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news
NMoTD 41.PNGNear Miss of the Day 41: Lorry driver runs red light across Cycle Superhighway
The latest vide in our Near Miss of the Day feature shows the moment a lorry driver ignored a red light and drove through a junction in London just as a cyclist was starting to ride across it.
Luckily the rider was alert to the danger - although as one commenter to the video which was posted to Twitter by Chris Herbert pointed out, by anticipating the changing of the lights, the cyclist did perhaps put himself at risk.
.@PremierPaperUK pretty sure the red light means 'stop', not 'floor it'. Trust you'll be taking this lunatic off the road until retrained? pic.twitter.com/6VHFRVOWCc
— Chris Herbert (@Chrs_H) October 13, 2017
That doesn't excuse the driver's actions, of course, and the company that owns the lorry has said it will investigate the incident.
Could you send some more details (location etc) to marketing [at] paper.co.uk please? We will investigate & take the appropriate actions
— Premier Paper Group (@PremierPaperUK) October 13, 2017
Over the years road.cc has reported on literally hundreds of close passes and near misses involving badly driven vehicles from every corner of the country – so many, in fact, that we’ve decided to turn the phenomenon into a regular feature on the site. One day hopefully we will run out of close passes and near misses to report on, but until that happy day arrives, Near Miss of the Day will keep rolling on.
If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road user that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it to us at info [at] road.cc or send us a message via the road.cc Facebook page.
If the video is on YouTube, please send us a link, if not we can add any footage you supply to our YouTube channel as an unlisted video (so it won't show up on searches).
Please also let us know whether you contacted the police and if so what their reaction was, as well as the reaction of the vehicle operator if it was a bus, lorry or van with company markings etc.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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22 comments
There is a lot you can't see, but I would presume that the cyclist who started moving at 4 seconds into the clip, was not watching their own lights but the traffic lights for the road instead. When they saw them changing they started to move, ahead of their own signal changing.
If the cyclist started to move as the road signals turned to amber, then this was giving the lorry approximately 1 second to react and stop. You see the lorry enter the frame of shot at 5 seconds, at which point he is already at the stop line. Therefore 1 second at 30 mph would meant he would stop somwhere around 5 to 10m over the stop line, which means it is not safe to stop.
If the cyclist waited until the traffic signal on the road was red then it is a different answer, but I suspect the cylist moved when the lights changed to amber.
The normal time between opposing green lights (intergreen) is set at a minimum of 4 seconds by law, a 3 second phase of amber on one set of lights, and a 2 second phase of red and amber on the opposing lights, which can overlap by a maximum of 1 second.
The red and amber phase starts just before the 6 second mark in the film and the cyclist first starts to move just before the 4 second mark, that IMHO indicates that there is a 1 second amber overlap, and goes back to my point that the lorry could not have stopped prior to the stop line on the road and therefore had no option but to carry on.
Thank you - this is interesting and insightful.
The cyclist that anticipated the light was indeed watching the road lights (and I suspect it's a daily occurance and he reckons he knows the phasing well).
By my reckoning, the timeline is (my camera and playback device don't show more than full seconds unfortunately):
32.05 - amber appears on road lights
32.06-32.07 - amber dims and red engages - cyclist moves off
32.08 - Lorry reaches stop line, at same moment, amber begins illuminating on CSH. Cyclist now level with ped crossing and not yet on road
32.09-32.10 - Green crossing light engages. Cyclist halfway over junction, lorry just clear of junction.
So, to me that suggests approximately 3 seconds between the amber engaging and the lorry entering the junction - toward queueing traffic at red lights, so shouldn't be accelerating. His brake lights don't actually engage until shortly after 32.10 and he comes to a full stop in around 1-2 seconds. It sounds like you're more informed than I, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.
I'm happy to be proven wrong (and if the company, having investigated, proves me to be incorrect, I'll very publicly say so) and for the record, I tutted when the cyclist ahead went, but was happy to roll the second amber appeared. At the time, it was a very clear RLJ that I felt had to be brought to the attention of the company. I did not approach Road.cc, nor was I approached by them - I was rather shocked to see my tweets here!
if those lights are intended for those of us who don't imagine we pay road tax - why are they placed at such an inconvenient height?
that’s to encourage you to buy a lorry
but, but... then I'd have to believe I was paying road tax towards traffic lights that I'd then be legitimately ignoring, instead of not paying road tax towards traffic lights that I can't even see and have no proof even exist except for seeing them on videos such as the above which may or may not have been doctored to create some kind of alternate reality to which I have no access...
oh my god, I'm caught in a cyclic holographic nightmare of my own choosing - stop the world, I wanna get off!
I'm sticking up for the cyclist. Lights were only put in place for MOTORVEHICLES and their operators, should a vehicle and its operator that in itself present such vastly little harm be expected to adhere 100% of the time to the rules set for those that present a thousand times more chance of death?
in any case, the law/society already accepts a small error of judgement for those presenting little harm and will not punish or blame, you only need look at the Charlie Alliston case to see that. the deceased made not just one small error/went against the accepted rules but did it twice and was still completely absolved. Why is that different then for people on bicycles when the other vehicle is a 1.5ton+ mass going at twice and more the speed of 85kg? Why are the rules suddenly twisted around?
You can't have a two tier system that always blames the person on the bike no matter if the other parties are doing something wrong in any case which is what we see here. The LGV driver has no intention of stopping for the amber nor even a red, clearing a junction happens if you are on top of the lights when it goes to amber, not when you are 50 metres or more away like the wank stain driver would have being.
There's always the, well what if the (illegally red light running) driver veers and kills someone, please, give me a list of the times this has ever happened in the UK when a cyclist has set off before the red turns to green.
But lights apply to all road users.
I completely agree that the greater sin is committed by the lorry driver in this case, given the danger he presents to everything else on the road, but seeming to refuse to acknolwedge the cyclist's guilt (as others have done on this thread) isn't going to advance our cause either
Currently they apply to motorists and people on bicycles, of course, I'm discussing why they shouldn't always and why they aren't as important to those not presenting much harm without lights of any sort. As a point of note they don't apply to pedestrians (another road user).
As I said, they were initially brought in to curb the actions of motorists, also when we see other nations not having issues with going on red for people on bikes in some scenarios we need to be thinking about how strict we need to be with regards to lights for those causing very little harm i.e. people on bikes
if we already have a system that absolves small errors then i don't see why people are getting their knickers in a twist over something extremely minor that has no evidence of causing harm, even the MET police who are the biggest bunch of cunts with regards to policing wouldn't batter an eyelid at the 2 or 3 seconds 'jump' into what would have being a clear junction had it not being for the bigger crime being committed.
If you want to be absolute, yes he broke the rules, did he cause or was likely to cause anyone any harm, no. again, small errors that cause no-one else harm are being totally ignored from a societal and legal POV and we already have previous on that and of very recent times.
Lorry appears to jump red light, cyclist in the opposite direction definitely jumps the red light and the cyclist crossing the road goes against a red light at least 4 seconds before the light turns green. I'm not sure what the point of this story is other than show there are morons on bikes too.
Some people will make excuses and say that cyclists don't pose a danger unlike motor vehicles, however, imagine hitting a cyclist, possibly killing them when you've done nothing wrong (not referring to the van in the video).
Why post this? The only thing it demonstrates is that impatient wallies ride bikes as well as drive lorries. Not exactly advancing our case.
I agree. In fact, when a key reason for people not taking up cycling is the perceived danger, why have a "Near Miss of the Day" article at all?
Clickbait? Very little effort to produce an article? Bizarrely strying to scare peoplpe off cycling? Who could say.
They wouldn't be missed if they went though. Generally just showing a bad cyclist with a camera intercting with a bad driver.
There are two or 3 places on my commute where you can pretty much guarantee two days out of five that a lorry will jump the lights. The place I see it most is lorries heading south across the lights at Southwark Bridge Road and Southwark Street.
This happens far more often than I see cyclists jump the lights there. I wonder if there’s a connection.
Hmm, while it's obvious the lorry driver has ignored his lights. The footage also shows that the cyclist has set off while he still has a red light, thereby arriving in the middle of the road earlier than he should have.
The timings of the lights aren't by accident, they're done to give traffic time to clear the junctions.
The cyclist has made the situation worse but jumping his own lights.
Vide rhymes with ride surely; vid rhymes with rid.
Red light jumper nearly hits red light jumper shocker.
Cyclis sets off at 3s, amber light comes on at 5s lorry goes through at 6s presumably green light comes on at 8s same time as the green man. We can't see the lights for the lorry so we don't know if amber or red.
Two red light jumpers as far as I can see. Admittedly the 8 tons of speeding metal will cause the greater damage, but still...
Wow I wonder how you would feel like should a group of pedestrians cross a road with red light.
When cyclists fuck up we should call it out, don't understand why you're so defensive.
There are many cycling laws that vary around the world and during time. There is also common sense too. For example I don't consider a cyclist doing an illegal in the UK (but recently legal in other countries that keep increasing) red light pass as "fucking up" if he has good visibility and suitable junction geometric design, while I consider a couple of slow cyclists riding abreast in a narrow road with curves and vegetation obstructing visibility that are perfectly legal in the UK (but not in many other countries) as totally "fucking up".
Crossing a road is a gap acceptance process. If this process seems to get hard, traffic lights will make it safer. But while a motor vehicle passing a red light can be very dangerous for others, a cyclist or a pedestrian is not as she/he is the one that will be affected the most by an error in hers/his gap acceptance.
Unfortunately cyclists are the road users that will mostly get affected by a red light, as they will lose all their hard earned momentum and when the lights turn green again they will pop up again first but then they will be overtaken by motor traffic in a rather dangerous way, as a road accident is easier to occur and they will have to eat all the ecofriendly "bluemotion" dieselgate kubelwagens* exhaust fumes from 1.5 tonnes vehicle accelerating directly in their lungs. If we don't realise this, we will not be able to request changes in the law at least for certain junctions as it happens in many other countries that truly want to get people of their cars.
*Godwinlawphiles, please don't break balls.
I'm so sorry but I don't understand gibberish.
..from which obfuscation we can conclude that you know the cyclist is also in the wrong but don't want to admit it.
Would you consider that he 'fucked up' if, say, he had collided with the lorry? or indeed another RLJ-er such as the cyclist in the nearby lane who passed just before he crossed?