‘My helmet camera filmed van knocking me off bike, but driver won’t be charged’
A CYCLIST whose helmet camera filmed her being knocked off her bike by a van driver has criticised the police for failing to prosecute him for careless driving.
Nisha Singh, 33, is heard screaming when the van suddenly changes lanes near Lambeth roundabout and sends her flying. The van driver was later told to attend a safer driving course.
Ms Singh, a King’s College London researcher, said: “The safe driving course is fine but I think there should be more punishment for people who drive badly, not just the ones who cause gratuitous harm.
“The statement I got back from the police said unless you have lifethreatening injuries or you are dead, we don’t prosecute. That is completely ludicrous. London driving has got so bad, not just cars but buses, vans and cyclists, that unless people are forced to show some respect it’s not going to change.”
Last week, cycling czar Will Norman said cycling in London was “safe” and more attention needed to be focused on pedestrian deaths. Some campaigners responded angrily that cyclists were more at risk. Transport for London confirmed the death and serious injury rate for cyclists was 2.6 times higher than for pedestrians.
Ms Singh, of Brixton, passed details of the collision to the Standard after reading about the inquest into the death of NHS physiotherapist Esther Hartsilver, who was hit by an HGV as she cycled in Denmark Hill in 2015.
Ms Singh said she had endured six months of frustration in dealing with the Metropolitan Police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the City Hall overseer. Her accident happened on July 22 as she cycled from St Thomas’s hospital to the Maudsley in Denmark Hill. She was left with bleeding, bruising and a black eye.
Ms Singh said she could have been run over by a cab as she lay in the road but was lucky it had been following at a distance. Karen Stuart, the Met official in charge of considering traffic offences in Lambeth, told her: “A [National Driver Alertness] course would not be offered if the matter involved a life-threatening or lifechanging injury. Unfortunately we can’t offer both the driving course and also summons the driver to court.” Ms Singh said she felt the police would have believed the driver’s claim that the collision was her fault were it not for her video, which was recorded by a rear-facing camera. She said: “He said I was trying to overtake him... I was ahead of him the whole time.”
The Met said: “The injuries and standard of driving are all taken into consideration.” @RossLydall