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news
Near Miss of the Day 140: A fellow cyclist
Our regular feature highlighting close passes caught on camera visits Bristol today for an encounter with a fellow cyclist.
Bristol Traffik writes: “Making a change from the usual vehicles which nearly hit me, here's a cyclist deciding not to quietly go through a set of red lights, but blow through them at speed six to eight seconds after they changed for him.”
He adds: “Note how he comes up the inside of the car before taking the right-hand turn with the bike tilted and him leaning into it; fully committed to that corner.”
The incident occurred at the junction of Whiteladies Road and St Paul’s Road and Bristol Traffik says there is a downhill where the cyclist appears from.
“If a car had been pulling out from my road, or that BMW opposite had been aggressive (why I hung back myself – to see what its plans were) he was going to be part of a crash.”
> 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 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
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.
Latest Comments
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Hope you don't mind some small corrections? Unless it's got much worse since I was last travelling there (over a decade ago now)....
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"Anything made from an old bike part"...
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As an urban commuter cyclist I really want a set of indicators that actually work....
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Just get them to walk a treadmill - or better, ride exercise bikes to power path lighting.
- AidanR 2 hours 38 min ago
So his advisers were trying to move funds around to cover losses, but in a way that needlessly created additional liabilities? It would have been...
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23 comments
Anyone working on a pay-per-job makes more money the more deliveries they do. With peak deliveroo hours being something like, say, 7-10:30 pm (vague guess), there’s a limited amount of work available, so there’s a motivation to take risks while cycling, scooting or driving.
But once you start taking those risks, you may get used to acting that way, do it all the time, and eventually, statistical chance will catch you out, especially given that it’s not just your decisions which can affect the outcome.
I fear the part-time deliveroo rider here is not long for this world
If only there was some way of identifying this cyclist, so he can be brought to book.
Like a number plate
Deliveroo backpacks could benefit from (a) a number and (b) some lights. As they track their employees through the phone app, it'd be hard to deny that you were where a complaint was made.
What could they do? Well, they could not give/reduce what you earn for any delivery where there's been a complaint, or some minor suspension: enough to change your behaviour, which is, after all, what we need. A bit like the NYC taxi authority discussing the idea of the taxi meters not charging for those bits of the journey where the taxi was going way (10mph+?) above the speed limit. It lets the taxi drivers speed if they want to, but removes all incentive for doing so.
I had not heard about the NYC taxi proposal but it sounds like a great idea!
There can't be any reasonable argument against it as no-one should be able to legally make money from illegal activity.
Isn’t that Simon Richardson from GCN?
Surely, "Cake or Death?"?
Most of the deliveroo riders I've seen tend to ride taking pointless risks, nearly clipping me as I'm waiting in traffic, and such. I do wonder if it's a certain type of person that takes that type of job. I do like overtaking them on my Brompton though, some of them seem to take this as me insulting their manhood or such, which just amuses more, especially if they got ahead by jumping the red light I was waiting at.
Deliveroo cyclists can be pretty bad, but their motor-scooterists are f-ing appalling!
I guess the problem with any of those delivery people is that they have to get there as fast as they can - same as white van drivers, skip lorry drivers, etc. The problem is the whole work environment/leadership, not necessarily the drivers/riders themselves.
That said, in contender's video,I don't think that bloke was on duty anyway (that's not a Deliveroo box on his back) so maybe he's just a cockwomble all the time...?
update, Sunday May 20.
Sitting in a pub (beerd, st michael's hill, for the locals), I've just seen the idiot go past with a deliveroo box on his back.
Which means he's probably like this on a lot of his deliveries too. This isn't good for his survival, the safety of others, or the Deliveroo brand itself.
Let's hope he learns better judgement from his almost crash with yourself (congrats on avoiding that, by the way), but I wouldn't bet any money on it.
Maybe Deliveroo should make a gimmick of it - "our delivery people will risk life and limb to get your food delivered hot".
good plan
"Pizza or Death!" would be more succinct version, one they could put on their cycling tops.
@Contender Were you turning left or going straight?
Going straight on from St Pauls Road Clifton to Tyndall's Park Road. I'm crossing Whiteladies Road, which is a long but not that steep hill...he was coming down it.
The main Bristol University halls of residence are at the top of the hill; the students union behind me, the time was 11:28. I suspect he was a student trying to be down at the union for 11:30 and prepared to endanger himself (fine) and others (not fine) to achieve that.
Maybe I'll go back there next week with my road bike, wait around and then if he goes past, catch up to express my views, possibly as my best roadie nose-blow.
Sounds fair enough to me.
@ush: and, if you don’t know it, Whiteladies Road is the ‘main’ road there. So RLJ bloke was on the main road and turning right into a side street. Contender was waiting to cross the main road.
The video is mine. I hope you all found it insightful.
why thank you. I own a BMW myself: know what they can do. In town, if you press the "Eco-Pro" button on startup ("Smug mode"), it powers off the engine whenever stationary, chooses a less aggressive acceleration profile. Looks like this driver remembers to do this too. Or, as there were no vehicles alongside/behind me, they didn't see a need coming out early.
Sadly, it plays more into the narrative of "it's the cyclist's fault" whenever there's news of another one killed. If anything had happened here, including him going straight into the side of a BMW, I'd have given the police the video and said "he chose to die, it's what he wanted".
Hopefully, by sharing the video here this kamikaze twat may actually see it himself and think "maybe I won't do that again". Better yet, I hope some of friends see it and call him out. And as I now have a clearer view of what he looks like (especially his black dome-head helmet), I'll be able to raise the topic if I ever see him. We're a small town; it'll happen.
I wasn't caught unaware by a cyclist 'emerging from a side road"". I was caught nearly unaware by a cyclist jumping a red light 8 seconds after it had changed so that he could do a high speed right hand turn.
He wasn't that easy to spot on account of the way he came out of the tree coverage from behind the car which had stopped. It was only the speed of his travel which kicked off the motion sensitive bits of the eye. I was looking forward and seeing what Herr BMW Owner was about to do. Didn't hear him either, even though I didn't have my headphones in.
judging by the expression on his face when I shouted at him -as I came to a hard stop with my Hope hydraulic brakes and their 200mm rotors- , the RLJ-ing cyclist hadn't seen someone in a bright blue 29" Orange Full-suss mountain bike, despite me being in sunlight, and emerging from the lane where you would expect people to be coming from, given they have the green light and all.
Here, this idiot made a decision as the lights changed to not stop and instead continue down the road for a full 8 seconds after the lights changed. He made that decision while approaching the junction at, what, 20 mph?, and his attempts to assess the junction at that speed were clearly wrong, as he hadn't seen me. As he was executing a fast turn, he wasn't set up to put the brakes on, even if he needed to. You can see the slight wobble as he sees me and goes past, but he's fully banked into the corner the way we mountain bikers don't, and as such he couldn't sit up straight and stop the bend: if he hit the brakes he'd be a smear of roadrash into the kerb.
I managed to avoid becoming a participant in a crash by being slow at the light, spotting him and braking hard. If I'd set off a second or two earlier, the outcome could have been different. What he did to endanger me was unacceptable.
Proper moron to ride like that. At least he's wearing a magic hat though, that will undeniably save his life one day, riding around like that... According to some Police forces anyway.
Weird how those things often seem to go together - cyclists ignoring every 'must' in the highway code, while following 'shoulds' in that same document. Simultaneously nervous-nellies and reckless-arseholes.
Maybe the helmet is increasing their appetite for risk?
Maybe the helmet is increasing their appetite for risk?
[/quote]
Risk compensation is a recognised phenomenon; feel safer, take more risks. It has been observed in drivers with all the safety devices used as performance enhancements, workers given safety gear and children. It seems to be a univeral human trait and is entirely subconscious, and most people will deny vehemently that it applies to them. Just ask any helmet wearing cyclist whether they take more risks because they're wearing one; they will deny it.
There are idiots on bikes, idiots on motorcycles, idiots driving cars and idiots walking. All are dangerous to some extent, I've been knocked down three times by pedestrians, but the really dangerous ones are in cars: this idiot was on a bike.
Of course the real damage he's done is giving the drivers something to hit us with "all you bloody cyclists, riding through red lights etc, etc." For that, I'll never forgive him.
Unfortunately this does play a bit into the narrative of excusing car drivers for not seeing cyclists, especially when they are doing something stupid.
Bear with me, but if a cyclist with the advantage of height, unobstructed visibility and hearing (unless one of those headphone wearing muppets) is caught unawares by another cyclist emerging unexpectedly from a side road, then a car driver is even more likely to miss seeing them. Having said that I think my attention would have been on the BMW as representing the highest risk in that particular scenario.
He wasn't caught unawares though was he, it doesn't play into any narrative whatsoever, one dick on a bike is a dick on a bike. That doesn't excuse people from seeing stuff even when others are doing something wrong.
One person being a dick does not absolve you of taking avoiding action when possible, that means both the person shooting the video and the BMW opposite should still see the idiot and try to avoid the conflict/hazard presented.
You need to expect the unexpected, this incident in no way changes that nor the requirement to see stuff if you're looking properly. I was a car commuter into/around London from the Northern home counties for 10 years, I never had problems seeing stuff because you drive with caution, you slow the fuck down and take a second, third or even fourth look if you're not 100% sure/poor sight lines.
You should do exactly the same when you're on a bike, the advantage as a cyclist is that you get good at judging speed/time/distance so may not need as many looks as you're avergae moton and indeed this helps when you're driving to assess better/quicker, it can sometimes lull you into thinking a gap is there when it isn't and you need to continually assess your actions, don't be a MGIF and take the piss like the scrote in the vid.
'or that BMW opposite had been aggressive (why I hung back myself – to see what its plans were)'
Excellent thought process, chapeau!