.
“I will make the local Road Policing officers aware of your concerns and ask them to pay particular attention to the area/ driver behaviour towards cyclists when they are on patrol.”
Harrison wrote back to the force pointing out that the stretch of A92 between Dundee and Aberdeen was part of Sustrans’ National Cycle Network, and that their policies up to now had been “ineffectual”, however, he hasn’t received any response from them.
He told road.cc: “Apparently the road is too dangerous to police properly to protect vulnerable road users, but I’m sure they will attend to scrape you off the road when you’re hit by a motorist!”
In March, Scotland’s police force came under scrutiny for not having a portal where cyclists can submit their close passes — unlike England and Wales where cyclists and other road users can submit video evidence of road traffic offences via Operation Snap and other police reporting portals, with road.cc reader Stewart criticising Police Scotland for making him go through a much lengthier process of providing evidence after suffering a dangerous near miss.
While a Digital Evidence Sharing Capability is being piloted in Dundee ahead of the expected national roll-out next year, it is not believed to be as strong or functional an option as the cancelled National Dashcam Safety Portal.
Just last month, Police Scotland was once again the subject of discussion after they shared pictures of a close pass operation, prompting numerous issues to be raised by cyclists and even a chief inspector from another force, with one commenter calling it “the worst operation close pass picture I have ever seen”.
The much-criticised image shared on social media showed a community officer on a bike, positioned on a close pass mat showing that he was 0.75m away from the edge. However, while this would normally denote being 75cm from the kerb, in this case it meant being 75cm from the door zone of a row of parked cars.
Chief Inspector Smith, from Sheffield's Response unit, replied to say that despite having one of the close pass mats, they do not use it due to these issues. He explained that they were made before the Highway Code changes, but added concerns that "it suggests that cyclists need to be 75cm from the kerb which isn't a requirement" and "it doesn't make allowances for handlebar width".
In the same month, new research commissioned by Cycling Scotland found that more than one in four people in Scotland are unaware that driving carelessly or dangerously around cyclists could result in a driving ban or prison sentence.
Meanwhile, as part of another Cycling Scotland survey, 58 per cent of motorists admitted that knowing their driving was being captured on camera would make them change their behaviour around people on bikes.