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news
NMotD 823Near Miss of the Day 823: The shocking moment a driver nearly crushes a child being towed in a bike trailer
Of the more than 800 videos we have featured in our Near Miss of the Day series to date, and thousands more that have been submitted, but not published, it is very difficult to think of a more shocking one than this – a driver who appears to make a deliberate manoeuvre towards a trailer being towed by a cyclist, in which the rider is carrying his infant son.
It left us speechless when we saw the video on Twitter earlier this week. Another couple of inches over and a family’s life would have been changed forever.
As you can imagine, the video attracted plenty of attention when it was first shared on the social network when Simon – @ChesterCycling – posted the footage, shot in Northgate Village, Chester.
“I had my one-year-old son in the trailer behind me, and my son (aged 7) and daughter (9) were riding their bikes ahead of me,” he told us.
“We were using a residential road to get from the local greenway to the centre of Chester. This was the route that involved the least time on a road.
“The driver pulled out of a side road, on to the wrong side of the road, passed two legal scooter riders, a car, and then tried to pass me.
“We were moving towards the centre of the road to pass a parked car on double yellows, and two vehicles were heading towards us on the opposite side of the road.
“He then stayed behind us until the top of the road, at which point he went right as we went left, and according to the passenger in the car behind me that he'd previously overtaken, he then continued up that road for a distance on the wrong side of the road.”
Simon reported the incident to Cheshire Constabulary, who confirmed to him today that “they have sent the registered keeper a letter” – although, echoing a frustration we hear from a lot of readers who submit footage to the police – he added, “I probably will never find out what specific action will be taken against the driver.”
> 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.
Latest Comments
- brooksby 18 min 46 sec ago
A plebiscite? Is that like when you start a petition calling for a new general election because you don't like the result of the last one?
- Flintshire Boy 43 min 6 sec ago
[Sorry - wrote mine before saw yours! You make the point much better than I.] .
- grOg 3 hours 23 min ago
Where does it state in the article that Ashley purchased the stock? it does state that Ashley bought the brand and intellectual property, not the...
- rogerwb 6 hours 4 min ago
Jump off the bike and run across. I cycle in trainers though.
- momove 7 hours 7 min ago
Cheers for the lesson! Wasn't expecting one so was pleasantly surprised, especially getting to find the origin of "laconic"!
- ktache 7 hours 53 min ago
Isn't it a rights issue?
- Daddy Feebs 8 hours 57 min ago
If anything, it looks a bit like an SL6
- wtjs 9 hours 33 min ago
Other commenters have different views True!
- Daclu Trelub 9 hours 48 min ago
Incredibly bone-headed.
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32 comments
Bloody hell, I jumped back from my seat whilst watching this one, by far the closest I have seen and a simple apply breaks to car rather than swerve into child would have been the correct course of action AFTER the car had already fecked up by attempting an overtake where there was nil room?
Red mist from me also.....
If the police don't prosecute this carsehole fucker. Then there's no hope for any of us.
My red mist would've seen my cleat foot go through his window and there'd be fuck all he could have done about it.
This driver is a cnut.
Cheshire police. What ya gonna do????
To regurgitate my comment from the live blog where this was posted a couple of days ago:
The only way to stop this kind of thing is to have significant prison time, lifetime driving bans and serious, life changing, fines be the normal response for this type of incident. There is no way to appeal to the moral compass or common sense of someone who thinks that their convenience is more important than the life of a child but that type of selfish, evil person will always try to protect themselves. Make the punishment massively outweigh the benefit of taking that risk and people will stop doing it. Clearly the possibility of killing a child isn't enough of a deterrant.
Unless it goes to court I'll never know whether they got a driver eduction course (they'd have to pay for), or points and a fine. Only if it goes to court and I'm called as a witness would I ever find out the outcome.
Havent some people had luck using FOI requests to get an answer to this question?
In principle, if you know when they went to court you can find the result, as court decisions are in the public domain, but when I tried to find out, when I knew the court, the date and person involved, trying to contact the court simply resulted in a hung up call every time over the period of a week. It doesn't seem right that we depend on a court reporter to publicise court results, and surely it couldn't be that hard for courts to have a web page of their goings on?
There is
https://www.courtserve.net/courtlists/current/magistrates/indexv2magistr...
requires
https://www.courtserve.net/secure/registration.php
But no obvious restrictions beyond
Please note that due to restrictions under the General Data Protection Regulation, we are unable to accept registrations from individuals under the age of 18 nor from individuals or organisations outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Hmm.
The UK is not in the European Economic Area.
No - but we still have an equivalent data protection law, until the governemnt takes away more of your rights in the name of Brexit
Totally with you here, money can be taken directly from wages for failure to pay council tax. How about 10% of this morons wages for 5 years?
Except that all the studies I've seen show that greater punishment does not deter. What does is the likelihood of being caught. Huge punishments are just revenge and don't affect potential criminals if they don't think they'll be caught, and at the moment, they're mostly right.
A fucking letter????
This happened 2 days ago. You can't prosecute a car, you need to identify the driver first hence the letter to the registered keeper requiring them to identify who was driving. Once that information is received then the police can take appropriate action against the driver. My expectation in this case with both video and witness evidence of extremely dangerous driving is that they will charge the driver. If they don't, then that is the time to be outraged, not when they do exactly what the process requires of them and take steps to identify the driver.
Only just had my account approved, but yes, exactly this, letter goes to registered keeper of the vehicle, they then determine appropriate action based on the drivers previous driving history and the severity of the incident.
Is it your video?
I did some some shit on twitter about reporting the parent to the NSPCC !
OMG: really??
Also had someone concerned about exhaust fumes, but I did point out if drivers stayed 1.5m away then exhaust wouldn't be relevant.
Although as the one year would be in a pram/stroller on the pavement, they would be the same height as the towing seat and get the same amount of exposure from passing cars.
Yes, I saw that and challenged it - apart from the abject nonsense of it, it betrayed total ignorance of what the NSPCC does, clearly the idiot thought that they are an enforcement agency like the RSPCA to whom one could report cruelty for action. Advised them that if they wished to make a report it should be to social services or the police, and that they would be told to go and take a running jump by either.
Yes, my video. There are always going to be trolls looking to wind people up, he was one of a very small number of people with negative opinions.
For your info there is one PBU on here and the occasional troll. Trolls don't last long though - usually one hit wonders. The last one was NotBlindedByCyclistsBS which surely even the hardened contrarians would raise an eyebrow at that username.
Typo in the above? I hope you mean saw (did see?) some shit? Not did it yourself - seems out of (your online) character otherwise? Brooksby's about to explode otherwise, and we've got a new Nige!
LOL. No, just a missing word "I did see..."
So a notice of intended prosecution rather than a warning letter? That is a better result.
Incidents like this forced me to give my trailer away a few years ago.
I decided my area (south east Wales) was not ready for it yet and probably never will be in my lifetime.
Far too many arse-holes in the gene pool.
I think education would be the best bet... Like a trailer with spikes and paint stripper!
Budicca chariot wheels.
Simon reported the incident to Cheshire Constabulary, who confirmed to him today that “they have sent the registered keeper a letter”
Sent them a letter? Sent them a letter? I keep reading that and then looking at the video and thinking "have I entered some parallel universe, where logic, reason and plain and simple common sense no longer exist?" Because it certainly feels like it. That kind of driving, complete disregard for the safety of a child, cannot be dismissed with a letter. Surely this should have at least been referred to the CPS?
That driver should have their licence removed forthwith, and not allowed to drive again until they had watched scenes of people dying in car crashes, every day for a year. Then they should be made to sit an extended test with a 99.9% pass mark.
I wonder if they would have sent Simon a letter if his son had been killed?
It's not as bad as it sounds. I went through the Twitter thread, and the letter sent to the keeper was the standard one asking them to identify the driver. They have 28 days to do so. Hopefully we will hear more within a month.
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