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Near Miss of the Day 559: Horse box driver gives cyclist the finger

Our regular series featuring close passes from around the country - today it's Northamptonshire...

A driver towing a horse box who seemed to be letting an approaching cyclist through on a road with parked cars along one side changed his mind, resulting in the rider being squeezed towards a stone wall, then gave him the middle finger for his trouble – that’s the main video in our regular Near Miss of the Day feature today.

The clip was sent in by road.cc reader Stuart, who told us that it happened last Tuesday – the time stamp on the video is wrong – as he was leaving the village of Charlton in Northamptonshire.

“The other side of the road had a number of parked cars, my side was clear,” he said.

“The driver towing the horse box made to pull in behind the row of cars and then changed his mind.

“As you can see on the video, he also felt that he could give me the finger gesture on the way past.

“There was another car which followed him as well. Luckily there was a space as I had nowhere else I could go.”

Stuart also sent us a second clip of an incident that happened on the road between Croughton and Charlton.

“This is a narrow road, the driver cut the corner and was oblivious to the idea that there may have been someone coming the other way,” he said.

“I haven't reported either event to the police,” he added.

> 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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16 comments

Avatar
Cycloid | 3 years ago
5 likes

Horse Box drvers are reluctant to brake or change course quickly in case it upsets their precious cargo.

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Captain Badger replied to Cycloid | 3 years ago
9 likes

Cycloid wrote:

Horse Box drvers are reluctant to brake or change course quickly in case it upsets their precious cargo.

You'd think they'd want to drive more slowly and carefully...

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EK Spinner replied to Cycloid | 3 years ago
4 likes

To look after the beast (and why wouldn't they - they ain't cheap) then hard acceleration braking or turning should be avoided, very smooth driving is the order of the day which is best achieved by driving slowly and observing well ahead to give them time to do all thier actions smoothly (like a showfer  1 ).

It used to be that pulling a heavy horse box automatically induced the slow bit with low powered cars and crappy brakes, now that niether of these are an issue then too many forget the slowly bit

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Muddy Ford | 3 years ago
2 likes

It is a close pass, but I think the cyclist should have held back in this case or accept that it was going to be close. If the truck and horsebox had overtaken the cyclist that would be a different story.  This type of close pass is very common on country lanes where I live, and I only get angry with the ignorant and dangerous drivers that make no attempt to slow down as we pass each other.

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EK Spinner | 3 years ago
4 likes

playing devils advocate a bit here and I don't know the road or the visibility leading up to this section but at the very start of the clip the rider is about 20m short of the first parked car, the pickup and trailer are already out to pass the parked car at the other end, and bearing in mind the length of the vehicle involved I wouldn't ecpect them to tuck into the gap in the parked cars as I would if it were just a car. Do they not have priority and the rider should perhaps stop and give way. Doesn't excuse the finger but does perhaps explain it

 

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David9694 replied to EK Spinner | 3 years ago
1 like

Makes sense - looks like sort of car the devil would own.

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Grahamd replied to EK Spinner | 3 years ago
4 likes

I agree, the following car however is at fault, doing the classic follow the previous vehicle without any consideration to anybody else.

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Projectcyclingf... replied to EK Spinner | 3 years ago
0 likes
EK Spinner wrote:

playing devils advocate a bit here and I don't know the road or the visibility leading up to this section but at the very start of the clip the rider is about 20m short of the first parked car, the pickup and trailer are already out to pass the parked car at the other end, and bearing in mind the length of the vehicle involved I wouldn't ecpect them to tuck into the gap in the parked cars as I would if it were just a car. Do they not have priority and the rider should perhaps stop and give way. Doesn't excuse the finger but does perhaps explain it

 

"20m" ?
More like around 2 cars lengths or about 10m.
>Also, you forget about thinking and reaction times - and one second in, he was already almost by the rear of the 1st parked car - at that point those on the side of the obstruction should have yielded, as required.

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Pyro Tim | 3 years ago
7 likes

Standard behaviour fromm horse community in vehicles. They want space and respect when on horses, but give none to cyclists. Especially in new forest

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dodpeters | 3 years ago
2 likes

Is this why people riding bikes are supposed to be nice and say hello to people riding horses?

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hawkinspeter replied to dodpeters | 3 years ago
9 likes

dodpeters wrote:

Is this why people riding bikes are supposed to be nice and say hello to people riding horses?

They're great when they're riding horses, but a lot of people totally change character when behind the steering wheel. When they're on a horse they probably have much more of a sense of vulnerability and they're more connected with the outside rather than just viewing it through a windscreen.

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grumpyoldcyclist | 3 years ago
3 likes

Why not report them? Police may choose to ignore stuff (separate issue) but they definitely won't do anything about these folk will they?

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Boombang replied to grumpyoldcyclist | 3 years ago
2 likes

Not sure what it is like in your area or that of the video poster, but my local forces submission took me an hour the other weekend. That was one of three really dumb passes by drivers on a ride I wanted to report and unusually had very clear footage. The other two didn't get reported unfortunately as didn't have another two hours.
20 mins for personal details and statement (no option to save a profile and avoid keying the bits that don't change each time), 20 mins upload for first video and 20 minutes for second (as they need 1 minute each side and cannot accept edited footage, unfortunately it spanned 2 videos). My broadband is not slow, but files large and upload to that site really slow.

Off the back of that they don't even let you know what action was taken, if any.

I have raised it to my local commissioner who says they cannot get involved in the matter as it is operational, but it has been passed to the force. Won't hold my breath.

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grumpyoldcyclist replied to Boombang | 3 years ago
3 likes

After my first submission I made a template for myself, then after completing each report just pasted the required text from that source into the various boxes as I went along, that may be something that you can do to reduce time spent?
I can submit reduced footage as long as the original stays on the original device untouched if it is required, so that makes it shorter to upload.

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AlsoSomniloquism replied to Boombang | 3 years ago
0 likes

Yep, can be a massive chore to do sometimes. The form is fast to fill in however they don't allow large files so I have to convert and compress on the computer. The time is taken by uploading the files from the camera, finding the right 11 minute segment (which in an hour could be five). Then finding the 4 mins either side. Clipping it, then converting to Avi to load into the GoPro footage editor, then converting back to a Youtube type for more compression before loading it through the webpage. 

So for all that work, with no acknowledgement of anything including a crime number (the portal emails to say it was uploaded and then nothing), it can be offputting. 

However I did try uploading a clip directly without compression the other day so they might have upped the limit for the file sizes or no one else is submitting so no contention on the shared drive.

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zero_trooper replied to Boombang | 3 years ago
2 likes

This is exactly the sort of thing the police and crime commissioner should be getting involved in! 
Keeping a victim/complainant updated is not an 'operational matter'.

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