SMIDSY

Road.cc readers are equally split between viewing drivers who pay cyclists no attention and those road users whose aggression means they display too much of it as the biggest dangers on the roads, according to our latest poll.

With around 300 votes cast, just a single vote separated the two choices, both of which gained 40% of the votes cast, with “The general level of aggression displayed by all road users” edging out “Drivers not paying attention” by 120 votes to 119.

The cyclists’ organisation CTC has rejected calls to throw its weight behind a campaign to introduce a five-foot-to-pass rule in the UK, and says that its priority is to improve the levels of enforcement of existing traffic laws.

All cyclists have heard the “sorry mate, I didn’t see you” excuse from a driver after a near miss or collision with a vehicle, but a 68-year-old farmer from Oklahoma has elevated it to new levels after failing to spot a two-tonne elephant on the road ahead of him.

Bill Carpenter was returning from church with his wife in their SUV when he belatedly registered the presence of the eight-foot-tall elephant on the road ahead, forcing him to swerve to avoid a head-on collision.

We’re all aware of the SMIDSY excuse – “sorry mate, I didn’t see you” – currently the subject of a high profile campaign by UK cyclists’ organisation the CTC, but a court case in the US in which a driver failed to spot a six-foot tall orange rabbit raises it to new levels.

A police sergeant was yesterday found guilty at Fenland Magistrates Court in Wisbech of knocking a cyclist off her bike in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, with his victim requiring six stitches to a cut above her left eye, leaving her with a scar.

According to a report in The Cambs Times, Sergeant Robert Norman had claimed that he had been unable to see Post Office employee Jane Gill before the collision last December because a pillar in his Ford Connect van had obstructed his view as he executed a right turn.

“Sorry mate I didn't see you” is a phrase sadly familiar to cyclists across the country: it's the stock phrase of the motorist who has just been involved in a near miss with a cyclists. Cycle safety campaigners long ago shortened it to the acronym SMIDSY, and now, as we reported earlier this month, the CTC has decided to use SMIDSY to raise public awareness of poor driving and road design.