North Yorks Police launch online "Driving Concern Form"

[thetapeworm]

I'm not sure if this kind of thing already exists in other areas but North Yorkshire Police are currently promoting an online service that asks people to report poor driving online.

Apologies for the link to a Facebook video explaining this but I can't find it hosted anywhere else:

https://www.facebook.com/BBCLookNorthYorkshire/vid...

The form:

https://nyp-online.victoriaforms.com/Viewer-VicFor...

Part of me thinks this is a good idea for repeat offenders who constantly drive with no consideration for anyone else but I can't help thinking that "concern" isn't standard across all humans and what scares the heck out of one road user / pedestrian may well be a perfectly innocent thing like a vehicle that's noisy as standard (like a Harley for example, a sound I don't enjoy for some reason but I accept it's out there).

I can also see it being misused as a tool to get revenge on people, I just hope it's fully automated in the first instance and doesn't take actual police off the streets any more than they are already.

Would you use something like this to report a drink driver? Middle lane hogs could be ripe for this sort of thing mind you...

[akirk]

completely open to misuse...

I wonder how many traffic wardens and police cars will be reported?

[cmaguire]

Idiotic idea.
The same few people will be reporting all manner of trivia dressed up as dangerous behaviour.

[carreauchompeur]

Oh FFS. This will lead to me spending precious time dealing with the kind of complainants who beep at you for overtaking.

[agtlaw]

Thanks. I might use that to report the police officer driving past the school on Cold Bath Road whilst stuffing her face with a sandwich.

[Drumroll]

You only have to look at all the videos on you tube where the poster says how bad x or y driver is, to get concerned by this development.

The big concern is who is going to investigate these incidents and make decisions on them.

Edited by Drumroll on Thursday 29th December 12:27

[Elroy Blue]

agtlaw said:

Thanks. I might use that to report the police officer driving past the school on Cold Bath Road whilst stuffing her face with a sandwich.

Unfortunately that's what constitutes a meal break for response officers. They don't get to nip down the wine bar for lunch.

Ridiculous idea. We can't resource demand as it is. It's another lunatic initiative thought up by some fast track individual to demonstrate 'openness'.

[long time lurker]

What a silly idea! Although I would say that as it's my area and I know how people think what's bad driving when it isn't.
Oh and let's see how long it take for me to get reported!!

[anonymous-user]

I am willing to bet it won't be too long before a car involved in a serious crime is reported for awful driving which gives a time and place that the vehicle was at and becomes a solid investigatory lead.

akirk said:

completely open to misuse...

No different to any other method of the public contacting the police.

[surveyor]

One would hope that they use the form as intelligence, and to stop wasting officers time with dealing with the spurious reports.

If there are enough reports on an individual perhaps worth looking at....

Mind you, you can imagine lot's of viewers of dashcams taking offence and reporting a single video lots...

[Crackie]

Elroy Blue said:

Unfortunately that's what constitutes a meal break for response officers.

Luxury lad, we only get to lick t'road clean, if we're lucky.

[ModernAndy]

Probably just a quicker way to deal with people phoning in about alleged dangerous driving.

"hello, I'd like to report a car that's..."

"fill in the form sir/madam."

[click]

[Lynchie999]

also good for accidents where (as no one is injured) the police don't attend... my family had an accident recently where some idiot could've easily killed someone... he has now been reported via this method by at least 2 other car drivers that were involved...

[akirk]

La Liga said:

akirk said:

completely open to misuse...

No different to any other method of the public contacting the police.

Other than that it is easy and anonymous - providing little barrier to spurious entries...
anyone fancy a simple script to scrape number plates (couple of threads on here which would provide good material) - and then fill it in at random times to report those cars

phoning to make a complaint means that you have a filter to only pick up the serious concerns
and why is policing now relying on the public's uneducated judgement on driving standards?

I have seen motorists locally who are driving very dangerously (20mph in a NSL with iced up windows) and seen them being overtaken very professionally and safely...
which do we think is most likely to be reported?

[4x4Tyke]

A facebook page and a poorly presented website not registered to North Yorkshire Police.

https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=victoriafor...

[MitchT]

Might be good if it had to be backed up with dash cam footage, but will more than likely be used by hand-wringers to report people for overtaking them while they were doing 30 in a 60.

[williamp]

ModernAndy said:

Probably just a quicker way to deal with people phoning in about alleged dangerous driving.

"hello, I'd like to report a car that's..."

"fill in the form sir/madam."

[click]

I'd like to hope its like this. A bit like those government petitions: it allows certain types of people to outlet their frustration at everyday life "I dont like blue cars, so can we ban them" type of people.

[ging84]

I think it could be a good idea although it depends what they plan to do with the information and how long they plan to keep it up.

By asking people to report concerns rather than actual incidents of dangerous driving they can pick up those drivers who are constantly doing stupid things none of which are particularly outrageous, so will never get picked up on but all add up to someone being a really incompetent driver who may not be a particularly dangerous driver but still a major nuisance on the roads.

This form seems to be the perfect thing for reporting things like major ditherers who end up in the wrong lane or outside lane sitters who don't know they're in the wrong and/or dont know how to use thier mirrors. After a couple of reports for the same thing these drivers might get some words of advice. Then if they continue to get reported, things can get taken a little more seriously.

Unfortunately i doubt it will ever work, i suspect they will not do this for longer enough, nor reach a wide enough audience to ever build up a big enough picture to do anything useful, instead it will just be used to pick on the usual targets of speeding and aggressive driving.

[anonymous-user]

It may well be the case it reduces demand i.e. "Report the matter using this online form", rather than having a call handler record the matter which triggers off various things.

akirk said:

La Liga said:

akirk said:

completely open to misuse...

No different to any other method of the public contacting the police.

Other than that it is easy and anonymous - providing little barrier to spurious entries...

Anonymity = no witness and no action likely to be taken.

Just because people may misuse it (why would we assume that it will be?) doesn't mean there'll be any consequences.

akirk said:

and why is policing now relying on the public's uneducated judgement on driving standards?

Why does policing rely on any uneducated witness judgement? Whether that be theft, violence etc.

akirk said:

I have seen motorists locally who are driving very dangerously (20mph in a NSL with iced up windows) and seen them being overtaken very professionally and safely...

which do we think is most likely to be reported?

I wouldn't make assumptions. There's an elitist undertone on PH that no 'general' member of the public has a right / the ability to report driving matters.

[xjay1337]

ging84 said:

I think it could be a good idea although it depends what they plan to do with the information and how long they plan to keep it up.

By asking people to report concerns rather than actual incidents of dangerous driving they can pick up those drivers who are constantly doing stupid things none of which are particularly outrageous, so will never get picked up on but all add up to someone being a really incompetent driver who may not be a particularly dangerous driver but still a major nuisance on the roads.

This form seems to be the perfect thing for reporting things like major ditherers who end up in the wrong lane or outside lane sitters who don't know they're in the wrong and/or dont know how to use thier mirrors. After a couple of reports for the same thing these drivers might get some words of advice. Then if they continue to get reported, things can get taken a little more seriously.

Unfortunately i doubt it will ever work, i suspect they will not do this for longer enough, nor reach a wide enough audience to ever build up a big enough picture to do anything useful, instead it will just be used to pick on the usual targets of speeding and aggressive driving.

But say someone cuts me up (in the normal way that can SOMETIMES happen). and I tell my mates
Then we all decide to report them because we are all mouth breathing scumbags who like nothing more than causing a problem.
What is the point?

the only thing it's good for is for frontline staff to be able to say "sorry reports of bad driving are now all handled online please go home and fill in the form online".