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news
Near Miss of the Day 898: Cyclist forced to slam on brakes as driver pulls out across roundabout – but cyclist says close call was “genuine accident”
A cyclist who was forced to slam on his brakes to avoid a collision with a motorist who pulled across his path on a busy roundabout says he neglected to submit footage of the incident to the police because he believes it was a “genuine accident” – partly caused by the driver failing to take into account the speed of the cyclist as they entered the roundabout.
The close call, which took place on Monday evening at around 8.30pm on the on York Outer Ring Road, saw road.cc reader Mieszko enter the A19/A1237 roundabout, as a motorist – seemingly oblivious to the cyclist’s presence – emerged from a road on the left and across into the cyclist’s lane.
Coming to an abrupt stop, brakes squealing, Mieszko can be heard shouting “Whoa, bloody…” as the motorist also brakes, before carrying on around the junction.
> Near Miss of the Day 734: "What are you doing?" — Driver ignores cyclist at roundabout
“It is a route I use regularly, I ride it most days,” Mieszko tells road.cc. “This is the first time I have had an issue on that roundabout, but it can get very busy. I have witnessed accidents on the A19 before.”
“There is a shared ‘cycle path’, but is very narrow and covered in debris and doesn’t go to the exit I need so therefore I don’t use it,” he continues.
“The ‘cycle path’ after the roundabout also has a sign saying ‘cyclists please dismount’, so therefore there is not really any other option but to use the roundabout.
“The driver pulled out in front on the roundabout and then braked when they realised how fast the bike was. I was doing 20-25 mph to try keep up with traffic on the roundabout so was likely going faster than the driver expected.
“I didn’t submit the footage to police as I believe it was a genuine accident.”
While Mieszko chose not to report the apparently oblivious driver, a similar incident in Gloucestershire from 2022 – albeit on a mini roundabout and at a much slower speed – saw the driver eventually slapped with a prosecution notice, resulting in either an educational course (presumably reminding the motorist of what direction to give way to at roundabouts) or a fine and points.
> 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 Twitter or 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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26 comments
Manslaughter is a genuine non-murder. But there's still a corpse.
As the comments are discussing, this is at the heart of the entire road safety debate. I would suggest that very few drivers intentionally try to drive dangerously around me. Far too many of them are willing to make mistakes either through poor judgement or just a complete lack of attention though.
The level of attention you require to avoid other cars and large vehicles is magnitudes lower than you need to watch out for cyclists, motorbikes and pedestrians and that seems to be the level most people operate at. Other cars are also far more capable of compensating for your mistakes and when they don't, the consequences are much much lower.
Unfortunately, the normalisation of inattentive driving means minor mistakes from drivers that result in big consequences for vulnerable road users are treated as such. Minor.
Someone curbed their car yesterday trying to overtake me just before a traffic island. I assume because they thought they could get past me before we got to it. They couldn't. Bad judgement. The thing is, she shouldn't have even considered it. The fact that she did means that in her head the risk to her was 0 and to me was a risk she was willing to take. All to have saved a few seconds. How do you combat that sort of thinking?
A very lucky escape, I can't find it now, but I'm sure I remember an incident where a driver hit the kerb of the island and was deflected into the cyclist with serious (possibly fatal) result.
There are always some drivers who think they can overtake you while passing the island, if only you would cycle a bit closer to the kerb.
There's a variety of very similar ones with a kerb involved
https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-812-295095
https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-811-295059
https://road.cc/content/news/252058-near-miss-day-217-driver-towing-hors...
Well first I'd probably bring in some kind of training for drivers - and combine that with a mandatory test to see if they're competent before they're allowed to drive. Perhaps a licencing system to suggest that you don't simply have a "right" to drive without respecting the conditions?
Then - knowing humans are human - I'd suggest a) some kind of ongoing monitoring of behaviour on the roads and feedback to drivers - perhaps the police could handle that? Also b) measures to assist drivers. There could be conventions like which side of the road space you drive on and an in-car device for measuring speeds combined with suggested safe limits. Maybe standardised markings on the driving surfaces / signs for information and maybe even some kind of movement control measures at junctions?
So obviously while I'd agree that standards don't appear to be high currently I'm also cynical about changing that. Or rather I just don't think we are likely to have both significantly higher standards AND mass motoring - and probably not much change even should we somehow achieve that. (Think of the "professional drivers" appearing in NMOTD). I also suspect "police it better" has limited potential for change.
I believe we can have safer roads and even nicer streets. However for better or worse to get there we will have to accept that most humans are human and there are only certain ways in which you can realistically hope to modify driver behaviour en mass. And even then it's not easy.
EDIT - of course it's possible for some kind of radical culture shift to do something (perhaps driving becomes a "spiritual" activity?). I'm not seeing anywhere that driving culture is radically different without a radical change in the overall goal of road design from the UK's perspective though - excepting some oddities e.g. very small places / police states / other places with different "social cohesion" (Japan?).
Driver is guilty, therefore report. Admittedly, I am reporting to the unremittingly evil and anti-cyclist Lancashire Constabulary so my reports are all ignored, but others claim to live in more enlightened and less malignant areas so it is to the benefit of all cyclists that reports are made
Standard footage for a youtube dashcam compilation.
Every single episode.
They can't even observe other cars !
If this clip was featured on such a compilation, you can guarantee that the comments would unanimously blame the cyclist for *checks notes* doing 2/3 of the speed a car would be.
I find the comments are very much against errors on either side.
Anyhow, the cyclist should be grateful that the driver did go in the correct direction.
https://youtu.be/JpettgSyTPo?t=611
See also numerous pullouts from the beginning !
Despite how it may sometimes feel, the vast majority of drivers do not set out to injure or kill cyclists. Most incidents are "genuine accidents". The road laws exist to deter drivers from making such mistakes by sanctioning them if they do. In that context I can't see the logic in not reporting someone for a "genuine accident"; the logical extension of that would be if the driver had hit and killed the cyclist they should still face no sanction as it was a "genuine accident". If a driver shows genuine remorse and stops to apologise I'd definitely consider not reporting (and have not done so on several occasions), if as here they appear to have just driven off without the slightest concern about what could have been a very nasty smash, I would have reported. Up to the individual of course and in no way criticising Mieszko's choice but I don't think I would have been as forbearing.
Or gives that poxy wave...
Ah, the old sorry not sorry might be apologising might be telling you to fuck off one?
Precisely!
As I commented on Strava a few days back, on one of my rides to work; "First the Chelsea Tractor driver, forcing her way out of a side road onto Garratts Lane - I got a wave, don't know if that was 'sorry', 'thanks', or 'go away you insignificant cyclist'."
Agree with the main point, but "genuine accidents" - again depends on perspective!
Years back if workers e.g. fell from height that was "just an accident". Now it's
a workplace crime... well, OK, it's at least frowned on [1] [2].The police and courts clearly feel the degree of culpability is often low (or they have "sympathy" for the defendant). However there is a degree of choice by the drivers* AND by our planners and politicians.
Many specific road layouts have safety issues and in general some road layouts, laws and vehicles (when combined with humans of course) have well-known failure modes. Many of these have known and indeed tested ways for eliminating the issue OR minimising consequences!
... but the cost side involves not only "dig it up and redo it" / "rewrite those laws and inform the population" but the greater psychological cost of changing from a belief that we must use a car / must maximise the motor traffic capacity. (Don't worry though - we can do a great deal and the drivers will still get through!)
* Choosing to drive - which is a choice although it may not seem so. Very often how we choose to drive - e.g. not driving to the conditions, or in vehicles which aren't even well-maintained or legal, or when tired / very emotional / otherwise impaired...
I get what you are saying but when it comes to road traffic collisions there's no such thing as accidents; genuine mistakes maybe but there's no act of god accidents.
https://www.bmj.com/content/322/7298/1320
I agree and indeed was told as much by my motorcycle instructor thirty years ago - that's why I put "genuine accidents" in quotes.
They may genuinely not have seen the rider, but it's still driving without due care.
What is a "genuine" accident? If that definition includes failing to observe properly and to drive accordingly, it is an accident: I don't think it does. I think it's failing to observe and drive properly, no accident.
It would be a less than genuinine accident if the driver had seen the cyclist but barged ahead anyway, assuming the cyclist would brake. Or if he had been playing with his mobile phone. Or if his thinking had been along the lines of "the cyclist shouldn't have been there anyway it's far too dangerous it's time someone taught them a lesson before they get themselves or someone else killed."
But is it an accident if they (possibly habitually) fail to maintain the (minimal) standards of observation which would e.g. be required to pass a driving test?
Poor observation here might only be "only looking for the obvious e.g. cars and motor vehicles". (Being humans our brains will always tend to pick up and use heuristics which save effort.)
The particular consequence may have been unintentional but they have made a choice - albeit in the negative e.g. simply failed to look properly. And that might include "sufficiently to overcome any 'only notice the motor vehicles' heuristics our brain has installed".
Perhaps that motor vehicle should have come with a warning that this kind of thing could happen?
Referencing discussion about the other recent roundabout case - there are different considerations which apply once you mix in vulnerable road users with motor vehicles (despite in this case cycles being vehicles it's perfectly legal to operate here). This driver could have been "getting away with" habitual poor observation because a) they rarely encounter cyclists b) cyclists are perhaps more observent than your average driver out of necessity / high motivation because of c) the asymmetric consequences of collision - I'm not aware of any drivers KSI by cyclists.
If the near collision wasn't deliberate or foreseen, then it was accident, even if the circumstances that led to it were the result of deliberate actions.
You mean negligence.
It's foreseeable that not looking sufficiently is likely to cause traffic collisions and thus failing to look is not an accident, but foreseeable and a deliberate non-compliance with good roadcraft.
You would think so. But the driver presumably believed had looked sufficiently.
Drunk drivers often think that they're fit to drive, but that's hardly any kind of excuse when they crash.
Non-drunk drivers may believe that they've looked, but if they can't see other people on the roads, then they either need to more training to improve their observation skills or be taken off the roads if they're going to be causing hazards to others.
Who's suggesting it's an excuse?