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Near Miss of the Day 197 revisited – What happened next?

Leicestershire Polcie took a look at footage of tanker driver's close pass - but decided against prosecuting...

Back in October, we featured a video in our Near Miss of the Day series that road.cc reader Andrew, who submitted it, described as “just a normal 40-minute commute” and which contained a number of near misses – the first of them a very close pass by a tanker driver.

Andrew said at the time, “I could've touched the rear of the trailer it was that close. I felt the draft sucking me in.”

> Near Miss of the Day 197: "Just a normal 40-minute commute"

He sent the video in to Leicestershire Police, and now he’s updated us with their response.

“Leicestershire Police Chief Constable Simon Cole told me that next year Leicestershire Police will be introducing an online portal to report these incidents, with supporting video evidence.

“After initially dismissing my video it was reviewed again, but dismissed as an acceptable pass.”

Andrew, who posted the full police response on Twitter, added: “I’m not sure the cycling community would see it as acceptable.”

Take a look at the footage above – and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

> 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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10 comments

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Awavey | 5 years ago
1 like

the problem is the video doesnt convey to a dispassionate observer,who may end up being a jury of 12 people if it went that far, the actual danger that kind of overtake poses to a cyclist, theres no context of the aero draft the truck causes or the actual closeness of the truck as theres no reference to the bike visually, it might even look to the observer(s) as if theres a nice cyclist friendly space being left, the truck doesnt swerve/veer, or even appear to be moving excessively quickly given youd expect it to easily outpace a cyclist.

to get to that mindset of thats actually a bad pass, and it is no question,you have to add your own experience of being in that situation and knowing what it feels like,how you get buffeted, knowing the technology actually optically distorts the field of the view such that actually objects are a lot closer in real life than shown in the camera

so I might not agree with the police decision, but I can understand how they reached their conclusion.

for all the self help cyclist videos there are out there it amazes me how few focus on how to to record near misses and whats the best setup for a camera given we know the limitations

Avatar
Hirsute | 5 years ago
1 like

Policy between forces is clearly not uniform.
I can only assume that there is a tick box that simply assesses the distance and has no box for size and type of vehicle.

Amazingly my footage before Christmas of a close pass resulted in Essex police sending out a nip.

Avatar
mikecassie | 5 years ago
1 like

A dangerous pass, simple as that.  Leicestershire Police need to give themselves a shake and get hold of the Tanker Driver.

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Argos74 | 5 years ago
2 likes

Too close, too fast, too dangerous. Leicestershire Police need to have a rethink.

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growingvegtables | 5 years ago
1 like

Keeping it simple - for the sake of Leicestershire Police.  Was that acceptable?  NO F***ING WAY!

 

A little more nuanced - and perhaps beyond the collective intelligence of Leicestershire Police?

WTAF? 44 tonnes?  Of fast-(and it was fast!)-moving metal, with all the vagaries of its liquid load?  Fast - and causing any amount of wind turbulence?

 

Any, and every, police officer involved in this decision should be put on a bike for a month, requred to cycle 150+ miles a week, entirely on precisely that sort of road. 

AND NO!  They don't get to wear police uniform, police badges, or fancy police reflectives with battenbergs/Stillitoe tartans/whatever.

Send the ignorant fuckers out, as naked and exposed as any ordinary cyclist.

 

Let me guess - the Police Federation's Health and Safety helpline will self-combust from over-use.

 

The tanker driver's a bastard. 

But I've no time for the self-serving, work-shirking, so-called-"public-service" bastards, who condone such criminally inept driving.

Avatar
brimstone | 5 years ago
0 likes

The inconsistant approach by the differing police forces is a probably a matter for the National Police Chiefs' Council to provide guidance upon.  Their Twitter handle is https://twitter.com/PoliceChiefs - perhaps we ought to highlight these cases to them and see what happens? 

 

 

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Steel | 5 years ago
2 likes

Would the Police Chief say it was an acceptable pass if it was he or members of his family that were on the cycle?

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Richard D | 5 years ago
1 like

Leicestershire Police were totally disinterested when some yob threw a beer can at my head two years ago.  It won’t take much to get me to turn vigilante I fear.

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ChrisB200SX | 5 years ago
1 like

Totally unacceptable by the tanker driver, on another day he will kill someone driving like that.

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burtthebike | 5 years ago
4 likes

I keep getting notifications of changes to the law, including a change to the Highway Code which says that drivers must give cyclists at least 1.5m clearance when overtaking, but since this is just the HC, I'm not sure that it's law.  If this is indeed true, then that pass would be illegal.

Whatever, it was clearly too close and the police are wrong.

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