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news
NMotD 767Near Miss of the Day 767: MGIF driver cuts across cyclist at speed on roundabout
Ah, roundabouts – the bane of every cyclist, from professional to commuter, as this video of a driver bizarrely attempting to overtake just before the exit, almost clipping our reader’s front wheel in the process, shows.
(To offer a counterpoint in defence of roundabouts, they do provide commentators – I’m looking at you, Carlton Kirby – with plenty to talk about during long, flat days at grand tours, such as this afternoon’s interminable Giro stage…)
Anyway, back to Eastbourne, where this impatient motorist passes the cyclist from behind as they both enter the roundabout. The driver – seemingly unaware that the cyclist is continuing on in his lane – then immediately cuts back across him to turn off at the first exit, narrowly avoiding a collision.
Mark, the road.cc reader who sent us the footage, says he reported the driver to the relevant authorities, who issued the motorist with a cursory advisory letter.
> 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
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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15 comments
Shocking from the driver but.... if I may be slightly criticial of the cyclist, his lane positioning at the start of the roundabout could have been better, as could his entry onto it when he does move left which may.... and I stress "may".... have been taken by the car driver to mean he was going left. That however doesn't mean the driver should do what they did. I just fear a Police Officer may look at the film and think that the cyclist was in the wrong.
And yes, I have no idea whether the cyclist made any hand signals about their intentions. If I had been them, I certainly would have made a hand signal or two afterwards.
Perhaps I am being over critical, but sometimes you really must take your lane. BUT to stress, the car driver was in the wrong.
I know you're trying to be helpful; but the idea that a cyclist should move further into path of a car in order to make a motorist drive more safely is questionable.
So you doubt the efficacy of the primary position ?
Road position on roundabouts is critical for cycle use despite the updated HC.
I think the issue is not how useful taking primary is in general, but how useful it as a means of stopping a dangerous maneuvre when the driver is already committing to it.
I've had this numerous times on narrow bottlenecks when the driver chooses to perform a squeezing overtake regardless of the reduced gap and me being dead centre of the lane.
In this instance it seems (speculation, I know) the driver may have proceeded with even smaller a gap had the cyclist been in primary.
But I feel here by riding prime theyd have forced the driver to then make a choice, whereas riding closer to the kerb than I certainly I would have done in that situation, almost feels an enabler for the driver to make that kind of overtake as theres no blocker to them.
Prime doesnt always work for sure, but I certainly would have reacted in this scenario on review, cursing myself for not taking the lane and almost exaggerating the positioning I was going straight ahead.
In which case there is more escape room. I position myself close to the right edge of the lane in these scenarios although they are only 30 mph roundabouts. I did have a range rover driver having a rant at me for this although as I was in L2 and he was in L3, I'm not sure what his issue was. Then again it find RR drivers somewhat psychotic even when I'm a pedestrian.
edit: oh, look surrey cops 70 in a 30
https://twitter.com/SurreyRoadCops/status/1525068835375697920
I think you're both probably right, in hindsight. Perhaps I am growing over cautious; I got knocked off my bike (hard) a month ago adopting a perfectly commanding, clear and well-communicated road position and just can't trust motorists any more. At the end of the day I feel this is a human of exposed flesh and blood competing with another human encased in a metal machine and hoping they can block them physically. At the end of the day, if it came to it, the machine is always going to win.
Post HC change should have had a bit more than a warning given the speed, size, proximity.
Where my wife works, they are supposed to report near misses (and one point had a target !) so that remedial work can be done before it goes wrong. Whereas police and highways wait until something has gone wrong then think about changes and then might wait until there are enough KSIs.
Exactly the same thing happened to me just after I started cycling over 10 years ago.
In my case it was a Doris in a Discovery. What I didn't realise (and neither did she) was that there was a Police car also waiting at the roundabout who promptly pulled her over - Result!
".....who issued the motorist with a cursory advisory letter."
How does he know it was cursory?
Unless he's seen it of course. It could have been detailed, with a full explanation of why the driving was so bad, giving chapter and verse on what laws had been broken and the possible penalties and pointing out that this letter would remain on record and be used in evidence if the behaviour was repeated; I hope it was all those.
Yes, but it almost certainly wasn't...
"Oi! Driver! No!"
Everyone knows these letters are a waste of perfectly good trees and are basically saying nothing more than, oooh you were a bit naughty weren't you, don't do it again. Pretty please.
As I've said this before, they're a bit like me, a secondary school teacher, giving that disruptive Year 9 child their 'final warning.'
...hah, as if.