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news
Near Miss of the Day 70: One reader catalogues a year of close passes etc
Given it's that time of year when people in the media are working on round-ups of what's happened in the past year, it's timely that this video landed in road.cc's inbox today.
Sent in by road.cc reader Martin Pascoe, the video was actually uploaded to YouTube in April this year, but captures a year's worth of poor driving encournterd by Martin while cycling in and around Exeter.
Close passes by drivers of cars, buses, lorries, motorists parking or driving in cycle lanes or failing to give right of way at roundabouts ... it's all here, as is the momeent a man who looks rather the worse for wear walks across a pedestrian crossing and staggers into the wall on the other side.
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.
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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31 comments
It's a shame how people have got so inconsiderate. I used to cycle in and around Exeter all the time, including the occasional commute from Tiverton along the A396, featured in some of these shots.
I still work in Exeter, but sadly live 35 miles away and that's just too far for me.
I do sometimes consider driving to the park and ride then cycling, but my personal experience of how other drivers in Exeter treat cyclists and videos like this have really put me off.
I generally avoid cycling on "A" roads altogether now and town centres, but I'm definitely not happy about feeling like I've been forced off the road.
So many of those close passes due to drivers in too much of a hurry. When will they learn that they won't get where they're going any quicker by driving aggresively? On the other hand they increase the risk of killing someone greatly.
Those bike lanes going against the flow of traffic are weird!
I'm not sure which is most annoying: parking in the bike lane, or just cutting you off. My favorite had to the fellow stumbling across the road and collapsing.
These aren't even close passes, this is the kind of cyclist that annoys me. His road position isn't great on a lot of them either.
Also, this daily/weekly feature is just toxic. Road.cc shouldn't bother with it.
Yellow van was a bit alarming - not sure how you avoid that. M/c coming the wrong lane was a shocker. The rest was business as usual.
I disagree with your closing sentence but the yellow van was just fucking insane. What was the twat thinking? Was he trying to use the cycle lane as extra road space to undertake the traffic stream?
The pissed bloke walking into a wall is just business as usual for Exeter; the town seems to be full of druggies and piss-heads. I've never known a place to smell of weed everywhere like Exeter does.
I just meant the rest of it was close/not so close passes and people pulling out when they shouldn't. You get that sort of thing even when driving, so it didn't stick out like the other 2 incidents.
Agree with the comments that this is "standard" conditions for anyone who rides a bike around any town. That is not to say that we should accept it this way. Having ridden around Exeter and recognise some of the areas, what is particularly noticeable is how the amount of traffic has increased dramatically over the last decade or so but the road network is largely unchanged and struggling to accomadate it. This is no doubt true of many other towns but Exeter was a so called cycling city and made concessions for cyclists which as you can see on the film made no difference.
Is a Stagecoach driver stalking this guy?
Is it me or does this rider keep deliberately accelerate every time someone pulls out to get as close as possible?
It's you, he doesn't, in any case how much faster can you decide to accelerate because someone has pulled out on you in say 1-2 seconds?
Yup it's definitely you
Yes, you...the concept of speeding up is completely different on a bike. Generally, you ride at near full speed on any stretch of road. Certainly I do mostly, if I could accelerate I'd only be slowly adding an mph or two, not bloody wheelspinning...
As others have said, this is atypical of any commute sadly. Also, it should be noted that the experience is ALWAYS worse than it looks on the footage.
Wide angle camera, just an effect of the optics. Same reason passes look further away than they are in reality.
Looks pretty standard, sadly. Looking at a lot of the clips I'd say take the lane more often, in a lot of them the rider is way too far over to the inside of the lane, almost inviting ignorant and foolish drivers to put th cyclist's safety in jeopardy. Obviously the positioning of the cyclist doesn't excuse the bad driving but if you give drivers fewer options to put you in danger then at least you have a bit more control.
Of course, the only problem with defensive cycling is the drivers who would have given you room don't change their behaviour (because it doesn't affect them anyway), and a fair portion of the bad drivers rather than wait patiently just give the cyclist aggro instead
People saying most of these are no big deal, maybe if I waft a sledgehammer near your or your kids face on the pavement with me running at you when you're walking towards me might make you change your mind. Because aiming a ton plus of mass at you at 30/40/50mph and more is far, far worse. That in some instances you get 'accustomed' to it and pass it off as 'nornal' just highlights how bad a problem it is.
If this was replicated with mass sledgehammer wielding on the street and in some cases ending in death and serious injuries, say around 80 a year dead and several thousand seriously injured the fuzz would be all over it and there would be a public outcry to ban sledgehammers if not sledgehammer swinging in public.
If it makes you feel fear, it's an assault, sure some like the peds he could see and should have slowed and his position could be better but this video just shows you how not only are vast swathes of people in motors a bunch of cunts who'd rather threaten your life than slow down/take a bit of time to assess but road planners are fuckwits.
Dead right
What? Do you think any of those cars would have pulled out of another car was coming at the same speed?
Yes unfortunately some drivers still do.
For example with the car doing the 3 point turn in the road it is common for drivers to do one regardless of the fact another car or van is coming along. They expect that car or van to stop. Oddly they don't do one in front of a HGV, bus or coach.
I've seen 2 cars pull out right in front of ambulances with flashing blue lights on my road.
Agreed that people can drive like Dick's regardless but in your post you suggest a hierarchy with the hgv and coach. I was trying to point out that the speed of the cyclist approaching the roundabout shouldn't really be a factor as it was probably less than your average motor vehicle which they'd likely not have been so flippant about...
If you ride on to a roundabout without slowing down, you really shouldn't complain if a vehicle which is already in front of you is... in front of you.
Yeah cars shouldn't have to give way on a round about should they!
In quite a few of those the cyclist could take a more assertive road position. That said, it might be more risky given some drivers are willing to endanger lives just so long as they don't have to lift their right foot momentarily.
The town-centre contra-flow cycle lane is just very badly designed infrastructure on the part of the Highways Dept. - hence the reason it is abused so much.
Needs Armadillos - or porcupines perhaps.
Half of those were not close enough to bother mentioning, the rest were a mix idiot drivers/pedestrians/motorbikers and the cyclist himself not bothering to slow down at roundabouts or show any kind of caution.
I find pedestrians to be the most brain dead of people when it comes to the road. They do not check for traffic, they cross roads or junctions head down, texting, listening to music and totally oblivious to traffic of any kind, have herd mentality when crossing and don't give a damn about anything other than themselves.
OK. The really drunk fella on the zebra crossing aside, this is mostly the usual stuff. Much of this looks innocuous on screen, but at the time it’s more than unpleasant.
Two common themes are: the initial wide overtake, reduced to close pass as oncoming vehicle requires pulling in; and the straight up lack of room given, even with the whole road free. Equally shit driving.
The city centre bus/bike lane stuff is mainly down to poor infrastructure. I could make a central London Ben Hur length film of peds blindly walking out in front of me. It’s the ones that sprint at 90 degrees without warning that’ll do for me one day.
but its interesting to me at least, the same types of passes are happening on the same bits of road, they always close pass at stupid speed going up the hill, someone always tries to overtake by that left turn (I half expected a left hook), someone always tries to use that contra cycle lane as extra road space.
whilst Id say IME I might find certain bits of road present more challenges shall we say to cycling on, I very rarely get repeat moves like that, one week on the same bit of road it might be a close pass, the next a brake test, the next left hook , dodgy parking etc etc.
A year? That would take about 3 hours to put together here in Leicester, worst drivers in Britain in my experience, far worse than London. Can anybody's home town beat mine for motorised fuktards?
Though as Beecho says, peds in London are in a different league.
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