Even Mr Loophole aka nick freeman has said the driver was wrong.
His words, [ Ill advised not to take the course offered].
The new highway code is wrong and misusing it as law is fundamentally wrong for the following reasons:
The Highway Code is and always has been advisory, recommending the ideal while recognising that the ideal is not always possible or even desirable or necessary, according to circumstances.
If a recommendation in the highway code is essential, then it should be removed from the code and made absolute in law, enabling everyone to know exactly what is required at all times.
Instead with our utterly useless UK governments, in lieu of adequate road facilities and sensible laws we get these sort of half cocked compromises:
Want to encourage cycling: Paint a white line on the road near the kerb and call it a cycle lane.
Want to make junctions safer: Paint a circle in the middle and call it a mini roundabout.
Want to make cycling safer: Bully drivers with immense fines for not precisely following a desirable but not mandatory highway code measure, which is in any case often impossible to adhere to.
These sort of measures do not increase cycling safety, all they do is encourage the anti-car cycling brigade to festoon their bikes with cameras with the express purpose of giving their anti-social feelings expression by reporting drivers for often imaginary transgressions.
This won't make cyclists safer, it just increases the level of hatred drivers and cyclists often have for each other and look at where that sort of hate can lead. We've just learnt that two people have been brutally murdered over a simple parking dispute,
LINK
It's not enmity we should be encouraging on the roads by enforcing potentially unfair measures, nor being obsessed with speeds. It's courtesy we should be encouraging, a recognition that we are not fighting for road space, we are SHARING it, preferably with understanding, not antipathy.
The whole approach of the authorities needs to change, from bullying about speed and road space usage with unfair penalising, to the right messages of co-operation and courtesy. We all already do this when walking on the pavements, sharing the space when they are busy by making way for each other, showing that this is socially natural to us. Nobody has to have bodycams to ensure this happens, no-one has to be threatened with big fines, because we naturally want to co-operate.
The authorities approach should be entirely about exploiting this natural behavioural tendency by encouraging it continues when using any other means of transport.
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