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Near Miss of the Day 675: Four rules broken at once

Our regular series featuring close passes from around the country - today it's Thames Valley...

Are you struggling with balancing everything on your pre-Christmas to-do list? Well perhaps you should take notes from the latest driver featured in our Near Miss of the Day series, who has truly mastered the art of multi-tasking. In a single manoeuvre they were able to break FOUR separate road safety rules, an incredible feat which earned them a spot on a driver awareness course organised by Thames Valley police.

This clip was sent in by a road.cc reader who told us that the driver was sent on the course due to “Overtaking on a solid white line; overtaking approaching the brow of a hill; overtaking approaching a corner”; and finally “overtaking on approach to the junction.” Quite the list, eh?

Rule 129 of the Highway Code tells road users that, where the carriageway has "double white lines where the line nearest you is solid," they "MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road." It adds that they "may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less."

As we can see, the cyclist in the video was storming along at almost three times that speed, making the overtake – and immediate left turn – even more dangerous. Hopefully the driver awareness course will take hold.

> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?

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.

> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling

 

After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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10 comments

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ChrisB200SX | 2 years ago
17 likes

Barely compares to the lorry driver who deliberately pulled in whil alongside me when he had about 20m of road width he could of used while overtaking.
He was beeping his horn before he started the overtake... and then wildly gesticulating at me, pointing at the ditch while his cab was alongside, then just swerved to the edge of the road, forcing me off it.

Will be checking to see if the footage saved and hopefuly reporting that this evening.

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zero_trooper replied to ChrisB200SX | 2 years ago
2 likes

Good luck and please keep us updated. If the footage is acceptable, the quicker it's submitted to the police the better. 
 

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TheBillder replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
2 likes
Garage at Large wrote:

The annoying thing about this dangerous manouvre was the futility of it.

No. The annoying thing is the danger caused to the cyclist and that would have been caused to any oncoming traffic which the overtaking driver could not see. Apart from marginal environmental costs, I don't care a button, I don't care a fig* for the futility or lack of it for the driver.

*Anyone getting the reference can have my first NFT free of charge.

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sensei | 2 years ago
10 likes

I was actually impressed with the correct overtakes of the first 3 cars. But then it all went wrong very quickly. Of the 4 offences the one that stands out is the MGIF and then immediately turn into a junction. I've had this happen so often and only avoided going into the side of a car by quick reactions. Again, another motorist that sees cyclist = slow and completely misjudges the time for their manoeuvre. Or worse, could simply be a motorist that has that much contempt for cyclists that they intended to put them in danger.

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wtjs | 2 years ago
6 likes

Pfff! Lancashire Constabulary must be ignoring worse cases every day- like APC delivery Transit MD68 FWC. The report received no response whatsoever until long after the 'NIP 2 weeks' had passed- this is a common LC dodge

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matt_cycles | 2 years ago
2 likes

The thing about this overtake, the driver actually used the other side of the road (as did the other cars to be fair) and just let themself down amongst other offences.

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Hirsute replied to matt_cycles | 2 years ago
11 likes

The other drivers did not overtake on a solid white line though.

How could the driver know there was nothing coming the other way ? In the event of a smash, the cyclist would be have been caught up in it. All to save 5 seconds.

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STiG911 replied to Hirsute | 2 years ago
4 likes

Specially as it's a '60mph derestricted road' as Mr LoopyNutHole describes it.

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AlsoSomniloquism replied to STiG911 | 2 years ago
2 likes

I did wonder if he was in the blue BMW filming a cyclist holding up traffic by doing 30mph in a 30 but I'm guessing  back then, he thought he would have got his 10k signatories easily with just a couple of Newspaper interviews and GB news shows. 

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GMBasix replied to Hirsute | 2 years ago
2 likes

The learner driver did, though.  (S)He failed to return to the left side of the road before the solid line started.

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