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news
Near Miss of the Day 459: A close pass that bucks the usual trends
Here’s a Near Miss of the Day video that bucks some of the trends we usually see – with a motorist who doesn’t overtake a cyclist despite the fact there is approaching traffic, and doesn’t overtake him through roadworks.
Instead, the driver waits until they are through the roadworks, and the road is clear – and then still manages to make a close pass, at speed, on the rider.
The video was sent in by road.cc reader William, who said: “This is a close pass from 29 February 2020.
“The interesting feature is that I received a surprise message from Lancashire Constabulary yesterday (Wednesday 19 August) saying the case was to be prosecuted and asking me to approve and sign a court statement.
“There has been no other communication about the case from Lancashire Constabulary since I submitted the report online on 1 March.”
> 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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38 comments
The delusion, manifested by some below, that you can tell exactly where in the lane a cyclist is from a headcam, is also held by the police. Furthermore, they also imagine that the duty of untermenschen cyclists is to make way for Überflieger BMW drivers to put the foot down regardless of the law. A Blackpool traffic sergeant wrote to me on 20.6.19:
The second set of images regarding the White Fiat PJ64 VZS has once again completed the overtake safely although has come over to the opposite side of the carriageway more than the Honda. This does appear to be as a result of you coming over to the middle of the road more than would appear necessary.
I would like to draw your attention to the offence below which does carry a fine of up to Level 3 (£1,000):
Section 29 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 creates the offence of cycling on a road without due care and attention or reasonable consideration.
S. 29 If a person rides a cycle on a road without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road, he is guilty of an offence.
As I have mentioned previously in correspondence with you, The role of the police is to keep the public safe and investigate fairly and impartially any offences reported and as such I suspect that an offence has been committed by yourself but I would need to see the full footage to determine what offences have been committed by any parties.
The photo of the Fiat is below- you can see they don't bother much with traffic law and the Highway Code up here, but deploy Lancashire Constabulary Law instead which declares that the Fiat has overtaken 'safely'. This particular Sergeant is conspicuously useless at deriving information from images and can't, for instance, tell the difference between one large dog sat in the front passenger compartment, and three! A moment's thought shows that if the head is turned to the right, the images suggest that the cyclist is further to the right than he actually is. Needless to say, nothing came of the threat to prosecute me despite my encouragement for him to accept 'the full footage'. I have never heard from him again.
"A close pass that bucks the usual trends"? Really? What I saw was a motorist, annoyed at being "held up" by the cyclist (note, not "held up by the road works", because it's much easier to blame a other human being), executing the typical punishment pass as soon as they saw their opportunity.
How do you know the 'motorist was annoyed' ?
Sounds like it's you that is annoyed here, and you'd be more than that if you, or someone you know, became a victim of a dangerous driver.
How ever you wish to perceive this incident, it's factual that it was a dangerous and illegal overtake and the reckless driver needs punishing before they kill any vulnerable groups.
I think you need to re-read the post you quote.
I think Richard feels the same way as you.
He seemed to be taking mild issue with the reporting, as that manoeuvre seemed fairly typical of a close pass. I'd probably agree with him (and you)
"A close pass that bucks the usual trends"? Really?
I agree. I was expecting a close pass but I was expecting something unusual such as the driver getting out of his car at some point to get confrontational with the cyclist, only to be attacked by a bear, hit by a sprinting reindeer or hit by a meteorite. Something to justify the words "bucks the usual trends". That justification never came. Just a poor headline.
There is a lot of uninformed guesswork on here. What should give a clue is that LC claims to be prosecuting 6 months after the event, which is not only unheard of but entirely unexpected. I have filled out the statements and we'll see what transpires. Despite my explanation below, the delusion persists that it's possible to tell from the video the position of the cyclist on the lane- it isn't, as any headcam user can easily demonstrate. The particular circumstances are that this was a 3 way light with massive delays where a cyclist would have to be barmy to wait at the back of a 100 yard queue when he can overtake on the right with no oncoming traffic. The road works were short with the lights at the start and no-one was waiting behind until after the roadworks when what stopped BMW nut-job overtaking was the queue of oncoming traffic at the lights and the inconsiderate oncoming car with the temerity to be on the road when aforementioned nut-job wanted him to not be. I explained below for the hard-of-seeing that on a normal width road it is not legally possible to overtake a cyclist when there is an unbroken white line on his side of the road. End of problem- guilty as charged.
What I take from this is the massive inconsistency that seems to exist in whether action is taken as a result of footage submitted to the police. To prosecute this and ignore instances where actual contact is made seems ludicrous.
If this response is repeated consistently by all police forces then it is a move in the right direction and may even help reduce the fear of cycling on our roads which will result in better air quality and reduced carbon emssions.
I am afraid that motorists will have to get used to the idea of (slightly) longer journey times and see the advantages of driving as comfort, convenience or carrying rather than speed if we are to achieve the goal of promoting cycling as a mode of transport.
I don't think that being more careful around cyclists is going to cause any significant delay to motorists. What really delays motorists is when there's too many motorists, so by making the roads more palatable to potential cyclists, it could reduce journey times.
MUCH longer journey times actually. With ever more speed cameras and increasing traffic, driving is usually a very stressful experience. And you pay thru the arse for the priviledge. Except driving isn't a priviledge, it's a fuckin chore.
I look forward to moving into a new house closer to where I work. No more driving, which means no more issues with having to stick to rediculously low speed limits, no getting wound up by dawdly or generally inept drivers, no more having to pay mechanics and taking their word that what they do is actually worth the money they charge.
On the other hand I do worry that this frustration I suffer when I drive may very well be used against me when I'm cycling some day. Contrary to youtube and this site, my presence on a pushbike hasn't caused any issues with drivers (yet). Long may it continue as I intend to cycle way more and drive way less in the future. I feel sorry for those who have to drive.
Whatever did or didn't happen before the roadworks is irrelevant. My driving lessons did not teach me: "well he started it, so now I'm justified to...." .
Instead they taught me to drive a car responsibility and considerately at all times, and appropriately for the conditions and traffic.
There was no safe place for the driver to overtake the cyclist at any point: not through roadworks, not whilst clearing oncoming queue, not approaching bend with solid white line.
As a cyclist I too would have owned the lane all the way through. That is not to irk the motorist; rather it is to communicate to the motorist.
As a former motorist I would have been patient and only overtaken once it became safe. Based on the exact situation at that time, not based on a balance sheet of what happened before, nor based on whether it might be my best chance for a while to give it a go.
"There was no safe place for the driver to overtake the cyclist". Indeed so, and the cyclist would have known this, but there was plenty of opportunity for the cyclist to have let the motorist past, without losing time or precious momentum - for instance by not filtering past them at the lights, or by pausing to let the faster vehicle go first when the lights changed.
"I was taught... to drive ... considerately at all times..." And so likewise to cycle.
The cost in time to the cyclist of showing such consideration would have been seconds, and yet we berate motorists for not showing such patience.
There is a difference between filtering at regular urban traffic lights, when the cars are simply massing from one queue to the next whereas the cyclists can make progress, and this situation where the cyclist is holding up the motorists whilst gaining nothing and simply adding to the motorists' frustration. Like you say, show consideration, and be part of the solution.
We start down a very slippery and unattractive slope if we impose on slower road users the obligation to pull over and let past the faster ones.
Well, the HC does require this in specific circumstances.
I'd agree with the general point that there is a difference between filtering to the front in a normal road with traffic lights and one with temporary lights.
You do that !
Practice what you preach and jump on your saddle and hang back for all motorists, giving way and yielding to them all at all times !
Then post a video of you doing just that.
Except that isn't what they said is it. They made their position about a specific situation clear.
No, Srirarcha.[sigh]
The fault lies with the one who conducted the close pass, no one else. The dangerous action was from the vehicle operator, and it was utterly optional. Frustration is an emotion, and not a rational one either. It also belongs to the frustrated. It's subjective as some get more frustrated than others.
Any driver who allows frustration to advise their choice of driving manoeuvres is high risk, and shouldn't be driving.
Badger, I made no comment on the close pass, other than to agree that there was no safe place to pass [sigh].
For the record, I don't believe that inconsiderate cycling justifies a close pass.
It's a BMW driver. What more would you expect? The real surprise is that Lancs Plod have decided to do some work, finally.
The true facts are: the driver couldn't overtake through the roadworks (he had previously performed another close pass back up the road, but I went through to the front at the lights) because there isn't anything like enough room even for a BMW driving psychopath. He couldn't overtake before the unbroken white line because the lane is full of oncoming traffic, but his longstanding entitlement to be enraged at anyone getting in his way led him to ignore the Highway Code and traffic law and decide he could break the law in several ways at once. I was travelling at 20 mph. It is illegal to cross the unbroken white line, particularly when approaching a 'blind' humped canal bridge on a right hand bend with no visibility ahead. This is certainly an illegal close pass- this isn't 1.5m, it's about 20 cms. I could even see the small writing on the rear nearside window I was certainly alarmed. He was travelling at 45-50 mph in a 30 limit. There is one misunderstanding below: you can't tell exactly where in the lane I am when it's a headcam where the view doesn't include my wheel on the road. In fact, I wasn't adopting any special position to deter overtaking and was in my usual 'left of centre-lane position'. I wasn't expecting this nutter to overtake, even though I'm used to lawbreaking at this bridge.
That's great news about it going to court, though?
it looked to me like he knew he still had a solid line on his side and it was a half-baked attempt at complying and presumably not hitting whatever comes around the corner/over the bridge.
Precious nanoseconds saved, no doubt.
it looked to me like he knew he still had a solid line on his side
Well, he could hardly miss it. What he thinks is that he's an ace driver who can pass cyclists as close as he likes on the reasonable grounds that Lancashire Constabulary has never prosecuted anyone for that offence- maybe it is about to, but I'm not told what the prosecution is for.
Hmmm. Passing cars at a road works traffic light queue that have only just passed you, kind of guaranteed to annoy them for limited gain on your part? I dunno, not knowing the circumstances, but it's been debated before:
https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-443-close-pass-through-roadwo...
I do agree that I wouldn't have filtered by someone who has shown such disregard for my safety initially and would have hung back a car or two depending on the queue. However, as with ASL boxes, sometimes having a bit of length ahead of the queueing traffic is a good space. I suppose it depends how many was ahead when wtjs approached.
I think in this situation I'd have moved into the coned-off area and pootled along to allow whatever queue of cars was behind me to get through before rejoining on their tail. Lose next to no time, get rid of the queue of cars on my tail, peaceful cycling until at least the next phase catches up - what's not to like?
If you do that, it all seems good until the lights change. The cars facing the other way don't wait for you when they get a green light, but just drive straight at you, because it's your fault that you didn't get through in time.
They don't tend to do that if there are cars behind you.
You're imagining something that can't happen. At the end of the roadworks, where you'd slip in on the tail of the passing queue of cars, it's back to two lanes. It's not that hard to be considerate, although there's always plenty of excuses.
Have you seen these ones? There is no space for the cyclists inside the coned off areas to pootle along. So either you are stating wait at the first one until the end of the traffic and hope the lights haven't changed (The last one might have gone through on red which normally happens.) Or pull in at the last one and wait for the traffic to go past. But then we are back at two lanes...
I don't see the difficulty you describe. I see plenty of space, after the trench, to move into the coned area, allow the slug of cars to get by, then join the back of them as I exit the coned area at the end, on my side of the road.
I was mentioning filtering to get ahead at the lights similar to ASL and you mentioned you would have gone into the coned off area. So I natually assumed you meant at the start of the road works.
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