Near Miss of the Day 480: Driver almost hits cyclist on roundabout (includes swearing)

Personally he has just come off a motorway at 70mph and doesn't want to adjust speed, looking for a large object and not seeing anything. 

Well avoided Jon. 

dassie wrote:

Idiot driver possibly failing to check A-pillar blindspot? 

Looking at it again, I reckon you're right, the A pillar is obscuring his view of the cyclist, and, like most drivers, he can't be bothered to observe properly.  

This is a very frequent event, caused by the massive A pillar, something supposed to make driving safer, which, to be fair, it does; unfortunately, it kills cyclists and motorcyclists.  When are cars going to be designed for the safety of everyone, not just the occupants? 

What are the chances that this driver will have learned his lesson, and make sure he observes properly?  Or will he just shrug his shoulders and think "That cyclist was bloody lucky." and carry on driving exactly the same way?

You're absolutely right. There was a time when they used to advertise the % all round vision in cars, and given advances in design technology it must be possible to get it pretty close to 100% now. A cebtury ago a car had two panels of flat glass for a front windscreen. Now you can bend laminated glass to curve round to the shape you want. A couple of roll bars to keep the roof on and protect idiot drivers who turn their cars over, and maybe a small bit of metal and stuff to seal the doors and the rest is glass.

My wife had to borrow her mum's Fiat (?) Punto a few years ago.  She absolutely hated driving it: she said the visibility was appalling and all the pillars were so wide she could barely see out.  The rear side windows were the size of a saucer, the bonnet was so steep you couldn't see the front of the car from the driver's seat, the pillars were all so chunky...

She loves driving her 1973 VW microbus, which is basically a greenhouse on wheels.  You sit about fifty centimetres behind the front of the vehicle, and so much of the sides are glass...  Wouldn't want to have a collision while sitting in it, mind.

I've got a '67 (typed 1) VW Beetle. A pillar about as thick as my finger....I need to finish restoring it, get it back on the road so I can see cyclists properly

Yeah: our other car is a 1970 type 1, so I know what you're talking about

But the event isn't caused by the A pillar, and A pillars don't kill. Unobservant drivers can and will. Anyone who has driven a panel van knows that they have to find different ways of observation - more use of door mirrors etc.

The problem is the assumption that if the driver hasn't seen something then they are free to move off, and that's not really enough.

Must say I am glad that this debate can proceed at a level above some recent threads.

TheBillder wrote:

But the event isn't caused by the A pillar, and A pillars don't kill. Unobservant drivers can and will. Anyone who has driven a panel van knows that they have to find different ways of observation - more use of door mirrors etc. The problem is the assumption that if the driver hasn't seen something then they are free to move off, and that's not really enough. Must say I am glad that this debate can proceed at a level above some recent threads.

But, unfortunately, we know the behaviour of drivers; see nothing, therefore it's safe to proceed.  The fact that the bureaucrats have seen fit to obscure drivers' vision for their own safety is not uppermost in their minds.  That's how humans behave, so we can either work with that and remove the obstruction, or somehow change human behaviour.  Which do you reckon has more chance of success?

I'm not excusing drivers not checking their A-spots - and I don't know if the driver's side A-spot contributed to this near miss, but....

I for one was never taught about about the A-spots - perhaps because when I learnt to drive, vehicles didn't have such large A-pillars. Okay, I'm reasonably intelligent, so I've figured out that I need to move my head around when the area I'm checking is obscured by an A pillar (or by the rear view mirror, in a lot of modern cars).

There's nothing in the highway code that mentions what the A-spots are or how to deal with them.  There are no warnings in cars to tell drivers about the A-spots. Finally, we have allowed (and continue to allow) manufacturers to produce cars with very large A-pillars - personally, I think the safety of vulnerable road users is more important than the safety of people who manage to roll their car, and allowing such large A-pillars was a mistake.

jh2727 wrote:

There's nothing in the highway code that mentions what the A-spots are or how to deal with them.  There are no warnings in cars to tell drivers about the A-spots. Finally, we have allowed (and continue to allow) manufacturers to produce cars with very large A-pillars - personally, I think the safety of vulnerable road users is more important than the safety of people who manage to roll their car, and allowing such large A-pillars was a mistake.

You're right, and this should be specifically mentioned in the HC.  The manufacturers didn't just decide to make cars with huge A pillars, the bureaucrats of road safety told them to, so that the vehicle occupants were protected if car rolled, but like seat belts, at the expense of the safety of cyclists and motorcyclists.