It beggars belief that the Police response re the transit van driver was that he should have sounded his horn – completely neglecting that an offence under s.72 Highways Act 1835 was being committed in the process. If you had witnesses – or the footway was covered by CCTV from the school or nearby buildings you might even ask why the case was not considered for prosecution

On occasions like this it can be a strange coincidence that wing mirrors get smashed off as the pedestrians leap clear, or for large slow moving flat sided vehicles (like buses pulling in) it is a prudent move to lean against the side as you brake and slide along as the bus passes by, to avoid being knocked down and going under the wheels. Oddly enough that does tend to leave prominent mark on the offending vehicle.

In the current annual report from the UK Traffic Commissioners (aka The Office of Road Regulation) the commissioner fro your area takes up where his predecessor left off, calling for a better arrangement to get Police and Courts reporting the offences and convictions for bad driving committed by LGV and PCV drivers. The TC has the powers to revoke a vocational licence if the driver is not of Good Repute, but far too often the first they hear of this is when a fatal or serious crash takes place.

I’m hoping that we can get some dialogue going here on managing vocational driver standards from the perspective of the pedestrians and cyclists who suffer the impact of poor quality in this area.

I reported a driver who reversed a transit van along the pavement out side a primary school into a group of three children and one adult, narrowly missing them only because they jumped out of the way. I found out that the police have advised the driver to toot his horn when reversing blindly along pavements in future.

I have also made more than one report about taxi drivers parking in/driving along the cycle contra-flow on the approach to the train station and have been fobbed off completely (despite being surrounded by a gang of around 10 -20 taxi drivers and threatened with violence by them when I stopped to take a photograph of their poor parking).

And when I reported an incident when I was run off the road (only surviving because I happened to be adjacent to a driveway so managed to escape sideways) by a bin wagon driven by a man who had “not seen me” I was told to speak to his employer, police not the slightest bit interested that HGV’s are being driven around Sheffield by people who can’t see properly.