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news
Dame Sarah Storey with Sheffield NW Neighbourhood Policing Team (via Strava).PNGDame Sarah Storey joins South Yorkshire Police on close pass operation – and almost one in five drivers get pulled over
Dame Sarah Storey, who earlier this month became Great Britain’s most successful Paralympian athlete, joined road policing officers in South Yorkshire last week for a close pass operation targeting drivers who overtake cyclists too closely.
Fresh from winning the 17th Paralympic gold medal of her career at Tokyo three weeks ago and wearing the rainbow jersey of para-cycling road world champion, Storey accompanied the operation on Friday afternoon on the A57 through her role as active travel commissioner for the Sheffield City Region.
> Dame Sarah Storey named Sheffield City Region's first Active Travel Commissioner
It was carried out as part of last week’s Project EDWARD, with the acronym standing for European Day Without A Road Death, a Europe-wide initiative launched five years ago by the European Traffic Police Network and supported by the European Commission.
An account of the operation, carried out on Manchester Road from Rails Road up to Cutthroat Bridge, was posted to Strava by Inspector Kevin Smith of the Sheffield Northwest Neighbourhood Policing Team, who said that it was one of the roads they receive most complaints over.
“Two teams of cyclists were used, two on road bikes wearing road bike gear and looking, at least in one case, like an athlete,” he wrote. “The other pair were on our electrically assisted e-bikes.”
He outlined the specific issues related to the stretch of road chosen, which reflect a scenario we often see in submissions to our Near Miss of the Day feature.
“The A57 is a long climb with lots of double white lines due to some blind bends,” Inspector Smith said.
“It is often safer to cycle two abreast on these sections to reduce the temptation of some motorists to try and ‘squeeze’ the cyclist to the side of the road by overtaking on a blind bend and then pulling back left to avoid a head on collision with traffic the other way approaching at 50 miles per hour.
“Even when cycling solo, it is often safest to ride in primary position on these bends, to ensure that you are visible around the bends,” the officer said.
“Unfortunately, it was not the most stress-free afternoon of cycling, with lots of people apparently unable to overtake without the assistance of their horn (perhaps it is linked to a booster system?).
“Sarah’s Garmin radar detected 110 overtakes over the two laps we completed, and of those 110 overtakes, 20 were stopped for advice purposes, which is disappointing.
“Our other pair were also close passed a few times, taking the total to 25 vehicles stopped for advice purposes, and another five that we will catch up with through the post,” Inspector Smith said.
“In total 10 prosecutions for a range of offences from careless driving to contravening double white lines. It seems many drivers are unaware that if a cyclist is travelling at more than 10 miles per hour there is no loophole to allow them to overtake on double white lines, and we saw a depressing level of selfish and poor behaviour throughout the day.”
Referring to the rule which says, among other things, that cyclists “should never ride more than two abreast, and ride in single file on narrow or busy roads and when riding round bends,” the inspector revealed, “We’ve already seen some ‘what about Highway Code rule 66’ whataboutism on twitter by people trying to justify close passes.
“My reply is that on this road, the only safe place to be to overtake is on the opposite side of the carriageway (it is a 50mph road), and if you need to be on the opposite side of the carriageway, it doesn’t matter how far into the road the cyclists are, if there’s no room on the opposite side of the road, there’s not enough room to overtake.”
Inspector Smith added: “As you can imagine, trying to keep up with a gold medallist also added a new level of difficulty to the affair (this was my second highest wattage 20 minutes of 2021. and trust me, I wasn’t planning on going all out), but it was good to show Dame [Sarah] Storey how we run close pass operations to try and educate road users, either by speaking to them at the side of the road, or by providing consequences to their poor driving choices.”
> Dame Sarah Storey to campaign for safer roads for cyclists on behalf of British 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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69 comments
Agreed on this. I've found that on pretty much every occasion those overtaking on bends, brows of hills etc, are young drivers.
I was driving through the Cotswolds with some friends in the car a couple of months ago and we came across 3 cyclists. I waited patiently behind.
One of my friends asked "aren't you going to overtake?". It was a NSL road with a brow of a hill about 50m away
You mean you waited? Crazy dude....
and amazingly the sky did not fall down, and the car did not even self destruct. Mr Pickles most likely arrived at his destination within a minute of the time he would have, by dangerously overtaking any cyclists he came across.
I was recently criticised for being too cautious when driving, probably because I don't break the speed limits, observe carefully before carrying out a manouvre and don't overtake dangerously, especially cyclists.
It's true; cyclists make the safest drivers.
I'm the same. I was tailgated by some loon the other day when I was driving with my daughter. He tried to overtake me when passing under a narrow blind bridge, continued to TG up teh following road, (perfectly wide enough to o/take there- I was making probably about 25). He then decided to overtake when I encountered and slowed for 2 riders in x1 file, wait for it, on the approach to traffic lights. He o/took me, and immediately cut across to take the left turn filter and performed an emergency stop between the two riders.
Off he then sped with much revving and squealing of tyres. Interestingly I turned up 1 car behind him at a traffic lights 4 miles (and about 10 mins) later, in spite of the fact that he was speeding and I was my usual ~10% below.
I imagine his behaviour is my fault for going too slowly, in spite of the fact that on average we were going exactly the same speed between the 1st bridge and second lights. My blood pressure is lower though....
I've done a lot of miles by bike over the last 18 months and noticed that the standard of driving is getting more polarised. Most are considerate and safe, almost to the point over over-caution in a few cases but the bad ones are getting worse.
Typical example would be a Lambo that passed me about a metre away on full noise in a 30 with no oncoming traffic. About 400m later he pulled into a drive so obviously I stopped for a word. He could not understand that his feeling that he'd given me enough space was incorrect. He was also reluctant to swap places so I could show him how wrong he was, even though I used to instruct on race circuits in Lambos!
I now drive a large delivery van, always at the speed limit and it's depressing how many cars feel like you are holding them up and are either so close behind that I can't see them in my mirrors or actually overtake just to wait at the next lights or pull into their work car park just up the road....
Im glad its not just me that's noticed this, I thought I was being oversensitive.
Its not reserved for cyclists either, I've noticed a lot more horn blowing when I'm driving too.
That's an awful percentage - shame on those drivers!
(And great job by the officers and Dame Sarah Storey)
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