Near Miss of the Day 800 revisited – Tipper truck driver fined for close pass

This is an excellent result, thank you for reporting it.

Good to hear that drivers now seem to be behaving more considerately around the cyclist. That is the result we want after all.

Out of interest

Do we know if the driver pleaded guilty and what the charge was?

Were all four close passes reported and did this have any effect on the outcome?

If I had previously had three near misses, I would be reviewing my videos and asking myself why this was happening? The road positioning of this cyclist is too near the gutter and in my experience is just inviting every vehicle to squeeze past without crossing into the other lane. It takes some guts, confidence and practice, but this behaviour could be stopped very easily by riding in the Primary Position.

A victory - nice one!  Baffling how a professional driver wouldn't turn up in court to defend themselves tho. 
I do wonder if he was properly informed.  The driver I got sacked on a NMOTD was a non-national and I do wonder whether they get any support from their agency/employer.  I suspect not and if what they have done wrong is not properly communicated and chance of learning from the incident is gone.

Amazingly managed a conviction while presented on The InterWeb. Who knew such a thing was possible?

Is there a social media hashtag for this series?

Thanks.

No excuse - murderous driving. Poor infra also sadly. 
I would ******* their truck or the depot if they did that to me. 

One course of action if you have a problem with a haulier is to contact the Office of the Traffic Commissioner who are responsible for issuing the operator's licence hauliers have to have.

Unfortunately with tippers working out of quarries, they are often self employed drivers who are subcontracted to the quarry and simply have a lorry painted in the colours of the quarry company which complicates this, but the registration number of the vehicle will be linked to the relevant operator's licence so it could be followed up.

This subcontractor arrangement does lead to time pressures on the drivers because they do only get paid per load, and the main contractor/ quarry will not want to be involved for fear of being seen to treat them as an employee and consequently become liable for National Insurance contributions.

Tipper trucks and skip delivery trucks have the highest crash rates of any HGV classes. There are reasons for this. First off, the drivers of both are often paid/delivery, so they're working against the clock to earn as much as they can. If you look at supermarket delivery artics by comparison, those have amongst the lowest rates of crashes for HGVs because the firms tend to hire the best drivers and those drivers are paid hourly rates, so they're not under such pressure. 

There are other reasons too why tipper trucks and skip trucks have such a poor record. And if you know anything about the construction sector, you may know what I mean. In short, a small percentage of the firms have links to crime and criminals. With an even smaller minority, it's because they're used to launder money directly. With others, the links are less direct but there all the same. It's of note that some tipper truck or skip delivery firms will be phoenix companies, closing down and then restarting again shorlty after with a slightly different name. For the phoenix firms, the crash rates can be truly horrific. A very significant proportion of the crashes involving tipper trucks and skip trucks occur with the firms that have links to crime. The people running the firms may have the same risk taking approach to safety that they do to sticking within the law.

Not all companies running tipper trucks or skip trucks are like that by any means. A significant percentage are well run and have decent safety records. I can think of one contractor with a large tipper truck fleet that has several main board execs who are keen cyclists, and it's no surprise there that the truck drivers get specific cycle training.

A quick rule of thumb - look at how grubby the tipper truck is. If it's covered in dirt that's been there for ages, you get an idea of the firm's maintenance practices, particularly if you can see grease or diesel fuel staining the dirt. In those instances, keep well clear. And that should apply whether you're on two wheels, driving or walking.

Why is it so many motorist can't cross the centre line when they are overtaking.

The lorry overtake was bad, but none of the follwing cars covered themselved with glory either.  Especially when you consider that there were no cars coming the other way.... so they could have passed safely

The police have the attention span which is generally attributed to the goldfish (probably unfairly) - 3 seconds. They had forgotten this case as soon as they knew nobody was KSI'd- if somebody was they get out the excuses file, and make sure there's 'insufficient evidence'. 

It's like a building site where the safety log is full of near misses and nothing was ever done about them. Then one day it's a KSI, and people ask what could have been done?

Absolutely report these to the prime contractor. At least let them be without excuse if the H&S investigators ever have to pay them a call.

Nobody gave you the room that the HC recommends. The Mini at the end hardly veered off it's course. I personally keep away from tipper trucks as much as I can, they seem to be a law unto themselves.

If it's anything like the quarries around my neck of the woods they'll all be self-employed drivers on piece work, but none of that should excuse their shite driving.

When I've had problems in the past I went after the quarry owners, Tarmac in my instance. They had quite a bit on the Corporate Bullshit site about taking responsibility for their actions through sustainability etc, so I put it to them "why are you allowing your sub-contractors to drive like utter arseholes"?

Their response was almost immediate and extremely favourable, they even did a driver/cyclist day so their staff could see the situation from a cyclists perspective.

In these instances always go after the main contractor. They are usually horrified to have the subbies driving like twats.

(Pedant bit) This should now be NMOTD 800 as 798 (b) is now 799.

Confusing I know.

I hope Warwickshire take action. Ridiculous.

Thanks for taking the trouble to report and to submit it for NMOTD