Appealing a PCN

[akirk]

no issue with challenging the PCN - worth a go...
however, hopefully (in the nicest sense) it is also a moment to stop and think - no accident, only a penalty - but... had there been an oncoming car / an oncoming cyclist with no lights / a pedestrian crossing who had only looked the other way not expecting you to come that side of the island - then the situation could have been a lot lot worse... so whatever the outcome, be thankful and take the time to think about how you could deal differently another time - the reality is there will always be cyclists / pedestrians out there who are dark at night - as motorists we have to drive expecting that and being able to deal with it...

[blueg33]

walm said:

blueg33 said:

amancalledrob said:

In spite of the automatic naysaying that seems to have become PH tradition I agree with the OP - worth an appeal. The PCN is issued automatically before any opportunity for the driver to explain his actions. Unlit cyclists are incredibly hard to spot (which is why lights are required, is it not?) and an emergency stop from 20mph on a wet greasy road isn't as quick and simple as some appear to believe

I totally agree. The automatic Op flamers do my head in. Why not trust people a bit, especially if you weren't actually there.

I posted info that shows even someone in pale colours can be hard to see, but all that is glossed over because there is an opportunity have a go at the op.

The problem is that with an alarming regularity the naysayers are right.

I can well believe the emergency stop would have been a problem but only because I simply cannot believe he was going 20mph.
Have you ever driven at 20mph??? Honestly, it is RIDICULOUSLY slow.

And your incessant bleating about the pale coat completely ignores the speed of the cyclist making the speed differential even less likely.

Its not incessant bleating, its too many people ignoring factors that could be relevant saying that the cyclist would be visible - how the fk do they know, when it can be demonstrated that people on the road are not as visible as you may expect.

As for the speed of the cyclist who the hell can anyone tell whether he was doing 30mph or 5 mph? If the cyclist speed is relevant, which it probably is, we have no way of knowing that speed, making all comments relating to that pointless.

I frequently drive at 20mph through my village so I know how fast it is thanks. 30mph just doesn't give enough time to react and in some circumstance 20 can feel too fast.

The absolute fact here, is that NO ONE has enough info to judge the Op correctly, and that will include whoever looks at the PCN. I don't think the op will win an appeal but I also don't have enough info to decide whether he had many alternatives.

[walm]

blueg33 said:

As for the speed of the cyclist who the hell can anyone tell whether he was doing 30mph or 5 mph? If the cyclist speed is relevant, which it probably is, we have no way of knowing that speed, making all comments relating to that pointless.

I disagree.
We can make a fairly educated guess.
Certainly if the speed were >=20mph then if we believe the OP there shouldn't be a problem.
5mph is falling-off speed it's so slow and 8mph is jogging pace.

He is VERY VERY likely to be somewhere in the 10-20mph range.

That's hardly pointless when a 10mph stopping distance is 14ft, (vs. 44ft for 20mph).

It STRONGLY points to the OP being full of st.

Sure, we can't know for sure. But I feel that it gives the naysayers plenty of justification to question the veracity of the OP.

[blueg33]

Too many assumptions IMO

I am happy to pick someone up when it clear that they have transgressed, but would rather avoid assuming a transgression when it needs too many assumptions about widely ranging variables.

[walm]

blueg33 said:

Too many assumptions IMO

I am happy to pick someone up when it clear that they have transgressed, but would rather avoid assuming a transgression when it needs too many assumptions about widely ranging variables.

Fair enough. You're more forgiving than me!!

[Yipper]

In all honesty, given the speed of the car and the location of the cyclist, it looks like the driver has seen the cyclist about 15-30 metres previously and just swerved into the opposite lane rather than bother to brake and wait. A jury trial would probably pass a majority-guilty verdict and enforce the PCN. But it has to be worth an appeal and a sob story. Nobody got hurt, there is plausible deniability, and the driver may get lucky (even if few believe him).

[TooMany2cvs]

I notice that the OP has uploaded a smaller version of the "guess where?" image than the original one. The cynic in me suggests that's deliberate, to make it harder to spot the cyclist.

They're also both very low resolution images, with the registration illegible. The original quality will be much better, else the OP could not have been traced.

There's stationary traffic just out of sight to the right? Well, that makes an overtake even dafter, doesn't it?

At a rough guesstimate, the cyclist appears to have travelled about half as far between the two images as the car - which would support the 10mph guesstimate, assuming the OP really was doing 20, which would give us that closing speed of about 2.8 metres per second. And I make it about four car lengths between the two cars? So that's about 18m, or about six and a half seconds between the first car passing the cyclist and the OP getting to them.

Yipper said:

it looks like the driver has seen the cyclist about 15-30 metres previously

So about when the first car passed the cyclist...

[Pip1968]

amancalledrob said:

In spite of the automatic naysaying that seems to have become PH tradition I agree with the OP - worth an appeal. The PCN is issued automatically before any opportunity for the driver to explain his actions. Unlit cyclists are incredibly hard to spot (which is why lights are required, is it not?) and an emergency stop from 20mph on a wet greasy road isn't as quick and simple as some appear to believe

I think most are naysayers because the whole thing is a little incredible. Plus I cannot really see how the original poster will paint himself in a good light:

"I was going too fast to stop in time to prevent hitting a cyclist and so decided to commit an offence and drive on the opposite side of the road (even though it is clearly marked by a traffic island as keep left)"

Even if they believe him the next question will be why did you ignore the keep left. You (he) could have pulled onto the wrong side of the road to avoid the collision and then simply pulled back onto the correct side.

If he knew there was a camera would he have passed the wrong side of an island - errr I would suggest "NO". If he had gone onto the correct side of the road afterwards would the following car have crashed into him - err I would suggest very unlikely so his suggestion that this was the reason to pass right will not hold.

They have a camera there presumably because so many people are doing the same thing - avoiding invisible cyclists. I woud suggest that the OP travels this stretch regularly and has seen plenty of others do the same and so thought it will be fine for him to do it.

It is no different to speeding. Pay up move on.

I hope the original poster will keep us up to date with the outcome of his appeal.

Pip

[spikyone]

It's worth an appeal on the grounds that councils often screw up on technicalities and if you go all the way to London Tribunals (formerly PATAS) it can often be overturned on one of those.

An appeal on the grounds of "I didn't see the cyclist and wasn't able to keep left once I had" is going to get OP laughed at - he's about two to three car lengths ahead of the cyclist in the image and assuming he was genuinely travelling at 20mph, if he had time to move to the right of the cyclist, he also had time to stop before the traffic island.