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news
Near Miss of the Day 829Near Miss of the Day 829: Fast undertake on cyclist lands driver three points & fine
Today's Near Miss of the Day at least comes with the consolation that the offending driver was ultimately fined and saw their record endorsed with three penalty points for this dangerous undertaking manoeuvre.
It happened, road.cc reader Andrew tells us, on Baltic Road in Tonbridge at the point the road narrows to one-way over a steep rise.
"I checked behind and the BMW is some way back, as you can see from the initial footage from the seatpost camera," he recalled.
> (Not so) Near Miss of the Day 828: Driver hits cyclist at speed, leaving door mirror behind
"I moved into the centre of the lane, standing to get over as quickly as possible, and heard the engine gunning from behind. I thought 'to hell with the driver, I'm not moving over to the left; they can wait until it's safe to overtake'.
"Just as well as the driver sweeps past on the left well within the 1.5m shown by the tramlines. I reckon 99 per cent of cyclists would have been intimidated to moving over, with probable fatal consequences given the speed of the manoeuvre."
The driver was reported to Kent Police and following a court hearing Andrew learnt the undertake earned them three points on their licence, a £120 fine, costs of £90 and a victim surcharge of £34.
> 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
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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30 comments
Don't mean to victim blame but what is the cyclist doing here? He's not in primary, almost in the right hand gutter. It looks like he's about to turn right and is moving in that direction. The driver should have waited obviously but the cyclist's positioning is all wrong. I'd never ride like that.
You cant take the ideal prime because theres a water stop cock cover in the road which could unsettle the bike handling and even cause you to slip on it and fall off if you hit it.
if you go to the left of it you risk a dive in from your right, so it makes perfect sense to go to the right because nobody is that daft to try an undertake there right ?
We aren't told what offence the driver was charged with but clearly not dangerous driving if he only received three points. Clearly this was a very dangerous manouvre and the charge should have been dangerous driving IMO. Of course the threashold for a DD charge probably wasn't met for whatever reasons but that only goes to demonstrate that the threashold needs to be changed in order to reflect dangerous driving. The other thing that I find wrong here is that as the driver went to court to contest the charge, he should have had the book thrown at him for wasting court time and money. £120 and three points is a joke!
The cyclist position will have been a factor in the lack of DD charge. Unlikely a jury would convict as 'what was the poor driver supposed to do... wait until the cyclists decided to stop blocking the road and get out of the way???'
Obviously the actual answer to that question is 'yes, that's exactly what the driver should do'
Surprised the chap decided to go to court... obviously felt the cyclists position justified his actions too. I am also surprised that having done so, the drivers punishment was not greater... that should have been 5 points and a larger fine - based on my understanding of the sentencing standards for driving without due care and attention
Except the cyclist is not blocking the road, they are using the road.
The fine is tiny (fines should be a percentage of income/wealth/value of vehicle) and 3 points seems very lenient - you'd get 6 for looking at your phone in a traffic queue.
3 points seems very lenient - you'd get 6 for looking at your phone in a traffic queue
Still better than nothing, which is what they'd get here for either offence
The fine may be small but the hike in insurance costs over the coming years will not be.
Unfortunately three points makes virtually no difference, Compare the Market found that three points on a clean licence raised the average premium from £700 to £705. Six points is better, raising the average from £700 to £937. Still, if he drives like that regularly he'll either already have points or will be picking up some more soon.
Depends on the code. They will want to know what the offence code is and a driving offence code might be treated differently from a speeding code.
Does everyone ask for that now? I remember filling in Mrs H's form some years ago and I was surprised that it just asked how many points you had on your licence and not what you got them for.
Did she have a lot of points ?
Good work by the police. Any points are music to my ears, because nobody has ever received points for close passing up here- there have been no prosecutions or close pass operations.
Those side windows look to be very heavily tinted too. Scummy driving.
This report says 'following a court case'
This implies that it went to court. So the driver wasted court time and costs but they didn't increase the points or fine, which is usual in these circumstances when found guilty?
Some twit got a FPN and believed that as they hadn't hit anyone they couldn't possibly be in the wrong, or tried to argue that it was the cyclist's fault for "being all over the road".
Perhaps they went to a solictor and the solicitor said there was a good chance of overturning it. In which case the driver paid out quite a few hundred quid more - which would be nice.
Successfully the one time I've got a driver into court sadly.
Apparently being passed and not hit by jinking out the way and having rear footage of the previous rider being passed by about 18" was insufficient to achieve a prosecution on review. I suspect remaining 2 abreast through parked cars either side might have been the all over the road excuse.
Drivers excuse - "I didn't hit the cyclist"
Passengers excuse - "cyclist's fault for being all over the road"
Magistrates excuse - "cyclist didn't have to swerve or brake"
Cyclist - "WTF?" (under my breath obviously)
Magistrates excuse - "cyclist didn't have to swerve or brake"
No, that's Essex Police!
And the speed looks to be well over 20mph too...
Excuse my ignorance but what is a victim surcharge, what determines it and who gets it?
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/types-of...
It goes to "fund victim services through the Victim and Witness General Fund"
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/types-of...
But don't the Police treat cyclists in this situation simply as witnesses rather than victims?
Not relevant though - as per the link
When a court passes a sentence it must also order that the relevant surcharge is paid.
Thanks
Maybe Andrew was a little bit too far to the right, allowing the driver space to undertake, but that's being very critical, and I have no wish to blame him. The fault lay entirely with the driver who has paid a very small price for what, as Andrew points out, could have ended with a fatality, as most cyclists would have moved left to avoid the most probable scenario, of the driver overtaking on the right.
The punishment, as ever in these cases, does not fit the crime, and given the probable outcome, is simply not appropriate. We need fast, responsive road crime courts where such dangerous driving can be dealt with robustly and quickly, so that the incident is fresh in the driver's mind. I would suggest that such dangerous driving should result in an immediate ban of a month, and any repetition within a year resulting in a twelve month ban and retest.
I'm sure the comprehensive review of road law will bring forward measures like that which will actually reduce road crime and re-offending; as soon as it starts. It's not as if the government have anything else to do at the moment, and I'm sure Boris the Liar will give it his full attention just as soon as he gets his feet back under the desk in number 10.
I suspect if the driver had done the same to the right he would have got away with it. It was the undertake that got him the prize, not the speed or distance.
Looking at the front view of the video, the cyclist was also moving out to take account of the parked van in front of him on the left. When he reached that, ony a few seconds after the undertake, he was perfectly positioned between the parked van on the left and parked car on the right.