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Near Miss of the Day 750: Close pass on bend in the rain

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

No close pass is a good one, is it? But when it happens in the rain, ahead of a sharp, blind right hand bend when you’re concentrating on the bike and there could be traffic coming the other way, we reckon it makes it worse.

That’s the scenario in today’s featured Near Miss of the Day video, filmed in Leicestershire in February by road.cc reader Drew.

“Just got to the end of a ride and the heavens opened,” he told us.

“I’d had a submission where I’d swore after being scared with a previous incident , and the police told me off, so I’ve now figured how to send it without sound.

“I might have cursed this driver a little bit, they ended up taking a driver improvement course.

“Why they passed me in that position I’ve no idea other than being totally impatient.

It’s a bad section of road at best of times!”

He added: “Leicestershire police seem to be pretty good as dealing with these things, this was probably my tenth successful submission.”

> 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

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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10 comments

Avatar
TriTaxMan | 2 years ago
3 likes

Rubbish driving in the rain.  All to save a couple of seconds.

I'm going to have a look at the comments on the Facebook post for this article..... As a guess it will be drivers commenting on how the cyclist moved out of the gutter towards the car as they were going round the corner......... or similar

Avatar
MaleficentFalcon | 2 years ago
1 like

How do people find out what the vehicle driver gets? Op Snap Wales say they can't release it because of GDRP. So i just get allot of "positive action taken".

Avatar
wtjs replied to MaleficentFalcon | 2 years ago
0 likes

Op Snap Wales say they can't release it because of GDRP

All of these statements are lies- of course they could say, they just don't want to because it would reveal how little they have done. The action taken in courts is reported in newspapers! Lancashire Constabulary has even resorted to warnings that people using cameras must inform those being filmed! This is the condition you have to accept:

I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR 

It is dispiriting that the police are lying and misinforming all of the time

Avatar
Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
5 likes

Quote:

 I’d had a submission where I’d swore after being scared with a previous incident , and the police told me off, so I’ve now figured how to send it without sound.

I bet that fairly soon a submission without sound will be rejected because "we can't tell if the cyclist was provocative" or some such, it really is any excuse. Recently had a submission to the Met (slam-dunk RLJ 10 seconds after the lights changed) rejected because I accidentally clicked 4.45 instead of 16.45 as the time, realised immediately and sent them a message correcting it, got a reply saying submission rejected because of innaccurate time. I sometimes feel they spend more energy finding reasons to reject than they would actually need to spend on properly following through.

Avatar
chrisonabike replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
3 likes

Yeah - to my mind that makes it worse.  Seems that we're edging towards (already there) the following: "he ran me over!" "Ah - but in this video it looks like you could have made a rude gesture at him.  Six of one..."

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stonojnr replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
3 likes

The splashproof case for the Cycliq 6 covers the mic and whilst you get sound it's so distorted its basically unusable as audio.

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wtjs replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
1 like

I sometimes feel they spend more energy finding reasons to reject than they would actually need to spend on properly following through

Sometimes?!

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Bungle_52 | 2 years ago
2 likes

I can't help but notice the similarity between this and NMOTD 748. I'm struggling to explain the difference in the response of the two forces.

Thank you to the OP for taking the time and effort to report and thank you to Leicestershire for taking action.

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Hirsute | 2 years ago
11 likes

Utterly pathetic to warn someone for swearing when their safety is put at risk by poor driving.
Oh I forgot, poor driving is totally acceptable.

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David9694 replied to Hirsute | 2 years ago
5 likes

It's a false equivalence, mis-guided attempt at being "even-handed".  I'm glad they are even-handed; one of the greatest drains (often waste) of their time is being dragged into disputes between individuals - the risk is - false equivalence again - that close passes and the like start to fall into that category.

There's a "well, he/she deserved it"  line of thought - just about tolerable if it the result is a bent bit of bodywork: not remotely tolerable if it involves a VRU.  They are a victim, in the same way as if they had been burgled at home. 

No-one "deserves" to get injured at the hands of a driver - ever. 

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