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news
Near Miss of the Day 330: Cyclist on CS7 locks up when driver turns across his path
Today’s near miss took place on London’s Cycle Superhighway 7 in July when a driver travelling in the opposite direction turned just after one cyclist and right in front of another.
Toby, who sent us the video, said the incident occurred northbound on the A3 at the junction with Union Rd, between Clapham North and Stockwell.
“I put the anchors on fairly aggressively and locked the rear up, so apologies for the swearing,” he added.
Toby was commuting at the time, “on my trusty 15 year old Orbea, which batters every day through rain, sleet, snow, and almost BMWs.”
He says his journey’s only about seven miles or so from Tooting to St Paul’s, but near misses are fairly regular – “Perhaps every other week. They tend to be more of the close pass/squeeze against the kerb/changing-lanes-without-looking type of near miss rather than the blatant pull across like this one.”
> 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.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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39 comments
Driver was definitely in the wrong but from many years riding motorcycles, I know that I would be hidden behind the truck. I would have started to go to the right of that lane (if possible) to increase the time the driver has to see me.
Glad the cyclist didn't get hurt.. That junction is terrible as you can also be hidden by buses going straight.
this isn't my video, but my last two London compilations attracted a similar range of opinions. It's an interesting experience posting such a video and you get comments from a very broad church. They include 'Well, it was obvious what was going to happen', to 'Shit riding' to 'Slow down'. It also includes comments that seem to relate to a completey different incident and opinion presented out of context (ie without knowldge of the road layout). My commute has somewhere between 90 and 100 sets of traffic/pedestrian lights each way. Probably well over a thousand side roads - i'm not going to try and count. Each way. And cars beyond number.
The thing with these is:
And therein lies the rub, especially in London. All of the commute is like that. In my case for about 2 to 3 hours a day (depending on whether I'm flogging all the way back up the hill home or drove the fisrt/last 6 miles).
Without the benefit of hindsight you have to ride to what you see around you and the established norms of the way traffic is supposed to do, modified by 'spidey sense' and familiarity with the points at which people typically do stupid things. As a general rule, the latter excludes points with good sight lines, lots of space etc.
What I take home from most of these videos is that anticipation and awareness of what might happen reduces the surprise element and quickens reaction time.
As others have mentioned, it is easy to anticipate what is about to happen in a video clip entitled "...driver turns across his path". However, and this is where the years of experience of actually being in moving traffic comes in, you pretty much end up seeing that title in your head at every junction where a car is involved. 999 times out of a 1000 nothing untoward happens but on the 1000th you already have plan 'B' oven ready, as Boris would say.
Thanks for posting, and good reactions in avoiding a collision.
These videos should carry a warning, objects in video may be closer than they appear. Usually looks much worse from the saddle than what the wide angle view from the camera shows. Toby’s reaction time is about normal from what I can tell. Just an all too common incident because drivers are poor at judging a cyclist’s approach speed.
I think the only person point scoring is yourself.
You don't address posts such as the one by craigstitt it's simply retrospective analysis of a video knowing the outcome and expectations.
I'm not sure which post you mean,but I did agree with Craigstitt at the time.If there had been a collision,the driver would have been at fault.
Re retrospective analysis,isn't that what the OP put it it up for?
I'd still like to get your take on the event.
I don't disagree in principle with any of your points about spotting the signs, but by my reckoning the point at which you think it starts to look dangerous is 4 seconds in. Toby brakes at 5 seconds. It just seems to me that the very best Toby could have done (ignoring reaction times) is spotted the danger and taken action one second earlier. Yes, seconds count, but I'm not convinced that extra second would have made a significant difference to the outcome - it would still have been hard braking and too close for comfort.
And it's not an exact science.Sometimes they'll be positioned just right,you can make eye contact,and they'll still turn across your path.
That's why I gave up the motorbike.One too many of these incidents.It's counterintuitive but I feel safer on a bicycle.
I got taken out by a driver doing that. Write off my bike. If the BMW had turned a second later it would have been the same thing here. If your driving decisions rely on second by second timing then you're doing it wrong.
And you know that if he'd hit the BMW the driver would have given him hell for "going too fast".
To be safe on the roads, just try to remember that any BMW or Audi anywhere in your vicinity will pull out on you, whilst not using indicators. It's in their DNA.
Not their fault if BMW and Audi don't install indicators!
Probably that Toby should give up the bicycle thing, get himself a BMW or Audi, and therefore have priority over all other road users.
Argus, the thing is, drivers don’t usually go particularly fast in central London. When drivers are approaching junctions at 15-20mph, they can slow to a stop fairly easily and quickly, meaning it’s less obvious when they’re NOT going to stop. I’m not sure if that makes sense.
And I’d say road positioning on the approach was normal for a car turning right but stopping, until suddenly he WAS turning right.
TLDR: he was going slow; could easily have been slowing to stop (as one would expect). Road position not a giveaway until he started turning.
Thanks quiff – I thought I reacted fairly well, but would still call it a near miss.
Argus, you've said you can tell a mile off that the driver's not going to stop. What I haven't heard is what you think Toby should have done differently. At what point in the video do you say you can tell the driver isn't stopping, and what do you suggest Toby should actually have done differently and when? The fact is, he anticipated it well enough to avoid an incident of the driver's making.
Good question.Once Toby's twigged to what's happening he does a pretty fair job of salvaging things.When does it look like the car's not stopping? As I said before a good driver who intends to stop would make that turn in two stages.First he'd pull up close to the centre of the road with his front wheels pointing straight ahead.Our man was lining up that turn at the point when Toby is crossing the blue CS marking.That's where it starts to look dangerous.
I'm a bit Hypersensitive about these things but I've taken out about 25000 driving tests and turning right across traffic is included in every one of them,both from the turning and straight ahead drivers point of view. In this case I'd be watching not only the behaviour of the car,but where the driver is looking.(You can't see that in the video).Think of it as a form of body language.
After all these tests all you can offer is 20/20 hindsight and per 325 to 'expect the unexpected' (presumably you never venture outside and live in fear of a 747 landing on your house)
You must have exceptional vision to see inside all those cars with their windscreens which reflect light back at you, thereby obscuring the occupants.
OK-given a similar situation,how would you deal with it? Take us through your mental process as you approach the intersection.Are we trying to be constructive,or just pointscoring?
Tbh I'd have been more surprised had the BMW actually waited
Toby here (though you'll have to take my word for it).
Not reported though I did get the plate from a frame of the video.
I’d posit I have fairly good general anticipation of what drivers are about to do (regular sunday cyclist (not racing), London commuter cyclist, and motorcyclist). I’d agree though, I didn’t anticipate the BMW turning, possibly because of the cyclist in front. Most drivers (even in London) wouldn’t go for that gap. Ofc, expect the unexpected etc etc, but we all operate based upon norms, and that’s not (I’d argue) the norm.
Point to note re swinging right to avoid. I estimate I was doing c.20mph there (ASL box is usually 5m, took me c 0.5s to cross it = 10m/s = 22mph, seems broadly right) as it’s the bottom of a slight descent. Time elapsed between the point of the car starting to turn and me crossing the back of it is about 2.5s, maybe 3s. There’s a lane to the right of me, no idea if there was anything in it. How quick can you do a shoulder check? 1s? 1.5s? i.e. a significant portion of the time available. Not sure I could’ve done a shoulder check, and then swung right in time, so naturally I put the anchors on (and stopped "pounding on the pedals" ).
Everyone has 20:20 hindsight, especially Twaddle-Blind Freddy (it seems). Thanks for the support all.
His road position and the fact that he wasn't stopping,didn't ring any bells?
You must have lightening reactions, as the van obscured a lot of the view.
Still, might is right.
Argus - the BMW's road positioning at that particular junction was exactly the same road positioning used by the black car that went straight on. The fact he wasnt stopping became apparent about 4 seconds into the clip, and less than half a second later Toby was hard on the brakes.
Just because you read the headline you were actively looking for the car to make the turn..... you saw it was an 8 second clip, car 1 was by the junction before the BMW came into view, therefore, of course you could tell what was going to happen.
Even Spiderman would have struggled to react better with his spideysense.
That's not a near miss. When the car started turning he was at the box where cyclist stop on red.
A smidge of anticipation from Toby and he would have freewheeled a bit and scooted to the right of the car, instead he kept on pounding the pedals.
If you use that sort of anticipation in London you'd grind to a halt. The anticiptation to which you refer is commonly called 'hindsight'.
Twaddle-Blind Freddy could see that car was coming across.
So are you the latest petrol-head troll, or are you one of those cyclists for whom the point of the activity is demonstrate your 'elite' status to yourself and others by engaging in a technically demanding dangerous sport, rather than getting from A to B? I can't decide which it is. Needs more evidence.
You're overthinking it,sport. What we have here is a simple difference of opinion.
Agree. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume Pigeon's not just a troll (first post though...):
The video is 8 seconds long. Watching at full speed, I reckon I would have appreciated the car was going to turn across me at the same time as Toby, about 5 seconds in. Yes, if you freeze frame, you can see the car start to turn at 4 seconds. But do you really think freewheeling for that one second would have made this ok? Or do you think maybe the driver misjudged Toby's speed and went for a gap that wasn't there, and it's just as well Toby grabbed a handful of brakes?
I must be misunderstanding how the roads work. I didn't realise that if a driver is in the ASL then they get priority for turning right across incoming traffic.
Can't agree with you there. That was a near miss, purely the fault of the driver.
The cyclist in the clip begins braking hard as soon as he crosses the first of the Advance Stop Lines (showing good reactions for realising the car was going to make a dickish move). You can see that from the way that his hands move on the bars to the brakes.
The driver either didn't care about the cyclist or wholly failed to realise the speed that the cyclist was travelling on the road. I'd be willing to say its a combination of the two factors there.
*edit*
Re-watching that, it is only by sheer good luck that there wasn't an accident involving the cyclist ahead of the cammer.
The BMWanker starts to turn as soon as he passes the van, never breaking his momentum. If the cyclist ahead of the cammer was 5m further back they would have been a bonnet ornament
*end of edit*
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