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news
Near Miss of the Day 353: Driver fined for pinch point close pass
It's always good to hear about the police taking action against motorists caught breaking the law on film, and that's what we have today in our Near Miss of the Day feature, with the driver in one clip being fined and the motorist in the other sent on an driver awareness course.
They were both filmed in South London by road.cc reader Mitch, who said of the video above: "This was Hawks Road, Kingston (London), 23 April 2019 at 16:46.
"The driver passed at a pinch point/zebra crossing. Reported to the Met Police and resulted in 3 points and £100 fine for driver.
"Just a couple of days ago another driver did exactly the same thing to me in exactly the same way as this driver, they have now been reported and issued a Notice of Prosecution, I'll be posting that video once the police conclude their investigation (in around 6 months)."
Mitch also caught the below incident on camera on Lamberts Road in Subirton on 23 May 2019 at 09:08 and said: "The driver forced me to brake almost to a stop. Reported to the Met Police and resulted in driver attending a driver awareness course."
> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?
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.
> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling
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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23 comments
Default choice for me after much experience, including filtering on the outside whilst riding a motorcycle is to filter carefully between kerb and car on a bicycle.
Reason: When the traffic moves off it can potentially rapidly accelerate leaving you hung out to dry on the outside, especially when some drivers see an opportunity to make your life difficult by not leaving enough gap to let you cut back in.
Sometimes, dare I say it, I am aware of my own MGIF attitude. Is there any point filtering past a few vehicles to the lights only to have them pass you again within a 100m of them turning green?
Yes - I find it safer to be at the front of lights (in the ASL) and take off as quick as possible to get over the junction before vehicles have a chance to hit me. I'm happy for them to overtake as soon as I'm out of the danger zone.
There's a mini roundabout a few hundred metres from my home where I get dangerously overtaken as I enter the roundabout at least once a month. Some drivers are just useless, lacking the spatial awareness and ability to judge closing speeds required to drive safely. This can be mitigated by driving more slowly, giving the brain some more time to work out what's going on, but we all know that those new 20mph urban speed limits are just impossible to stick to and are only there because the government hates motorists, right?
Passengers unfamiliar with the Dutch reach and unaware that cyclists might come up the inside are reason enough to prevent me doing it. But each to their own; riding in traffic is complex and you do what you have to.
Having had some issues with pinch points just today on my club run I think the first is an example of the lack of ability to judge a developing situation, and it's endemic. Drivers cannot work out which road user will be at the pinch point when, and some are unwilling to react to that problem by staying back.
I get that islands can be useful for pedestrians and to prevent insane overtaking, but we cyclists are endangered by the way some drivers go past them, and for my liking there are far too many of them. Grr.
Drivers of German cars, says it all
The one where she was sent on a course looked very scary, if not deliberate, I would like to have seen a more serious charge or punishment there
The first one simply completly incompetent, more in need of the course and a retest
Scarey stuff, but why did the cyclist pass on the inside so close to the traffic in the queue? They should have passed on the outside, this is what pisses some motorists off.
Nope - those motorists are pissed off already (mostly at the fact that another vehicle is 'in their way') - being passed by a cyclist is just the (illogical) excuse they use to vent that pissed-off-ness.
Although the Highway Code advises against filtering on the left in moving traffic or alongside large vehicles, there is no law that prohibits such undertaking. It may indeed be wise to filter on the right but since when did the average motorist become expert in wisdom? Some might say they are not good enough to know how bad they are.
Filtering on the right only means you add another set of unpredictables to contend with.
You can argue that filtering on the left adds unpredictables. My logic for filtering down the right is that this is where drivers will be expecting motorbikes to filter, and therefore are more likely to be looking on this side.
Having said that, I filter down the left when it's unsafe to go down the right!
Perfectly reasonable when the traffic is stopped at the lights. It is normal filtering. It's quite possible that there wasn't space to pass on the offside or that it would have meant crossing into the oncoming traffic.
I'm pretty sure that it's simply being passed that pisses some motorists off. I was going past one the other day on the outside, before he suddenly pulls out into the other lane (you know, the one where you can encounter oncoming traffic). I shouted at him to use his bloody mirrors and indicators next time, and he told me I shouldn't be passing on the outside, because it meant that I was on the wrong side of the road!
You couldn't make this shit up sometimes.
I've been caught out by a driver suddenly pulling out from a line of stationary cars whilst I was filtering on the outside. What bugs me is that if a driver follows "mirror, signal, mirror, maneouvre" then there's three opportunities to avoid an incident. Luckily, I only had a slight bruise to a finger and the driver was apologetic afterwards as I remonstrated with him.
Personally, I filter on the inside or outside according to the conditions - I don't think one is necessarily better than the other.
Which does lead on to a question of HC etiquette.
Road with one lane going each way (for people that know, this is going down Suspension Bridge Road in Leigh Woods, Bristol, heading toward the bridge).
The lane I'm in has been double yellowed all the way, whereas the other one is still fine for people to store the cars that they aren't using.
The long queue of traffic tends to move over a bit so cars coming the other way can squeeze between the queue and the parked vehicles.
Now, if I filter on the outside of the queue then I'm still in 'my' lane (I haven't crossed the white line) but there isn't room for any oncoming cars to squeeze through.
So if I start filtering when there are no oncoming vehicles, does that mean that I retain priority and they shouldn't just drive at me and play chicken?
My view is that when filtering you do not have priority and should only do so when there's the space to do so (though I am happy to squeeze through tiny spaces, personally). This means that when filtering on the outside, I'm watching out for any vehicles that start to indicate that they want to pull out - I'd be aiming to hit my brakes and wave them out in front of me. For oncoming vehicles, I'd pull into a suitable gap to allow them to pass and then I'd attempt to continue filtering if there's enough space or lack of traffic. Along that road, I'd probably do a bit of changing from filtering on the outside to the inside according to where the spaces are.
Thanks, hawkinspeter.
The problem with that road is that the queuing motorists take exception to any filtering at all - in my experience they'll even close up gaps so a cyclist cannot get out of the way of the other motorists bearing down on them
But I see your point - I just wanted to see if the road.cc cloud would give me permission to say "I'm in my lane - you're the one who isn't!"
In my opinion, if oncoming vehicles have to cross the white line down the middle of the road they MUST make sure it is safe to do so and give way to ANY oncoming traffic. If you are on your side of the road you take priority, I don’t see the filtering (or not) as having anything to do with it. What if you were about to turn right? Just because there are cars to your left doesn’t mean oncoming traffic can take your side of the road and have priority.
PP
Thanks for posting these and demonstrating that at least some police forces take these things seriously. Can we send some of the recalcitrant coppers on a dangerous driving near cyclists awareness course? These vids would be a good start and should be used to demonstrate to the forces reluctant to pursue cases like this that they could get a result and save some poor family and themselves the distress of another pointless death on the roads.
The driver in the second clip seemed perfectly aware of what the were doing.
The pinch point thing I can sometimes see as stupidity and confusion, suddenly being presented in an uncommon situation, asked to awake from their half asleep automatic driving, of course with the massive resistance to ever slowing down. They are still arseholes, of course. We understand the pinch point thing because we experience it every time we get out on the roads, we can figure out speed and distances, we are aware of our environment and the width of the road, they might encounter a cyclist at a pinch point so very rarely. And of course no risk to them.
But that second one, that was on purpose and was meant to be threatening and scary.
I blame the cyclist for being there in the first place
Seriously, well done for getting a result!
Its like they say: YMMV. I didn't think the first one was so very bad, but that second one had bits of me clenching... I couldn't even see what the point was - do driver awareness courses explain to motorists that they have these amazing things called "eyes"?
The first one is easy to prosecute because it's a blatant overtake on zig-zag lines at a crossing.
Prosecution of close passes is complicated by usually not having an absolute measure of the distance between the car and bike.
The second one was most certainly intentional and very close.