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news
Near Miss of the Day 424: "Morons" ignore red lights and drive at cyclists through roadworks
While temporary cycling infrastructure is going up in many places in towns and cities across the UK, roadworks are still a feature, whether being actively undertaken, or the barriers left in place due to works being suspended - and it's roadworks, apparently for fibre optic broadband, that feature in today's Near Miss of the Day video as cyclists going through a temporary traffic light that has just turned green find drivers, who have presumably ignored a red light at the other end, coming straight towards them.
The vast majority of the videos we feature in this series are from people who've been cycling for years - but this one is from someone who, like many others, has only started riding a bike recently with many people taking to two wheels during lockdown whether for exercise or everyday journeys.
Kenny, the road,cc reader who shot the video on Monday, said: "I'm new to cycling, but I've found on every trip I've taken so far, there's at least one dangerous driver threatening my safety.
"Today it was these morons, skipping a red light & driving at cyclists in narrow lanes, on New North Road, Canonbury, London."
> 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.
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.
Latest Comments
- Barraob1 1 sec ago
If the owner can't identify who was driving their vehicle, impound it for a month and see what happens. I bet they figure it out real quick
- mark1a 27 min 50 sec ago
Interesting point ref processing resources. Just yesterday I had a phone call from an actual Op Snap review team member. I've spent a few years...
- KiwiMike 1 hour 26 min ago
Maybe it will get tested, and we'll know for sure.
- andystow 3 hours 4 min ago
This morning's commute was -10 °F / -23 °C. I doubt the relative humidity is really that low. The dew point might be -30 °C, but that's still 30%...
- lonpfrb 3 hours 11 min ago
IC confirmation bias at it's finest, and not the facts of the matter IMHO.
- lonpfrb 3 hours 15 min ago
Not always as the ML models can be provided already trained for reuse, thus avoiding the training process where that 'I' is required because it's...
- Sriracha 4 hours 7 min ago
I thought bikes for general use had a shorter reach and a higher stack, compared to pro-race machines which have a longer reach over a lower stack....
- ErnieC 4 hours 45 min ago
Exactly. I wonder why so many are OK with UAE and Bahrain competing when clearly they should not be there.
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15 comments
To paraphrase Kevin Keegan:
"And I'll tell you, honestly, I would love it if they tried this with me. Love it."
Just park the bike in the middle of the lane, refuse to move & get them to reverse.
And if they don't, stand your ground and when things are suitably backed up, horns blaring, cars behind, cars in front, people getting out & getting mad ... filter away, my work here is done.
Don't know if it's best practice...but personally I always take the centre of a single carriageway like this, to prevent any following vehicles attempting an overtake either through the restriction itself, or until completely clear of the oncoming queue at the other side.
In this case I would therefore have met the oncoming cars centrally. It's never certain they would co-operate, but I would prefer that they have to come to a complete halt before I go around them, rather than the close-pass being with them in motion. Then I leave them to negotiate with the following vehicles behind me as to how to untangle their too-wideness predicament
Most traffic lights these days are set up by Traffic Management firms and done to an agreed standard. They're not infallible though and sometimes the timings are wrong. But there will be a road worker sign, traffic light sign and road narrows/single file traffic sign before you get to where the bus was so there's no excuse for not realising there will be a traffic light. The timings can be tight to ensure maximum traffic flow, so if there's a pause, say maybe someone turning into a driveway, then it can appear somebody jumped a red. Without knowing for definite what colour the opposing light was, we are only guessing. In my job (tree work) we often have to use 'All Stop', people often decide the lights are broken or are too important to wait and try to blast through when we're felling trees across the carriageway which adds a certain excitement to the task. So unless specifically told to ignore a red light by a worker with a stop/go board, STOP please.
Two Mercs, more evidence for the prosecution that rich people think rules don't apply to them.
You'll see more 'Mercs' on a social housing estate, then on the driveways of the affluent. This has nothing to do with rich or poor. Its just about idiots; of which I think you qualify, congratulations.
Another stupid comment from someone who assumes working hard for something, makes you a bad person.
And there's the predictable knee jerk reaction from someone with no reading comprehension that I expected. Congratulations.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drivers-study-scl...
"If you drive an expensive car you're probably a jerk" - for every $1000 increase in value there's a corresponding 5% increase in bad behaviour by the driver.
Other research has shown that this is because jerks (the Finnish researchers' term, not mine) are attracted by perceived high-value brands such as Mercedes, BMW and Audi.
I can't find any research into whether the same is true of expensive bike brands.
The bus isn't at the bus stop though it's already gone past it,A few weeks back the same thing happened to me on a pedestrian crossing the bus stopped at the red light as i began to cross 2 cars just overtook the bus and went through the red light.
Yeah, looks to me like the drivers saw a bus pulled over, assumed (wrongly) it was stopping to allow passengers to board / alight (bus doesn't seem to be indicating, but to be honest that seems to be optional anyway these days), and overtook. It's possible the sightlines would make it very difficult to see there were traffic lights there at all, or at least not until the very last minute as they draw level with the bus's windscreen - one driver seems to have managed to stop in front of the bus when they realised what was happening.
what sightlines are hiding that one lane of the road is barriered & coned off though ? or the roadworks signs they no doubt ignored as well, yes you can say the bus played a part in not giving a clear sight of the traffic light colour, but there are alot of other visual clues as to what should be happening there.
they didnt even appear to slow down when faced with oncoming traffic, not even a hesitation or thought of oh I might have got this a bit wrong sorry.
Totally agree. I was just saying that, while careless, it may not have been intentional. On the other hand in similar situations when temporary lights turn red, I have seen impatient drivers further down the queue overtake the first car that stops in order to sneak through - but I don't think that's what's happening here.
Looks like they all went past the bus that was waiting and didn't even notice the red light.
So driving without due care and attention!
Certainly looks like that. Stupid place to put a temporary traffic light, behind a bus stop where it will be obscured if a bus is at the stop. I don't know the road, but something needs to be changed before there is a collision.
Has this been reported to the highway authority?
well normally they close bus stops and move them temporarily for precisely that reason if the job is filed properly with the council,it would be part of the H&S assessment, so either the roadworks werent then setup properly by the workmen or the bus driver forgot to not stop there or maybe the depot didnt issue the instructions.