Near Miss of the Day 363: White van man in ultra-close pass - but police say cyclist at fault (includes swearing)

Yes Nic. There was a lovely bailout zone of a curbed grassy area with two massive steel bollards and to actually slow fast enough to not be going through at the same time of the van would have meant heavy braking. Of course, no one loses control whilst heavy braking  these days if they have antilock brakes which all bikes do or course. 

very mimimal slowing would have done it. I'm not excusing the van driver  here for bad driving but its good to live in the real world where you take action to protect yourself not the I cycle at this speed and must not slow and if anything out of the ordinary happens I crash but have the moral high ground as i heal world.  .Seems a lot of people on here would benefit from some defensive cycling / motoring training.

Thanks for your erudite comments but you failed to meet your quota of eff words per sentence.
On the other hand you exceeded the threshold for victim blaming.

Listen I take responsibility for myself. I've been riding a long time and also worked as a cycle courier in London for a while and had plenty of crashes during that time .
It's always easy to blame someone else, instead of taking responsibility for yourself. 
i have rode my bikes all over the world  , I live in London and do my riding / workout rides in London .  I've not crashed once , not once since I took up riding a road bike and that's been quite a few years . Admittedly you can be very unlucky and some idiot does  something crazy, I had a head on going down Highgate hill west , a driver with no patience decided he would drive up the wrong side . I managed to squeeze past him . He made a bad decision and lucky for me I never got hit . Things happen but most of the time common sense and defensive riding will see you safe . I put the gas down where I know it's relatively safe .  I didn't know there was a threshold for victim blaming. Perhaps you can post a pie chart or some stats you have made up in your head because somehow you think cyclists should have more rights on the road than anyone else and everyone should tiptoe around them . Learn to ride a bike and  know how to handle yourself and you won't have any issues. Simple as that. 
 So fuck off .....humour  by the way .

Of course I did not say that "cyclists should have more rights on the road than anyone else", not that making stuff up seems to worry you.

It's ironic that in your next post you tell us not to be angry.

I'm not your mate, so best not to tell me to eff off.

So you need to know a road now before you can ride down it and follow yet more non existent rules.
How does the van driver know if the cyclist knows the road? Is it his fault if they don't?
At what point does hitting someone with a vehicle you have sole control of become your fault exactly. According to you it is down to the experience of your victim and nothing to do with your actions.
What nonsense.

Don't worry all drivers understand and accept the contador gesture but it's all in how you deliver it

Something along the lines of Trinity in The Matrix - "Dodge this"?

Do you keep on staring back at the vehicle behind to catch the waved acknowledgements?

No they acknowledge me when they pass . Simple . I tend not to look back I'd prefer to see where I'm going .  
 

On the other side of the coin. Transit Man will also have been familiar with the road and would have known that the pinch point existed and should have dropped back rather than barged through.

There's several pinch points on my commute that even with my taking a strong position they will still attempt to barge through with some passing on the other side of the island when they realise they are about to impale their vehicle on a bollard. 

This is representative of shoddy driving demonstrated by many motorists who have no regard for other road users. 

Xena wrote:

I use the Contador  pistol gesture

Kicking myself for missing this last time I refreshed my knowledge of the Highway Code.

Wiltshire by any chance?

That's my local force who offer the same level of support.

Complain about the government not the police. Apart from the cuts in front line police there where also huge cuts in support staff. Exactly the sort of people who would deal with these videos.

Why not both?

The government should be blamed for the overall resourcing of police, but some of that blame should also fall onto the top police chiefs for not making their case sufficiently (or maybe resigning if they're not being taken seriously).

Meanwhile, the police have to be blamed for not performing their job properly. I can't defend police who blame a cyclist when the van driver is clearly at fault. I don't see how that's a resourcing issue. In fact, I would consider that the police are creating more work for themselves as they'll presumably be looking at dealing with a complaint as well as having to deal with the original incident.

Nailed it there Brooksby!

The van driver has an excellent view of what's ahead of them, including the cyclist and completely screws it up in a dangerous manner.