Near Miss of the Day 6: Lorry driver in "homicidal close pass"

Once upon a time lorry drivers considered themselves 'the knights of the road' and prided themselves on their professional driving.

Nowadays lorries are piloted by eastern europeans who've taken their test on some clapped out tractor and then get let loose in an artic. 

The problem with most of these close passes seems to be a combination of failure to read the road ahead and a lack of patience. The lorry ended up waiting at the junction anyway, completely negating the necessity for a fast-and-close pass. It's about one road user perceiving their journey as seemingly more important than another's, purely because they are bigger and can travel faster. I'm sure that most close-pass offenders are probably stressed as well, rather than just in an anti-cyclist mindset, and that impairs their judgement

I had a similar incident with a double-decker bus in Exeter recently, in which the driver squeezed me into the curb (causing me to thump on the side of his bus as he passed) only to pull in at the next bus stop, 50 metres up the road. He saved a couple of seconds, max. I challenged him when he was stopped at the bus stop about why he had pulled such a reckless move and his response was to say that he has "passengers who have to get places". The journey time of his passengers and where they needed to be was, in his mind, more important than my safety. The fact that I was cycling to the hospital for a scan of our baby was irrelevant to him. And that also impaired his duty of care to avoid any circumstance whereby his passengers would have to watch me go under his wheels.

I consider myself to be a safe cyclist, I've cycled all over the world, I drive also, I'm not a camera-wearer and I experience close passes regularly (most days, probably), but due to the attitude of the driver this was the first time I've followed something up. The company reviewed the on-board cameras (it was a new bus) and recordings from the driver seat, and I left it with them to take further action.

What exactly are we hoping to achieve with these endless scary close past posts?

Besides ad impressions, obviously...

I've reported a close pass to Warwickshire police before. Had a response saying they had been and spoken to the driver

Are the police as an institution anti-cyclist?

I think the issue is the lateness of pulling out more than the distance he eventually pulls over. He can see there will be a gap after the Sainsbury's van and judges he can hit that gap without slowing. But sudden braking by either Sainsbury's van or cyclist would gave resulted in a collision where the lorry driver had nowhere to go.

All to save a few ml of diesel.

at least he crossed the white line...and the road was reasonably wide...

come ride the R roads in Ireland...

Lorries twice as big, 2/3 the size of road and a penchant for trying to stay within the white line...

The stupid thing, is that most cyclists would have let the lorry past at the junction, and the cyclist was turning left anyway.

I know we need lorries to move stuff around the country, but they are some of the worst driver going. I've had several overtake just before corners with poor visibility. In stop start traffic, I had several lorries tailgating me before stopping within a foot or two of my car. (Solid beeps when I turned on parking sensors). They also suddenly swerve between lanes to try and get in a slightly faster queue, before moving back to the same spot they were in earlier.

How we can have lorries of up to 44 tons mixing it with 1.5 ton cars and 100kg cyclists, I will never know,