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Near Miss of the Day 47: Driver overtakes group of cyclists round blind bend

Our regular feature highlighting close passes caught on camera from around the country – today it’s Surrey

Today’s near miss, which took place in July near Charlwood in Surrey, sees a motorist for some reason choose to pass a group of cyclists on a blind bend.

Paul, who sent us the footage, told an all-too-familiar tale about his efforts to report the incident.

“A witness statement was sent to the police with a YouTube link to the incident. They didn’t seem interested, to be honest.

“First they said there was no evidence. When I pointed out the YouTube link, they said they cannot view online video footage and wanted a CD sent to them, which I didn’t do as I got the impression they wouldn’t do anything and were just making it difficult for me to report.”

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 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.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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18 comments

Avatar
Paul__M | 6 years ago
0 likes

It's weird how some seem to wait behind for quite a while, then ovetake as soon as a blind bend appears. Like "I've been patient enough now so I'll just go".

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BarryBianchi | 6 years ago
1 like

Nothing remarkable about that whatsoever.  I ride around that neck of the woods and that's absolutely parr for the course.  Not least as the average age of drivers is close to 200 and they just have no grip on reality, in terms of speed, time and distance, and traffic levels, let along niceities like which is a sigle carriageway and which a tow way road.

There are now far too many group rides aound Surrey, far too many of which are a shambles and just really annoy all and sundry - you can hardly move on a Sunday in the surrey hills for groups of fat weekend warriors blocking the roads and shouting the odds 19/12.  As a result, the general level of animosity to cyclists has palpably gone though the roof, to the extent that it's a very rare day indeed that you can do a solo ride for a couple of hours without something unpleasant happening/being shouted at you.

The council have refused to tackle the issue, and thus it's only going to get worse.

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SculturaD | 6 years ago
0 likes

I would get my MP Involved and let Surrey police explain to them why they weren't interested in pursuing of why they were making excuses.

Most Forces will now accept cloud type links to stored evidential footage. Well that is if they'll give out an email address to you.

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WillRod | 6 years ago
0 likes

Many employers block YouTube to stop you watching cat videos of girls makeup tutorials.

Its full of useful videos, but employers, including the police block it so they can’t see the bits they need. Of course they probably prohibit CD’s DVD’s and memory sticks too.

 

 

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Goldfever4 | 6 years ago
1 like

Avon & Somerset have a section of the webiste for submitting dashcam footage. Isn't this common across other forces/services/constabularies?

Worth saying that, through this facility, I have submitted Go Pro footage from a motorcycle that has been acted upon.

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whizzzz | 6 years ago
4 likes

When I reported something similar recently, the person who contacted me from the police, said they had to view the video from their phones as they didnt have anyway of viewing the you tube clip on any police owned machines.

And thats via the new Met Police site.

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rdmp2 | 6 years ago
0 likes

Weren't we praising Surrey police yesterday for requesting videos showing poor driving and supporting cyclists on Twitter? Are we back to complaining about them again now?

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nbrus | 6 years ago
3 likes

Must be pretty frustrating being stuck behind a group of cyclists ... frustrating enough to put your life and everyones elses at risk. Police aren't interested unless there's been an accident as they have limited resources, so if they are dealing with this idiot driver then someone else commiting crime somewhere is getting away with it. Even so, I can't imagine it would take that much police time to put down their donuts and go pay the driver a visit and record/monitor for a repeat offense.

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kraut replied to nbrus | 6 years ago
1 like

nbrus wrote:

Must be pretty frustrating being stuck behind a group of cyclists ... frustrating enough to put your life and everyones elses at risk. Police aren't interested unless there's been an accident as they have limited resources, so if they are dealing with this idiot driver then someone else commiting crime somewhere is getting away with it. Even so, I can't imagine it would take that much police time to put down their donuts and go pay the driver a visit and record/monitor for a repeat offense.

Well, the only reason the guy didn't kill someone is luck.

Might make sense for the police to spend some time on prevention, rather than cleaning up the mess afterwards

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alansmurphy | 6 years ago
0 likes

#standard

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Wolfshade | 6 years ago
0 likes

My collision was never investigated as I couldn't transfer my video to cd as my pc no longer had an optical driver  7

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spacedyemeerkat | 6 years ago
3 likes

Looks like Paul should try tweeting Surrey Police instead, given the response re Near Miss 46.

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Accessibility f... | 6 years ago
2 likes

> When I pointed out the YouTube link, they said they cannot view online video footage

Somehow I doubt they'd say that if the clip was of someone assaulting a police officer.

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Huw Watkins replied to Accessibility for all | 6 years ago
1 like

Peowpeowpeowlasers wrote:

> When I pointed out the YouTube link, they said they cannot view online video footage

 

Nice to see the police keeping up with the modern world.  

One day they might even decide that it's not 1964 any more and having 43 separate forces may no longer be necesary.....

 

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STiG911 replied to Huw Watkins | 6 years ago
0 likes

Huw Watkins wrote:

it's not 1964 any more and having 43 separate forces may no longer be necesary.....

Official vocab guidelines prefer the word 'Service' as 'Force' is too aggressive...

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Grahamd replied to STiG911 | 6 years ago
2 likes

STiG911 wrote:

Huw Watkins wrote:

it's not 1964 any more and having 43 separate forces may no longer be necesary.....

Official vocab guidelines prefer the word 'Service' as 'Force' is too aggressive...

Think “service” is too generous, the Conservative party recognised this some years ago but the MP who disclosed this before parliament had been advised was castigated about the change to “pleb”.

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ConcordeCX replied to Huw Watkins | 6 years ago
1 like

Huw Watkins wrote:

Peowpeowpeowlasers wrote:

> When I pointed out the YouTube link, they said they cannot view online video footage

 

Nice to see the police keeping up with the modern world.  

One day they might even decide that it's not 1964 any more and having 43 separate forces may no longer be necesary.....

Divide and conquer. Not sure that a national police force would be a good idea.

Avatar
maviczap replied to Huw Watkins | 6 years ago
1 like

Huw Watkins wrote:

Peowpeowpeowlasers wrote:

> When I pointed out the YouTube link, they said they cannot view online video footage

 

Nice to see the police keeping up with the modern world.  

One day they might even decide that it's not 1964 any more and having 43 separate forces may no longer be necesary.....

 

All government departments have IT restrictions on watching YouTube and other online video content, certainly the 3 I've worked for.

Distracts them from doing their jobs  1

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