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news
Near Miss of the Day 65: Royal Mail driver pulls out on cyclist* on mini roundabout
Update: At least one of us (possibly more than one, but no-one's keen to admit to something so stupid) failed to notice that this video was in fact shot from a car. Sorry about that. It's not like we have any shortage of near misses involving cyclists either.
Today’s near miss is from a few weeks back in Stoke where Matt had a Royal Mail driver pull out on him as he attempted to navigate a mini roundabout.
Watching the footage, it seems to us that the driver’s view of Matt is most likely obscured by the driver’s side windscreen pillar.
We recently reported on a fatal collision with a cyclist on a roundabout where the driver said she didn’t see the victim due to her car’s large blind spot.
Anne Lyst was convicted of causing death by careless driving and the judge emphasised that it was a driver’s responsibility to mitigate for the effects of a blind spot.
“Anyone who considered the evidence in this case in relation to the size of the blind spot may have been alarmed at the potential masking effect. But as the jury found, something being in your blind spot is no defence to careless driving. It remains your responsibility to mitigate its effect and what you did, if anything, was insufficient.”
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.
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19 comments
That Royal Mail depot is right by Stoke Station and the University, there's usually a fair few royal mail vans parked horrendously, cars using their hazards as a cloak of invisibility, headphoned lemming pedestrians et al. The driver probably just adopted his usual head down and screw it approach in fear of having to work beyond mid-day...
Go and watch some of the UK dashcams videos on Youtube to see how terrifying the roads can really be. Most of these cyclng videos are pretty much low-level idiocy compared to what you'll find on there.
SMIDNSY ... so even a big car is not visible enough ! another proof that mandatory hi-viz won't change anything.
I doubt that the car was wearing hi-viz.
Ohh FFS Road CC!!!
Not only are you happy to post videos of Buses and cyclists simply 'mingling' in heavy rush hour traffic, and brandish it a heinous close pass (when in fact it wasn't) you are now apparently quite happy to post a video which is clearly filmed from the dashboard of a car and pass it off as another horrendous insult on the safety of a fellow cyclist. The person owning the camera may well be a cyclist, but at this point in time he was obviously driving his car (and quite possibly not using his indicators whilst doing so!).
This video needs to be removed from this now rather tiresome 'close pass of the day' article.
"Watching the footage, it seems to us that the driver’s view of Matt is most likely obscured by the driver’s side windscreen pillar."
Except you clearly didn't watch the footage that well did you? If you had you'd have spotted that the Royal Mail driver pulled out on a car, not a bike. Oh dear.
Demsiters aside, I wonder if Matt was not indicating?
If he wasn't indicating the van should definitely not have pulled out. Anyway you don't have to use indicators anymore, i think there must have been an announcement about it. I've not seen it but everyone else seems to have.
In any other environment, a health and safety audit would identify a potential issue such as the 'blind spot'. The designers/managers/staff would then be tasked with a redesign to remove or mitigate the problem. Why does the motor industry get away with not bothering?
Couldn't agree more. Car buyers look for/expect 5 stars in the euro NCAP crash test, so the windscreen pillar has got thicker over the years to better protect car occupants.
A car hire company once 'upgraded' me to a Dodge Caliber which had such a huge windscreen pillar that it hid motorbikes!
Wouldn't it be good if the NCAP test penalised poor primary safety in cars i.e. the ability to see out ...
Yep, I think that a previous health and safety audit/euro NCAP has already increased the safety, but only for that of the occupants of the car/pedestrians being hit. Although there have been many improvements to modern cars, visability out really isn't one of them.
I've previously removed certain cars from my potential purchase list due to poor visibility. Most worryingly, many were samll "city" cars such as Fiat 500/Panda, Fiestas, Clios etc.
To be honest, if your eyesight is too bad to see a small (or samll) car, then you shouldn't really be driving anyway.
I don't he means that small cars are hard to see, just thaey have poor visibility from within. And i agree, we recently purchased a VW Up! and one of the main reasons was that the boxy design means visibility was so much better than alot of the more streamlined/stylised small cars produced by other manufacturers.
Where was the close pass
Where can I buy Matt's bike? It seems to have a convient glass shield infront of the handlebars, you can even see the reflection of the demisters that must be handy in the winter. Also the bike is really stable under braking, it almost behaves as if it has four wheels.
Really great suspension too. What are the roadcc journos smoking these days? A lot of crap is making its way onto the website.
Judging by the acceleration away from the scene, Matt has quite an engine on him, too.
Perhaps we are being overly harsh. it could have been one of these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKq1fGtXFM