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news
Near Miss of the Day 460: Van driver sacked after close pass
A van driver filmed making a close pass on a cyclist in Staffordshire will no longer drive for the firm that owns the vehicle.
The incident happened on the A34 near Trentham Gardens at around 7am last Thursday 21 August.
Damian, the road.cc reader who submitted the footage said: “I reported this to the company via Twitter on the same day, they have responded today with the following:
“It’s good that they have taken it seriously, and hopefully the driver will think twice about passing other cyclists this close,
“I have also reported it to Staffordshire Police, as they now have a portal to report incidents like these which I was unaware of until yesterday.”
> 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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10 comments
Hi All,
I just wnated to update everyone as I came across this feed recently. I, myself am the assitant fleet and asset manger for M.V. Kelly and perosnally deal with all matters of bad driving. In this case the footage was sent to us by the rider and it clearly shows some shocking driving with no care for the cyclist saftey. As a result of this video the empoyee was not dismissed from the company as some may think, but in fact put on our banned drivers list which we monitor using the tracker system we have in place. All our vehicles are fitted with the lastest tracking systems that encoperate front and rear cameras as well as driver score card reports that are actioned monthly. We endevour to do our best in relation to bad driving and would hope that although a few will sometimes slip throught the net, we stop incidents like this happening before they occur.
I want you all to know that as a business we try our best and spend a lot of time, money and effort into monitoring our driving standrds. Should you have any issues in future, please feel free to contact through the website. We arent a business that pays lip servcie to sweep them under the rug and we take every report of bad riving seruiously, so your feedback isnt in vain.
Regards
Thomas Byard
Thomas, thankyou for your prompt action, and also for taking the time to post on these pages. Chapeau!
We're all just assuming that the person has been sacked. It could be that the person will keep their job but not be allowed to drive company vehicles anymore.
If they have been sacked, it's a very quick sacking considering this happened on Thursday. It would suggest that the driver was an agency driver and the tone of the tweet would suggest that as well.
My only concern would be that the driver in this instance will be more aggressive towards cyclists in the future rather than less as "that f***ing cyclist lost me my job...", I hope otherwise but that is the worry.
Got to agree with most of what you said, there are several possibilities, the driver may have been on a final warning, stormed out in a Huff when confronted. It may simply have been there last day at work anyway
Even if they didn't sack him, saying they did is a good deterrent for others who would close pass, and hear about this.
I too am suspicious about this alleged action by the company. Companies 'never' do this, so I don't believe it. The usual response of companies is to ignore the report, as is the usual response of Lancashire Constabulary, but it has to go to the police immediately. When I tried to report this really dangerous APC driver committing Festive Offences, the company had disabled all the means of emailing the company with the report.
At this point, we only know that the company has responded by putting some contrite words on Twitter. We don't know that they've done anything beyond that.
Hopefully the Police will get to the bottom of it and take it seriously, it was a pretty nasty
overtakepunishment pass.Unfortunately I don;t have footage of the MV Kelly van drver that close passed me in Buckinghamshire.
Maybe MV Kelly need to do something about the sandard of all their drivers.
I hope they were honest and really did take action rather than saying they did just to sweep it under the rug.
A lot of companies always say they will investigate as a way to fob people off.
they sound quite genuine about it IMO, having experienced the fob off a few times, they didnt have to reply at all, or add the bit about safe cycling in the future, could have just blocked Damian on twitter, or done the oh the local depot team have dealt with it internally whilst waiting the 14 days before contacting you so you then cant report it to the police as well.
as a result I tend to submit the ones I want action on to the police, and only engage with companies if Im looking to educate them. so its good that the company have acted there as that did look particularly bad close pass given everyone else managed to use the other side of the road with no problem there.