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news
Near Miss of the Day 759: SMIDSY driver nearly hits cyclist on roundabout
A classic type of close thing features in our Near Miss of the Day series – a SMIDSY (“Sorry mate, I didn’t see you”) driver who almost hit a cyclist on a roundabout – though thankfully the bike rider was alert to it.
The footage was uploaded to YouTube by road.cc reader Ehe Life Cycle, who told us: “I was on Sefton Park Perimeter Road, Liverpool, out for a ride and approached the roundabout looking to take the third exit.
“I was going fairly slow, as it’s a small roundabout. The driver came out of what would be my second exit and drove straight through to back the way that I had approached from. Bike = red arrow, Car = blue,
“I’ve not reported it, as last time I did the police never even responded to me,” Ehe added.
> 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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18 comments
I'll do you one better - I was knocked off my bike in very similar circumstances (as above, but I was further on towards my exit and as witnesses said, the offending motorist accelerated hard right at me). Broke my left shifter, bent the flared handlebar inwards from force of impact and sent me flying. I was lucky to escape with just moderate whiplash injuries but my helmet was cracked.
....and WMP have done absolutely nothing about it, nor made any follow-up communication, three weeks after the incident. Maybe if I had a camera on, they'd see it differently?
SMIDSY (“Sorry mate, I didn’t see you”)
Thanks for the translation. When I first saw it I thought an MGIF was a new model of MG😁
We have probably all had a few of these though not all that close. Eek.
Totally agree it's going to be the drivers fault for failing to give way.
Always worth looking for eye contact with approaching drivers.
You can do, but just because they might have looked your way is no guarantee of anything.
Yep I agree, at roundabouts especially, I've had about an equal number of drivers who have simply not looked on the approach to roundabouts and drivers who have looked me straight in the eye on the approach to a roundabout and pulled out straight in front of me....because cyclist.
Me too - a couple of my scarier moments from times past were looking at someone approaching on a side road - seeing their face and suddenly realising they were looking but not seeing - no awareness...
I don't know what your police force is like but the cops do tend to take shit driving on roundabouts quite seriously.
Before Avon & Somerset stopped telling us exactly what action they were taking, I had 100% NIPs on drivers pulling out on me while I was on a roundabout with priority.
Absolutely agree. I was halfway across a mini roundabout when the driver of an Asda delivery van looked right at me, grinned and pulled right out in front of me.
I hope he's still grinning when his employer pulls him in to talk about the police action., 🤣🤣🤣
The problem with eye contact is that some drivers will take that as "he's seen me and will give way to my beast"
“I’ve not reported it, as last time I did the police never even responded to me,” Ehe added."
Then you are just encouraging the police to adopt that behaviour. You should report it, chase it up and demand action. They'll never take crime against cyclists seriously if we just give up reporting blatant breaches of the law.
^THIS
Skills!
One of the reasons I think about wether or not to signal, if they've not bothered to look, not seen you, they ain't going to see you signalling, and you have a few more moments to brake and take avoiding action. It's a form of constant risk assessment, similar to that taught about when I did working at height training.
It's always a no win situation for the cyclist.
Signal and you sacrifice some control of the bike. Don't signal and the driver uses that as an excuse for whatever he (she) does.
Slow down and you are inviting the driver to pull out, speed up and you end up sprinting into the side of the car.
It's the BL**DY driver that is at fault!
Exactly. All a driver has to do is move a finger to indicate, yet it's surprising how many of them can't be arsed to even do that.
A cyclist has to remove a hand from a braking / control surface whilst doing so, so the signal may be necessarily brief. Again, it's a driver education issue.
Although in this case, the signalling's really neither here nor there. Even if they'd been carrying on round the roundabout, the driver should still have waited and then entered in a position behind them once they'd passed, and what they did do would still have been dangerous.
Plan to Stop, Prepare to Go is the advice on approaching junctions/ roundabouts. However, far too many people nowadays don't follow this and expect to go, and carry on, or slam on. It's just poor driving.... this is a perfect example of it.
Had one similar to that a few years ago, a young woman driver, missed me by around two feet, I actually rode beside her car and lucky for me she was taking the same exit as me, if she turned right I would have under her large black car.
I got knocked off on an island about 8 weeks after I started cycling again back in 2017. Turned out they weren't just a SMIDSY but also a SMIDHY as they didn't stop even after Hearing the collision.
Luckily bruised ribs and slighlty bent QR was the only damages. The next time I had someone pull out like that it taught me to right turn into their direction rather then try to turn left and managed to avoid a collision.