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news
Near Miss of the Day 833: Oncoming driver forces cyclist to swerve
One of the big talking points on social media when it comes to cycling this week has been the video of a five-year-old cyclist, riding ahead of his father, nearly being hit by an oncoming motorist who failed to stop despite there being parked cars on either side of the road, meaning the driver passed the child with inches to spare – and we have a similar scenario today in our Near Miss of the Day series, albeit one involving an adult cyclist.
In this case, cars were parked on just one side of the road in the Gloucestershire village that Richard, the road.cc reader who filmed the incident, was riding through – but as you can see, there was barely enough room for the approaching driver to pass him safely, and the cyclist had to swerve to avoid being hit.
Richard said he was prompted to send it in to us after seeing that video of the child, pointing out that his one also “involves a driver not giving way while passing parked cars.”
He said: “I always stay well out from the kerb at this part of the road and most drivers now behind the parked cars until I have passed.
“If they don't, I stay out until they slow down or stop before moving in. This is the first driver since the Highway Code changes who has done neither.
“My front camera in on the handlebar stem and the bars are around 450mm wide. The rear footage shows how close it was.
“I reported it to Gloucestershire Constabulary using the online reporting system and the response was: ‘I have sent a warning letter to the driver’.”
“Personally I was quite happy with this in view of previous submissions getting NFA [no further action],” he added.
> 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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32 comments
Is it just me or is this playing 'chicken' with parked cars etc. happening more often?
I have one on the last stretch of a regular journey home. It's got much worse in the past few years, now with at least one on each trip. I can get most to slow, if not to a speed I'm ok with, at least a bit, by holding my line, but one or two have been seriously scary. And I'm constantly amazed at the confident assumption that I'll swerve at the last minute. If I'm doing 20mph (it's slightly down hill) and they're doing 30, that's a closing speed of 50. HWC really needs to explicitly say 1.5m for both sorts of passing.
I'm pleased he clarified what NFA stood for, I thought it was "Nothing, F... A.."
The rear view is helpful because it establishes that the cyclist was alongside a long row of parked cars, so the driver can't use the excuse that they had established themselves to gain priority over other traffic appearing at a later point.
On the other hand, you can also be like this driver and be a knob. In my braver moments I might take a strong primary position, especially if there is a car sized gap for the oncoming car to duck into, but drivers generally automatically slow if their brain registers and obstruction before the neandertal takes over and they start doing the automatic calculation of handlebar width plus mirror to mirror width plus 1cm* + 1cm** < gap width => "What's your problem. buddy?".
* Required minimum distance from parked vehicle
** Polite but unnecessary distance from cyclist
Try this one from yesterday, often happens here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqVCXJnVY9g
I took primary before, on a much narrower road than this (and uphill), in a similar scenario, the other week (where there was absolutely no room for bike and car to pass each other) and the car driver stopped in front of me looking totally perplexed, even though there was an empty space for them to pull in on the left. I had to point to the space for them to finally understand what they should do.
Seriously, I really don't understand what goes through some drivers minds.
When I did that one time, the driver stopped, so we had a chat about it, he told me i was very lucky that he had saved my life by not running me over and I should only ride on my side of the road.
Just to be clear I was riding on my side of the road in prime and he had stopped on the opposite side of the road facing me head on whilst over too his left there was an ample double car length gap in between the parked cars.
I decided talking to drivers was completely pointless from that point on.
I've had a couple of those. They expected me to pull into the gap, and indicated as much. One evidently thought he was doing me a favour by carefully stopping opposite it and was puzzled by my ingratitude!
Very little...
On my local roads, drivers do this to other cars, showing that they don't care about anybody and that consideration for cyclists isn't even a factor.
As long as they can physically squeeze past the oncoming road user, without actually making contact, then they see nothing wrong (backed up by the fact that a sizeable proportion of them are speeding to start with, and seldom slow down for the dodgy pass)
There's something wrong with people - seriously wrong
This happened to me today.
The road narrows just enough to not be get a normal and a "wider" vehicle past. There is a field to one side and houses to the other. There are a couple of points where cars have made passing places in the "hedge" so there are places to get out of the way.
I was driving and following another car. Coming at us was a sprinter van. I was just about to pull into the passing place behind the other car and the sprinter came belting through (this is a 30mph and I am sure they were going faster). I didn't make it to the passing place in time and could only watch and hope that the van didn't take the side of my car off. It was not even inches to spare, more like millimeters and at no time did the van driver slow down.
Many will be concerned about the lack of a reporting portal in Scotland and Polis Scotlands move to can it due to budget cuts. Cycling UK have created an auto letter to petition them not to cut it.
https://action.cyclinguk.org/page/116696/action/1?ea.tracking.id=web&_ga...
'
Only takes about forty seconds, folks! Follow that link.
.
I would have been pretty dissapointed with a warning letter for that. This goes beyond a close pass, you had to swerve to avoid being hit!
Based on my recent submission to Norfolk, I'm confident that would have been a notice of intended prosecution here.
What we need is a sting operation, with cyclists riding where there are parked cars, with a police car parked just around the corner to stop and interview the drivers who had committed the close pass. I for one would be fascinated to discover why they think they can so casually put someone else's life at risk. Then give them an official police warning, and only prosecute those who don't think they've done anything wrong.
I'm sure this will be adopted by the comprehensive review of road laws when it finally happens. Perhaps I'll write to my MP, Mark Harper, and ask how it's going.
What we need is a police driven national campaign, that categorically states the facts about what you can and can't do - then a nationwide (by all police forces) program of strict enforcement.
That's a bloody brilliant idea. We could call it something like mandatory training and force motorists (who are effectively operators of heavy machinery in public spaces) to take it or otherwise revoke their licence.
They do a similar thing in the airline industry and the risk to third parties is orders of magnitude higher with driving that with flying.
Which police?
Bet putting Lancs in the driving seat wouldn't change much, eh wtjs? I'm not convinced Police Scotland would put the courts into overdrive either.
There may be hope. Looks like Mark Hodson is on the case.
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/cycling-is-my-medicine-pioneer-of-...
Unfortunately it's because he has been diagnosed with some sort of illness that prevents him doing normal police duties. Every cloud has a silver lining I guess, at least for us.
A warning letter is a decent result ime. Thames Valley Police told me "You refer to changes to the highway code regarding safe passing of cyclists. This was added to the highway code to ensure drivers were leaving sufficient distance between themselves and cyclists when overtaking. Nothing in the legislation attributes safe passing distances to circumstances where a vehicle is approaching a cyclist."
"Nothing in the legislation attributes safe passing distances to circumstances where a vehicle is approaching a cyclist"
Surely there was nothing new required legislation wise as the requirement to give way to oncoming vehicles before you pull out to pass parked vehicles wa already in place.
also I'm not sure that the revised highway code had any new legislation as such, just clarified guidance and notes
HC already said that, and also something about not forcing other road users to slow down or swerve. So already a RTA s3 offence.
But having had similar last summer (cars overtaking a bin lorry) I was told by TVP that I should have given way because "HC is guidance only" and "Drivers do this all the time"
Sorry I am in a loop now.
That is due to a poor choice of words in the new highway code rule 163 has for cyclists
but for pedestians and horse riders
this has I believe led to the confusion - you pass something no matter what direction you are travelling, but overtaking is only carried out in the same direction.
This is why some think the rule of 1.5m does not apply to head on pass.
We are only protected by vague wording about not conflicting with oncoming vehicles - and then arguing that less than 1.5 m for a cyclist is "a conflict", and your mileage may vary between police forces.
Agreed - the wording is still sub-optimal even after the recent update (and not just here). Don't forget this is also not a "must" rule - so if drivers, police and courts want to ignore it they can!
not a "must" rule - so if drivers, police and courts want to ignore it they can!
Pfff!! Lancashire Constabulary abandoned this HC rubbish about 'must' years ago. Traffic lights are endowed with HC 'must rules' and LC completely ignores them, along with all the bureaucratic nonsense about 'MOTs', double white lines, handheld mobile use while driving etc.
I can understand why it is not a "must" rule, there are too many circumstances where properly and safely ridden and driven interactions might be considered unlawful if there was an absolute distance, for example when riding on a road with oncoming traffic, riding two abreast we don't really worry about having more than 1.5 metres to oncoming traffic on marked roads, and on narrow lanes, as long as drivers moderate their speed, most cyclists are happy to invite a car past while keeping riding where there is not 1.5 metres available, as long as there is some space.
The reality is that a lot of driving that can be prosecuted is not explicitly written down. For example, the CPS quote using the wrong lane at a junction to gain an advantage over other cars as an example of driving without due consideration, but it is not explicitly written down within the HWC. We should expect the police and the CPS to recognise that the general offence of driving without due consideration does not necessarily require the written support of an explicit rule in the HWC, it should be sufficient to see that there is a demonstrable risk or nuisance to another person (or property, come to that) and guidance to magistrates and juries should reflect that (I'd suggest it already does cover that).
Hmm... again that isn't something I get troubled by. After all, definitions of "speeding" are there in black and white and yet despite protests we don't seem to have 9 out of 10 cars on the motorways pulled over. It's a bit like a couple of Ashley Neal's points about "but we can't possibly ever overtake in situation x if cyclists are two abreast!". Surely common sense ought to apply? In actual practice (see below) where things aren't codified it does seem that the outcome is more leniency, not less.
Of course in the same way that where there is "guidance" someone will always simply ignore it it may well be that if there's a law people will try to test it to find circumstances where it seems silly. (Or on this forum say "ah! If this one's a 'must' then that one [points at some other rule] should be too!").
Maybe it's just that in this case lots of people are ignoring "guidance" to my cost?
... "can" - but it isn't though. Whether due to lack of police resources or "normalisation of deviancy" what should be a "common sense" case for police saying "driving without due care" has become "that's fairly normal" or "not bad enough, sorry". I'd say a clear majority of overtakes I experience are fine, quite a few are excellent. But of course it's the few that aren't which can ruin your day, or just occasionally someone's life.
I think the 1.5m stuff clouds the issue, the principle point motorists need to understand is vulnerable road users need to be giving more than "not hitting you" space to be considered safe passing you, anything that isnt falls under careless driving, because its "Driving that does not show reasonable consideration for other persons using the road or pathways".
my test that I think the police/CPS should have adopted is would you fail a driving test for that ? if yes, its prosecutable, and cases if they go to caught should simply hinge on that point, yet when was the last time you heard a prosecution lawyer citing that as a test for the magistrates/judge/jury to follow?
Exactly this.
However, the 1.5m is a reasonable safety margin so that if a cyclist hits a pothole and falls over, then 1.5m should be enough to prevent their head being run over.
I'd push for driving case juries should be comprised of as many driving instructors as possible.
Just not the dubious instructors that Ashley Neal and others feature in their videos, I hope.
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