After a summer break, our Near Miss of the Day series returns with a double bill of close passes which led police in Kent to only issue warning letters in each instance.
road.cc reader Andrew Wills, known on this site as Jakrayan, got in touch in July with footage of a couple of videos that make for uncomfortable viewing. He takes up the story here:
“First up is a caravan towing driver on the B2068 Stone Street near Canterbury. On a very short straight they decided to overtake my wife – she’d dropped back a little as it was a short, sharp downhill – forcing 3 oncoming drivers to brake hard, the 3rd one coming to a complete stop (albeit arguably too close to the vehicle in front).
“The driver swung back in and almost took her out, forcing her to take evasive action into the verge. Fortunately no kerb, the outcome could have been very serious. The driver then overtook me seconds later, also where there wasn’t enough room ahead and swung in early.
“Unfortunately I didn’t have a forward camera at the time, but it was close. The idiotic thing is that Stone Street is an old Roman Road so there are long, straight stretches just along the road. Kent Police merely sent a warning letter. Appalling in my opinion.
“Second one is a Stagecoach bus driver on the A28 from Sturry into Canterbury – a great example of why cyclists don’t use the bike lane, though I was trying to be considerate by at least cycling on the white line. The lane is narrow – certainly narrower than a pair of MTB handlebars (though I was on a road bike) – has drain covers, puddles, grit and is usually overgrown.
“The second bus driver shows how it should be done, and I gave them a thumbs up after they passed me! Police action warning letter sent to the company, didn’t even identify the driver despite the video clearly showing registration and route number plus the time of the incident.
“I now no longer bothering reporting these, as what’s the point of wasting 20 minutes filling in the website form when they don’t even ask to see the video – no Operation Snap in Kent. I also no longer cycle along the A28, too many close passes or people yelling at you to move over if you’re not in the ‘bike lane’.
“Fortunately, the vast majority of drivers around here are courteous and considerate when I’m on my bike, though of course it only takes one idiot to ruin your day. Or worse.”
Our thanks to Andrew for his submissions. As you may have noticed, submissions to NMOTD don’t have to be hot off the press, in fact we prefer to wait until we have an outcome from a police investigation, be it a warning letter, a fine or ‘No Further Action’. At least Kent Police still issues warning letters…
> 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@road.cc">info@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
5 thoughts on “Near Miss of the Day 947 and 948: Warning letters issued after two close passes on busy, narrow roads”
You did well to get any result from Kent Police. I gave up after reporting a couple of incidents and not even getting a request to submit video evidence. They don’t seem to care about roads policing. Well done for getting these 2 actioned.
Another great example of how dangerous these token ‘bike lanes’ are. The magic white paint relieves the driver of any obligation to leave a safe distance.
@bikeclips Famously, these painted lanes have been shown to be more dangerous than no lane at all.
If it doesn’t have bollards, it isn’t infrastructure
@bikeclips A slight correction, in the driver’s imagination it relieves them of any obligation, under the Highway Code guidance that only applies to a completely segregated lane, the same instruction to leave 1.5 m applies whether the paint is there or not.
Advice letters are worthless junk designed to appease the gullible, as the offenders are fully aware that the police don’t possess the the wit or the willingness to find out whether the driver has received a joke advice letter for the same offence in the past- and that’s even within the same force. Imagine the vanishingly low probability that they would trouble to find out about offences in the jurisdiction of a different cyclist-hostile force, and refusing to look at the video unless the cyclist has been KSI’d is pretty hostile- wait till they catch onto the Lancashire technique of just binning everything that comes into OpSnap from cyclists! Kent has clearly been on the Lancashire Stagecoach course:
ttps://upride.cc/incident/sk19evu_stagecoach42_closepass/
ttps://upride.cc/incident/px12dmy_stagecoach40_closepass/
These are minimum field of view videos- they would look even closer if I used wide angle like the OP