Originally Posted by
aliasfox
Hi,
Was out on a glorious ride yesterday morning, leading a couple of friends along one of my regular routes. We were having a fantastic ride: two of us can sustain just under 200w continuous, and the third guy can probably hold 100w more, so we let him set pace - a moderate workout for him, a stretch for us. All was going well, until we get to one set of intersections...
We are riding in the bike lane, when the dedicated bike lane disappears as another road merges in from the left. There are clear green boxes denoting that the right lane was to be shared between cars and bikes. All three of us stay in the right lane (shared bike/car lane), when a black BMW 3-Series comes within about 6" of swiping the guy in front before cutting us off. As we're recovering from the WTF moment, a white Lexus GX comes within about one foot of me, before doing the same thing. At the next red light, the woman (can't call her a lady) in the BMW screams at us to get off the road, and the Lexus driver looks like he wants to run us down, or give me a beatdown. I considered breaking out the cell phone to record their license plates, but decided not to escalate beyond a shouting match.
For those local to the SF Bay Peninsula, this was Alameda de Puglas when it changes to Santa Cruz, headed towards Sand Hill in Palo Alto/Menlo Park.
Anyway. anybody have any experience with seatpost mounted cameras, something like the Cycliq Fly6 or a Techalogic? Or maybe a full fledged action camera like a DJI or GoPro? Looking for something that could record a purposeful close call without escalating the situation. I've seen some of the sample footage on YouTube, and license plates aren't always clear - is there a camera that has a better (or worse) image quality in regards to this? After all, not every close call will have another red light 300ft down the road for the cars to stop at.
Thanks for allowing the venting before the question.
I have had a LOT of experience with cameras on bikes. I tend to find the the front camera is actually sufficient in most cases. I have both the Cycliq front and rear lights but I prefer to have the Varia from Garmin in the back. it's a way better light and it helps me deal with traffic from behind too. I do have the Cycliq12 on the front as my front light and for its camera. My experience has been that it is just as easy to see what happens and measure distances from the front and you can see what they are doing as they cut you off, So my recommendation would be for the front light and for a Varia tail light.
About 5 years ago, I got fed up with the drivers and not doing something about it. I live in Minnesota and we had an incident where Jessie Diggins the Olympic Gold Medalist cross country skier was out training with her coach on back roads where I live. Some jerk got into with her, she pulled out her phone and filmed it and then put it on facebook. The thing went viral locally, the sheriff got wind of it, tracked the guy down and prosecuted him for road rage. Jessie is from the area here and is kind of a local hero besides being just a really nice person. The whole valley went crazy and this guy wound up being shunned in the community and (thankfully) moved away. But the important takeaway was that local driver behavior immediately improved.
Subsequent to that I decided to deal with people like that when I had issues. So I got the camera and I would package the video up in a short clip that portrayed the situation. If it is from a commercial vehicle, I then ask to speak to whomever is responsible for safety in management and that I'd like to talk with them before I turn my video over to the sheriff. I usually am in touch right away with the right person and the results are usually swift and beneficial. Especially true for the local school bus company - it's a training issue for them and they deal with it and results are immediately evident on the road.
If it's a private vehicle, I just contact the sheriff. The on duty deputy calls me, I send him the video and they go and figure out the driver and talk with them. They've told me that they sort of decide how to handle it based on the behavior of the driver in both the video and when they talk. If they are jerks like this woman, she's going to get a ticket. If they are ignorant and don't know (which is surprisingly epidemic) then they get an education and a warning.
Overall, seems to be making a difference over the year. Really helps when they understand they are not anonymous on the road.
I think it's important to be proactive and go after people like this. I don't see the value (maybe my heirs would) of having video but I'm dead. So if you do this, make sure you go after all of this bad driving.