Today’s near miss offers an unusual vantage point. The footage was not shot by the cyclist, but by the cameras attached to the bus.
The incident occurred earlier this month in Herne Hill.
Simon said: “I don’t run cameras, but this close pass was unusually disturbing so I did a Subject Access Request for the bus’s CCTV, which has just come through.
“I would have reported to the police but now it is too late, such is the process to get the CCTV.
“As you can see, the bus barrels through the lights just as I’m pulling off at the top of Red Post Hill in London.
“The side camera then shows me pulling out sharply to avoid the bus – it must have been an inch or two from my bars. (It didn’t help that I had a picture strapped to my bag.)”
Simon received a predictably vague response from Stagecoach.
He was told: “I was concerned to learn of the incident you described as our driver training places much emphasis on sharing the road with cyclists.
“I can advise that a copy of the CCTV was passed to the garage manager responsible for the route and that action has been taken with the driver in regard to the event seen.
“I am not able to give details of the outcome, however, I can assure you that any sanction imposed would have been appropriate and intended to avoid any repetition of such behaviour.”
> 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
45 thoughts on “Near Miss of the Day 446: Close pass of cyclist caught on bus’s own cameras”
I’d have taken primary there,
I’d have taken primary there, but that may have made it worse. Did the driver even notice the cyclist?
Driver needs to be sacked for
Driver needs to be sacked for that. Dangerous driving.
More concerned with carrying
More concerned with carrying speed as it went through the red light.
I normally stop in the middle
I normally stop in the middle of the lane at lights, if a driver can’t see you there they must be blind, also makes it very difficult to squeeze past like that and I can still accelerate faster than a bus 0 to 15ish
What if the bus is already
What if the bus is already traveling at 20+ mph?
Why not report it to the
Why not report it to the police straight away?
alexls wrote:
I would imagine because they didn’t have cameras of their own, and thought the police would just laugh and say, “Well, your word against their’s so off you pop, sonny-jim!”
I would be interested to know
I would be interested to know if it’s possible to report things like this to the police at the time, and follow up with the CCTV footage when it’s available. Is it when it’s reported that matters, or when the video evidence is supplied?
I agree.
I agree.
If you google “reporting
If you google “reporting incident to police…..” then put in the area where it happened it takes just 20 mins to fill out a report, include link to drop box footage etc. You will even get a crime no at the end.
I’ll tell you what – the
I’ll tell you what – the onboard cameras on buses are a bit sh!t, aren’t they?
The police have 2 weeks to
The police have 2 weeks to send an NIP to the driver/company don’t they? Which is exactly the amount of time it takes bus companies to conclude their investigation and send feedback to me when I have reported similar incidents.
I usually give the bus
I usually give the bus company three days to reply and then straight to the police.
Do the police ask the bus
Do the police ask the bus company for the video evidence then? My experience of the police is that they only take action if someone has been injured .
Perhaps report this to the
Perhaps report this to the local council as I’m sure the bus company need a license from them to run their services, doubt they will do anything but their might be a pattern. Also perhaps the local newspaper’s website, that will cause embarrassment for the company.
That’s a fast looking 20 mph.
That’s a fast looking 20 mph. You’d have thought that the camera would be recording speed?
Or another camera has that
Or another camera has that but not the cyclist. Or it is held separately.
Wow. And the red light jump
Wow. And the red light jump too (I didn’t notice it untill I read the comments).
Driver should be fired. And the police should have prosecuted on both counts.
The 14 day limit is a bad joke because it can take time to get the evidence.
The bus driver didn’t jump
The bus driver didn’t jump the light.
The amber light is much brighter than the red and the green lights. If you look carefully, you can see that initially the red and amber lights are on, i.e. the lights are about to go green. The cyclist jumped the light, he was already about a bike length past the stop line when the green light came on (0.03 on the video). The bus was almost certainly behind his stop line at that time.
It looks to me that between
It looks to me that between the 28 and 29th seconds, where the slo mo is in effect, that the light goes from amber only to red only. While the bus is still behing the ASL.
Also this looks like the behavior of a speeding “Amber Gambler”.
The cyclist seemed to have gone through on amber alone.
It also seems like a busy junction, there are many other vehicles waiting at the other entrances to the junction. Why were there no vehicles waiting at this entrance? Maybe they had already gone through on the previous green.
Oh and no “Ambler Gamblers” coming from any other sides, if the light was just about to go green, that might be expected to be happening. Not that I’m saying that any motorist would go through a red light, only cyclists do that…
Edit. FIne points, well made.
I think it goes red/amber
I think it goes red/amber green. If you look at 4-7 seconds, traffic is moving from the opposite direction which is the standard for a 4 way (although you can get each point in turn on a few).
It’s changing from red to
It’s changing from red to green. You can see from the side view that the lights are red for the crossing traffic, and from the backwards view that traffic continues to come out from the same exit behind the bus.
Because of where the clip starts it’s hard to tell whether the cyclist goes through the red light – it looks like they may have been waiting beyond the stop line and moved off on amber.
The light goes amber > green just as the bus enters the advanced stop box, so technically it didn’t jump the lights, but there’s no way the driver could have been confident that it would have been green, or the junction clear, by the time they got there, so they shouldn’t have been approaching at that speed.
Indeed, the highway code does
Indeed, the highway code does not say red and amber means approach at speed and trust green will come on before you reach the line
It looks like the cyclist is
It looks like the cyclist is getting his left foot on the pedal when he first becomes visible, suggesting the lights have sequenced red to green, it also appears that at least two cars followed the bus through the lights.
Report them to the Traffic
Report them to the Traffic Commissioners.
Do it now, that was desperately bad driving.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/traffic-commissioners
I know an ex Stagecoach
I know an ex Stagecoach driver, he told me to always report it to them, apparently they take such reports very seriously. I reported a couple last year to them, an area manager called me, I had a good chat with him, he was very apologetic, at the end of the conversation he told me that my complaint wasn’t the first they had received concerning this driver, and they had sacked him.
You have to report. No point
You have to report. No point in uploading to social media. Just appalling comments and you are just identifying where you ride for drivers and bike thieves to find you.
dog_film wrote:
Considering the police rarely take action, companies like Stagecoach need to be forced into taking appropriate action and often the only way to do this is by putting it on social media.
biker phil wrote:
Sorry to disappoint you but they didn’t, he’s still driving for Stagecoach because they were lying to you.
Anyone who works as a manager in a Customer Service environment has this in their box of ‘go-to’ responses for complaints about the actions/attitudes of staff.
One computer engineer I worked with was ‘sacked’ 3 times because of customer complaints about him, just had to make sure we didn’t send him back to the same sites.
AND on the other side of the
AND on the other side of the coin, cyclist are all over the road just lately & will not move over.
Yeah because 1500 kg v 10 kg
Yeah because 1500 kg v 10 kg and 160 kph v 50 kph is equivalent.
I didn’t realise road users had to get out of the way of bigger road users. Might is right then.
That would have been handy last night when I was stuck behind someone doing 26mph.
You can’t possibly ride with
You can’t possibly ride with a comment like that?
Do you move over for cyclists
Do you move over for cyclists or do you feel entiled not to ?
And there are many car drivers driving with EMPTY SEATS and taking up a whole lane and psrtly responsible for gridlocks etc, whilst 2-wheels only take up a small portion of a lane and has negligible impact on the environment.
Get things into perspective before you demonise 2-wheel green travellers.
Be fair, its not going to
Be fair, its not going to hurt the driver, like me, Hit from behind by Merc van on rounabout, I was left with a broken body, Long time in hospital, driver of van walking around, he first said, I didnt see him appear in front, latter said I rode into side of Van, dispite my tyre mark on bumper, bumper paint on my rear tyre.
Double standards. What are
Double standards. What are saying? First “cyclists are all over the road” then this, if true, which is it?
A close pass and running a
A close pass and running a red light – quite a few penalty points there. Report it ASAP.
I can hear readers groaning
I can hear readers groaning ‘change the record!’, but I’m saying it again. The police here have even ignored red light crashing 2 seconds after the change. I’m getting some action on the less serious cases at the moment (possibly related to me harping on about the suject on this site and providing one red light crashing video where the culprit was a large SUV towing a large trailer at speed) but I’m still suspicious that it’s a con and there is no real intention to prosecute. So it makes discussion about marginal passing of red lights a bit academic. If the police would just publish figures…”forget the Highway Code and the legislation, around here if you get through the lights less than ….. seconds after they turn red, you’re OK with us!”
”I am not able to give
”I am not able to give details of the outcome, however, I can assure you that any sanction imposed would have been appropriate and intended to avoid any repetition of such behaviour.”
Depot manager to driver ‘Oi John try not to hit a fuckin cyclist next time’
‘yea, alright’
‘good, on yer way.’
I thought the NIP process was
I thought the NIP process was a policy not a law, there’s no statute of limitations in the UK. The police are supposed to review any evidence provided and then act upon it. Go back to your local cop shop and raise a stink.
29 seconds in the bus is on
29 seconds in the bus is on green.
It was close and the driver should be penalised, however, if that was me I wouldn’t have carried on to be nearly squashed between the bus and lights at 14 seconds.
Regardless of right and wrong ride for your life. There is no point saying I was in the right when you are in hospital or worse.
Looking at the footage 49 seconds in, How far away is this?
What do you think?
The bus driver could say “I thought I was 1.5 metres away, and that the cyclist was cutting across the road,” regardless poor driving.
I know what I think? As I am not a believer in this 1.5 metre rule, It should be pass at a safe distance.
Toorie wrote:
You must have a lot of faith in the police and courts to think that would work better than having something measurable.
I have no faith in the police
I have no faith in the police or courts, its too late then. You need to make life or death decisions on the road there and then.
In this given scenario, I would have been in the middle/primary of the advanced stop line. This would have been a more visible position for drivers behind, if they did close pass at least you have space to move to. Looking and listening to traffic behind, left and right. I may even have run the red light, all depending on the left/right traffic, and the speed and amount of rearwards traffic.
where would you suggest the
where would you suggest the cyclist go at 14 seconds then ?
they cant shift left out of the way of the bus because that puts them on collision for the traffic lights or a garden wall, they cant brake because there are two cars following just as quickly through as the bus and who probably ploughed through on that if the bus can get through so can I mindset and wont be expecting the cyclist to even be there as theyve arrived with the bus hiding the cyclist.
I cant really see the cyclist had much choice other than to do what they did given they had about 1sec to react.
Pavement.
Pavement.
How can that not be a choice as an escape route?
Break the law to live. Simple. Always try to have an escape route.
Looks like the cyclist was
Looks like the cyclist was carrying lots of bog rolls. Sure that would have reduced the impact !!
On a seroius note: I have experienced more close calls with bus driver twats (Stage Coach & National Express) than any other incidents. They’re lethal and the few just don’t care about cylists.
Ride defensively not aggresively. Take your space on the road at junctions & let them pass when you can is my view.