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news
Near Miss of the Day 842: Passenger jumps out of car to remonstrate with cyclist… after driver cuts corner and almost hits him
Most cyclists, I’m sure, have heard that well-worn and tattered phrase, “get off the road!”, at some point or another, usually uttered with spiteful venom out of a passing car’s window. However, I doubt many have heard it coming from a passenger stood smack bang in the middle of the road themselves.
Well, that’s the bizarre situation road.cc reader Gareth found himself in while out on his bike in October.
While stopped at the junction of Brynteg road and Pontardulais Road in Penyrheol, Swansea, Gareth is almost struck head on by a driver who – clearly oblivious to the cyclist’s presence – attempted to cut the corner, before hitting the brakes just in time.
> Near Miss of the Day 841: Impatient drivers squeeze past cyclists on dark country lane
But unlike most of our near misses, that close call only marks the start of this particular story. After Gareth expresses his discontent with the motorist’s questionable turning method, the driver proceeds to pass him… on the wrong side of the road.
With the vehicle still moving, the car’s passenger – clearly unhappy that the cyclist made a note of the driver’s dangerous manoeuvre – jumps out for a round of detailed analysis, prompting one of the more bizarre exchanges witnessed on Near Miss of the Day.
“Listen now, I saw you, she wasn’t cutting [the corner],” the passenger, now standing in the road in front of the cyclist, says.
“What do you mean, she wasn’t cutting the corner?” comes Gareth’s baffled reply.
Then, delivered with a startling lack of self-awareness, the woman shouts at the cyclist to “get off the road” before he’s on the receiving end of yet more dodgy driving.
After Gareth, understandably, asks why he’s the recipient of a verbal lashing after a motorist cut the corner of a junction, almost hitting him, our protective passenger replies: “Because you’re standing still there and there’s other traffic, and you’ll cause an accident.”
As the cyclist, presumably shaking his head, finally rides off, strains of “we said sorry!” – and a few other things – fade away into the distance.
Blimey.
Speaking to road.cc, Gareth reckons that his close call, and the rather baffling stand-off that followed, provide an indication of "just how ‘anti-cyclist’ people have become”.
Or maybe it just tells us not to get on the wrong side of a Swansea mum…
> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 —a 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.
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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67 comments
SHE SAID SORRY!! Although must confess having watched it 3 times I can't hear an actual apology.
Imagine being married to that!
"Driver checks for oncoming traffic on main road before attempting to cut the corner to save themselves a couple of seconds, without looking into the side road."
Why on earth did that woman get out of the car? She - and the driver - ought to have just pretended not to see the cyclist and just slinked away in shame and embarrassment at their utter incompetence...
Here we are on 12th Night (unless it's tomorrow*) and we have a winner for NMOTY 2023.
*Apparently it's different between Catholics and Protestants. I'm not sure which group heathens should align with.
well 12th night of Christmas is tomorrow, but its clearly still just the 6th of 2023.
Heddlu response?
NFA...
Normal for Ammanford
Clear-cut driving without due care. I would still report this, citing the relevant legislation at them.
Unfortunately "Get off the road, you're going to cause an accident" is the default position for far too many car users with respect to any person who, in their mind, is daft and/or antisocial enough to actually ride a bicycle on the public highway.
No matter how inept or malicious the standard of driving, the cyclist is always in the wrong.
Or a pedestrian - on the pavement. There might have been some oil or something so case closed.
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/young-launceston-driver-...
Does the woman say "Listen now, I saw you, she wasn't cutting it, she didn't see you."?
Does this mean the only reason the cyclist wasn't run down by this corner cutting driver, is because her passenger told her to stop?! Flipping heck!
I have to say, watching NMotD has changed the way I approach these sort of right turns. I tend to stay a couple of feet back from the give way line and keep central in the lane. This stops vehicles turning left from cutting up my inside and gives a bit more safety room for corner cutting drivers. Although given how severely this corner was being cut, I'm not sure even that approach would work.
I've now adopted this same approach at T-Junctions. Though I still roll up to the line as it gives me a clearer view of he main road. It still hasn't prevented me from having to pull the bike to my left due to a motorist turning in or stoping a left turning driver mounting the pavement to get past me. I did one day take some time to watch motorists turning in off the main road at various junctions and was shocked at the numbers who never looked into the junction while turning.
I see that all the time, particularly at roundabouts. I think the culprits don't look because they just expect to see a large presence in their side vision. If nothing large, fast moving or brightly lit doesn't appear, I think they assume all is clear.
Plain disgusting driving, a lot of drivers cut the junctions like that here in Warminster.
It's even worse when the police also think this way. I admit, that when someone in a Freelander hit me when I was in the same position as the cyclist in the incident, the police didn't actually say it was my own fault for being there on the R side of the lane. However, they clearly didn't think the driver was much at fault either: the decision was that it was 'only a momentary loss of concentration so NFA'
You'd think that a momentary loss of concentration is still a loss of concentration, making it either careless or dangerous, and especially if that loss of concentration led you to drive into someone...
but momentary
As long as, afterwards, the cyclist is only momentarily dead.
You'd think that a momentary loss of concentration is still a loss of concentration, making it either careless or dangerous, and especially if that loss of concentration led you to drive into someone...
You are definitely now on Lancashire Constabulary Traffic's Need not Apply list
Classic examples for the arguement that the offenses need changing to below test standard for careless and "in a way that would cause an examiner to halt a driving test" for dangerous.
I don't see the deliberate shortcutting of a corner is a lack of concentration, it was a deliberate choice causing an unnecessary conflict with a road user that they had not noticed due to carelessness. The failure to adjust to the correct side of the road after the incident, or wait for the cyclist to clear the junction, points again to a deliberate act of choosing to use the road incorrectly.
With the poor visibility on that corner, cutting it so severely with the potential for conflict with an approaching vehicle was never going to be a wise move.
Agree that 'cutting the corner' was a deliberate choice, but 'not seeing the cyclist waiting to come out' was (probably) a lack of concentration (maybe having their ear talked off by the passenger...?).
I hope that it was reported; it is an open and shut case with testimony of careless driving.
I admit I enjoyed that In a Mrs Charlie Chaplin sort of way.
Am I allowed to anoint Swansea as the fishwife capital of Wales?
.
Certainly you can nomimate it, but you would be challenged hard by the good wives of Rhyl.
.
And Newport and don't get me started on Merthyr!
Yours
Jack
When did they say sorry?
You didn't hear the apology.. well I suppose it's understandable she was speaking Welsh.
You know she was speaking English, right?
Sorry in Welsh is usually Sori, anyway!
Exceptional (ish).
I must remember to never stop at a junction in case I cause an accident. Sounds like cracking advice.
Positively surreal. Just when you thought you'd heard every possible way for the cyclist to be wrong in any situation, this lady invents another; it's now our fault for being exactly where we are supposed to be on the road. Not only did the driver monumentally cut the corner, they then passed Gareth on completely the wrong side of the road at a junction.
Please, please, please tell me that he reported this to the police. That driver needs taking off the road now.
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