Near Miss of the Day 556: The squeal of brakes one

Van driver, not van.

And if someone is driving a vehicle and can't see or isn't looking, that is a major concern.

Freetime101 wrote:

just didn't see the cyclist until too late

This is the problem. To me that isn't a 'just' (i.e. somehow it's ok then). Another split second before seeing the cyclist and he's dead or seriously injured. So while this could be true, it's very much not acceptable, to me not particularly rosey glassed and doesn't make me feel any more positive towards the driver.

Absolutely. It's the driver sympathy which always outrages me - saying they 'just didn't see' is an appalling admission that they 'just weren't paying enough attention' or observing the road ahead to the standard that should reasonably be expected of a licence holder.

All too often this appalling excuse is accepted, as has been demonstrated by freetime101. It's cultural - there is an societal acceptance of below reasonable standard of observation on the part of drivers. Why? Because the majority are guilty of it at some point and sympathise.

Driving is seen as a convenient mode of transport and even the pretty limited driving test standard is very soon dropped once someone has passed their 'for life' test. There is no ongoing, developmental training to achieve excellence. There is very little monitoring of standards - it is only if you are caught and charged with an offence that you may have to receive some remedial training in order to regain the privileges of your licence.

The courts seem spectacularly lenient when it comes to driving offences, even the most serious where individuals are killed or suffer life changing injuries. They listen to the pathetic excuses and victim blaming and show undue leniency because any sanction would have 'such a detrimental effect' on the perpetrator.

And why is that? Because the driving standard is so low that they can all visualise themselves being in such a position, as they have all 'had a close one' where they never saw (because they weren't observing properly) a cyclist, or pedestrian or even another bloody car in similar circumstances.

The driving standards accepted by society will forever remain at an appallingly low level. There is no political will to drive them up - that will lose votes, not gain them as the hard done by drivers will once again bleat about how unfair it is if ongoing training and testing were to be implemented. As the vast majority drive they are unfortunately a very loud voice.

I'm not sure that was an appropriate comment to this video. I didn't see the driver racing anything. He didn't look like he was driving at excessive speed. It merely looks like he wasn't observing the road ahead and therefore did not see the cyclist until the last minute which then required almost an emergency stop to avoid a collision.

If he was 'racing', surely he would not have waited behind for so long before overtaking once he had rectified his first fault?

PP

I bet he was on his phone. 

Pilot Pete wrote:

I'm not sure that was an appropriate comment to this video. I didn't see the driver racing anything. He didn't look like he was driving at excessive speed. It merely looks like he wasn't observing the road ahead and therefore did not see the cyclist until the last minute which then required almost an emergency stop to avoid a collision.

If he was 'racing', surely he would not have waited behind for so long before overtaking once he had rectified his first fault?

PP

Judging from the video the driver in question appears to be doing ~40mph on country roads with high hedges, and clearly isn't paying attention. I stand by my original comment.

HoarseMann wrote:

With reactions like that, they were probably on something. I've noticed an increase in the number of cars and vans passing me recently that reek of weed.

The passing white van that stinks of weed at 7am in the morning is almost becoming passe. Drug driving is the new normal.

The van came into sight before he rode around the bend, the rider had been in visible to an alert driver 10 seconds before the  heavy braking

I don't like the term blind bend, it implies no visibility, the visibie distance is reduced, and hence speed needs to be so that stopping distance matches visibly clear distance, what most refer to as a blind bend is simply going to fast

Exactly. Limit points - You're supposed to be able to stop on your own side of the road - there's no way that van driver would have been able to.