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news
Near Miss of the Day 712: Driver overtakes cyclist at entrance to narrow bridge ... and saves two seconds
A dangerous overtake at the entrance to a narrow bridge features in our latest Near Miss of the Day video, with the driver immediately turning left afterwards meaning that they risked hitting the cyclist all for the sake of saving a couple of seconds.
It took place in Gunnislake, Cornwall, with the road.cc reader who submitted the footage, and who asked to remain anonymous, telling us: “As you can see from the footage I was mildly inconveniencing a BMW driver, who managed to save two seconds by performing a dangerous overtake before being held up by the LGV ahead.
“Over the parapet of the bridge is a large drop into the river Tamar below. Devon & Cornwall Police took unspecified action against the driver who co-operated with them after the registered keeper identified him,” added the cyclist, who passed on his thanks to the force’s Operation Snap team.
The footage is accompanied by the opening of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which we are told helps cover up some perfectly understandable industrial-level swearing.
> 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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51 comments
Devon & Cornwall Police took unspecified action against the driver
Oh dear! Police code for 'nothing at all' or 'words of advice'- which to a BMW driver means Carry on- do what you like to the scum!
Why is it most cr@p overtakes end up in the driver turning off at the next opportunity:-(
Just had one where the guy turned right into his drive about 50 metres later.
They're not all BMWs, this was.a Maserati with personalised plates.
I think there's a general problem of people just not thinking ahead. See it cycling and driving these days.
Looking and thinking ahead are probably the most useful skills to develop. When cycling, there can be an energy cost associated with not looking ahead - you obviously don't want to be accelerating hard and then having to brake for someone/something, and then accelerate back up to speed again (except when you want to push yourself or warm up etc). Looking ahead allows you to scrub off some speed early enough so that hopefully you can avoid the situation without needing to stop completely.
I wonder if some motorists have poor anticipation because they don't face any personal energy cost from braking/accelerating? Maybe that's why they can focus on overtaking even though there's a junction/lights/crossing just further on.
Case in point https://upride.cc/incident/that-was-worth-it/
You leave a nice gap in slow moving traffic so you don't have to brake/accelerate, only for an impatient mini bus driver to take advantage of it!
That kind of thing really snaps my cranks. It's worse on a downhill section when you've built up a bit of speed and don't want to be too close to a car in front and then some driver decides to overtake so they can fill the gap. I must admit to getting annoyed when that happens and then make efforts to overtake the overtaker again to "prove my point" - I need to stop doing that kind of thing so much.
Yep, at least this was all slow speed. Almost comical. I probably could have stopped without hitting the back of the van, but it seemed a lot safer and easier just to go around.
I've got Shimano on the line asking if you're going to withdraw that warranty claim...
Tell them their piece of shit cranks snapped after the warranty period
Pieces of shit bonded together, sadly.
I feel your pain despite living in the smug-lit uplands of 105 (modern) and Stronglight (ancient), and being 100% unable to resist the joke at your expense. Sorry.
No worries - I got a graze on my knee and was out of pocket on getting a new crankset, but if that's the worst thing to happen to me on my bike, then I'll take it.
I do now regret getting Ultegra to replace my Ultegra, but at the time my priority was to get my bike back on the road as quick as possible (took me 2 days) and it was only after having bought the replacement that I figured that 105 would have been better. I'll keep an eye on the new ones and hopefully I'll spot a crack within the 2 year period and thus make Shimano pay for their shoddy product.
I'm glad I avoided ultegra! LOL
There's a concept in human factors engineering called "cognitive tunnelling". Under stress, the brain focusses almost exclusively on the primary task ("overtaking the cyclist") and fails to process secondary information. It's a big deal in e.g., flying difficult fighter aircraft or preventing power station meltdowns.
Anecdote: Many years ago, I was riding along the Euston Road in London. I could see queuing traffic ahead in the left-hand lane and was riding in high primary so I could filter to the right of the queue when I got there. The driver behind me was obviously unhappy about my choice of position. They followed me extremely closely for about 100m and when I moved right to filter, they crashed into the stationary lorry at the rear of the queue.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!
I had a similar thing where a driver was intent on explaining he had every right to run me off the f***ing road if he wanted to, unfortunately he spotted me looking at the oncoming combine harvester and looked at the road in time.
80% of Advanced Driving technique* is observation. Anticipating hazards can only be done with proper observation, planning your drive can only be done with it.
Mind you, I've fallen out with IAM because they obviously have an anti-cyclist culture in their leadership now.
(*or as I would call it - driving)
Absolutely agree. It's not a personal energy cost, but I have always treated driving the same and never understood charging to a junction and braking, you're wasting fuel and wearing brakes unnecessarily. If you can see a junction ahead and the lights are red, lift off the accelerator.
As a young man having a car with a MPG computer was the number 1 factor in preventing me driving like an idiot.
I never tire of saying this! Yet another BMW fuckwit! You couldn't make it up!
Today cycling home from work a car overtook me on the other side of the road, so not a close pass, approaching a roundabout to which there is no clear view of any vehicle that might be coming off. In other words a potential head on collision ( I also passed him about 15 seconds later so nothing gained). On the same rounabout ealier this week I had a car come sailing on straight in front of me. I had made eye contact with the driver but he carried on nonetheless and when I shouted at hime he gestured to appologise, which I suppose was good, as he had realised his error of judgement, but why are people so impatient?
I once had a porsche overtake going the wrong side of a keep left bollard/island as we approached a roundabout and then lights. He had no sight of if something was coming the other way off the roundabout and then at the lights I caught him up and we both sat there for about five minutes waiting for the lights to change.
RE: Overtake round wrong side of island / refuge. Perhaps I'm just more of a snowflake from reading too many cycling sites but I seem to be seeing this more frequently.
Impatience is a human universal for which training is more or less useful "mitigation". There's cultural variability obviously but significantly not all rules and road designs are created equal. There are different design priorities in junction design between The Netherlands vs. UK ("minimise conflict" vs. "optimise [motor] traffic flow") so it's maybe not surprising but there is a pretty clear example of how you could move people more efficiently rather than just motor vehicles.
NotJustBikes on NL lights vs. Canada / US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4
Traffic lights in The Netherlands: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/tag/traffic-lights/
I'm hoping some of that gets brought in here. Although the really hard stuff - in terms of politics - is probably more important e.g. motor traffic reduction and "unbundling" / physical separation where needed of pedestrian / cycle routes.
For impatience, read Entitled. The curse of modern man. (Whoops, woman. Shit, person, they them etc).
Bigot!
These would look nice on the right side of an island. Might need some sort of remote controlled ones for emergency vehicles, though.
That's shocking. I'd want to know from the plod why I wasn't being called as a witness for a dangerous driving rap.
Awful MGIF driving. I guess the use of the music is a breach of copyright.
Classical music is usually out of copyright, but the particular performance can be copyrighted
Not necessarily, obviously Mozart is out of copyright (I've seen estimates stating that if copyright did exist for Mozart the copyright holder would make somewhere around $500 million a year!), recordings are out of copyright 70 years after the year of release, so if the recording used was pre-1952 it would be okay. Hard to tell, it does sound quite clean and any digitally remastered versions of out of copyright recordings get a new 70-year copyright.
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