British Cycling track legend Ed Clancy — winner of three Olympic team pursuit golds, four Olympic medals in total, twelve medals including six golds at the World Championships, European and Commonwealth titles, MBE and OBE recipient — joined South
Yorkshire Police earlier this month as they undertook their latest close pass operation.

Now Active Travel Commissioner for South Yorkshire, Clancy followed in the footsteps of fellow British Cycling star-turned-active travel figure Dame Sarah Storey who also joined one of the force's close pass ops back in 2021.

Clancy shared pictures of the May 3 work on social media, saying it "marks the start of my mission as Active Travel Commissioner to work with terrific teams like this to bring about safer roads in South Yorkshire for everyone".

South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership (SYSRP) praised Clancy's involvement saying it is "fantastic work to promote safe road user behaviour! Road safety is everyone's responsibility and we can only prevent serious and fatal collisions if we all play
our part".

As the force has explained previously, these operations work by teams of 'undercover' cyclists riding along roads of interest. When they are close passed by a driver, the rider communicates to officers further up the road who then stop the motorist who
is educated on the dangers of close passing cyclists or given a fixed penalty notice if a particularly dangerous offence is committed.

While we do not have figures from Clancy's operation, when Storey joined the force 20 drivers who overtook her were stopped out of 110 overtakes.

"Sarah's Garmin radar detected 110 overtakes over the two laps we completed, and of those 110 overtakes, 20 were stopped for advice purposes, which is disappointing," inspector Kevin Smith said back in 2021.

"Our other pair were also close passed a few times, taking the total to 25 vehicles stopped for advice purposes, and another five that we will catch up with through the post. In total 10 prosecutions for a range of offences from careless driving to
contravening double white lines."

Yesterday, we reported that an FOI request had revealed that of 3,898 allegations of driving offences received by Surrey Police in the last 15 months just 10 resulted in a prosecution.

These included 938 instances of close pass submissions, with only three resulting in a prosecution, four in a penalty notice and four being offered a driver improvement course. In contrast, 742 cases, almost 80 per cent of the total, were resolved with a
warning letter.

https://road.cc/content/news/ed-clancy-joins-police-close-pass-operation-301215

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There must be very low levels of crime in the South Yorkshire Police Force area, for them to waste such time for such trivial results.


swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

British Cycling track legend Ed Clancy — winner of three Olympic team pursuit golds, four Olympic medals in total, twelve medals including six golds at the World Championships, European and Commonwealth titles, MBE
and OBE recipient — joined South Yorkshire Police earlier this month as they undertook their latest close pass operation.

Now Active Travel Commissioner for South Yorkshire, Clancy followed in
the footsteps of fellow British Cycling star-turned-active travel figure
Dame Sarah Storey who also joined one of the force's close pass ops back in 2021.

Clancy shared pictures of the May 3 work on social media, saying it
"marks the start of my mission as Active Travel Commissioner to work with terrific teams like this to bring about safer roads in South Yorkshire for everyone".

South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership (SYSRP) praised Clancy's
involvement saying it is "fantastic work to promote safe road user
behaviour! Road safety is everyone's responsibility and we can only
prevent serious and fatal collisions if we all play our part".

As the force has explained previously, these operations work by teams of 'undercover' cyclists riding along roads of interest. When they are close passed by a driver, the rider communicates to officers further up the
road who then stop the motorist who is educated on the dangers of close passing cyclists or given a fixed penalty notice if a particularly
dangerous offence is committed.

While we do not have figures from Clancy's operation, when Storey joined
the force 20 drivers who overtook her were stopped out of 110 overtakes.

"Sarah's Garmin radar detected 110 overtakes over the two laps we
completed, and of those 110 overtakes, 20 were stopped for advice
purposes, which is disappointing," inspector Kevin Smith said back in 2021.

"Our other pair were also close passed a few times, taking the total to
25 vehicles stopped for advice purposes, and another five that we will
catch up with through the post. In total 10 prosecutions for a range of offences from careless driving to contravening double white lines."

Yesterday, we reported that an FOI request had revealed that of 3,898 allegations of driving offences received by Surrey Police in the last 15 months just 10 resulted in a prosecution.

These included 938 instances of close pass submissions, with only three resulting in a prosecution, four in a penalty notice and four being
offered a driver improvement course. In contrast, 742 cases, almost 80
per cent of the total, were resolved with a warning letter.

https://road.cc/content/news/ed-clancy-joins-police-close-pass-operation-301215

--
Spike

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BuckBreaker | 27 posts | 40 min ago
0 likes

I think it is quite incredible crazy how much the police are needed to work on this problem. In the Netherlands cars are so much more aware. The times I have been on my bicycle in the United Kingdom it is like the cars are asleep. Good work police to
help but it will take more than this if you ask me.

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On 13/05/2023 05:33 pm, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

BuckBreaker | 27 posts | 40 min ago

I think it is quite incredible crazy how much the police are needed to work on this problem. In the Netherlands cars are so much more aware.

That's the trouble with British engineering, innit?

The factories keep turning out unaware cars.

... I have been on my chav-bicycle in the United Kingdom it is like the cars are asleep.

Do they get tired> I never knew that

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wtjs | 2823 posts | 16 min ago
0 likes

We already know that if you commit an offence against a cycling police officer you may be prosecuted. However, that doesn't help those of us who aren't police officers, where we know that almost all cases with perfect evidence are simply binned (
euphemism 'NFA'd') with the police claiming they're too busy to deal with all the offences.

The trouble with this kind of story when we know that offences against cyclists are getting worse or, at best, not getting better, is that it allows the police to pretend to be serious while legitimising the notion that 'the police have to witness the
offence before we can do anything'- this is, of course, untrue- but that doesn't stop the police using the dodge.

The idea is to 'delegitimise' the personal camera- they're quite happy to wear cameras themselves, but they really hate cyclists having them.

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