Here’s one of the worst close passes we’ve ever seen on our Near Miss of the Day feature, as the driver of an HGV towing two trailers laden with hay passes a cyclist with millimetres to spare – but police took no action.
It was filmed by road.cc reader Robert, who told us: “It was taken using a first Gen Garmin Virb Elite, the clip is now some years old but still relevant,” and that he believes “might also have been used in a training presentation by a Northern Fire Service,” as well as being shared online elsewhere.
“Having previously been knocked off by a car driver who then reported me to the police for dangerous cycling, I decided it was time I invested in a camera, so I had some evidence to produce to the police,” Robert said.
“In the incident with the car driver, I was interviewed under caution by North Wales Police who swallowed the car driver’s version of events hook line and sinker, I was served with an NIP {Notice of Intended Prosecution] within the requisite 14 days , I was interviewed under caution and told the facts would be reported, I had a very stressful and nervous few months waiting to be eventually told No Further Action.
“From that time, I will only go out with camera,” he continued.
“Not long after the incident with the car driver, I had this narrow escape with the hay transporter.
“Knowing how the system worked, I made a written witness statement using North Wales Police Statement paper, and within 24 hours went down to the local area police station, where I handed a sealed envelope containing the statement and DVD with footage to a uniformed Police Constable.
“He looked at the envelope and told me he would give it to the Inspector as he was in and on duty.
“The envelope was addressed to the Officer in Charge, Denbigh Police Station,” said Robert, who added that he recognised two officers present – one the station sergeant, the other an inspector – who were both in uniform, and saw him.
“Many weeks later another officer called at my home address and told me that unfortunately my evidence had not been viewed in time and was outside the 14 days of the NIP, therefore no further Police Action,” Robert continued. “Well, there’s a thing!”
“Not being too happy about the manner in which it had been dealt with I made a complaint. The explanation? The envelope had remained sealed it had been sent from Denbigh Police Station to DHQ St Asaph, from there back to Denbigh for allocation and from there to Ruthin for allocation to an officer to deal with, that took longer than 14 days, so it was out of time. Really!”
> 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
44 thoughts on “Near Miss of the Day 533: Hay transporter lorry driver in very close pass”
A little bit of poo came out
A little bit of poo came out with that one. Looked bad on the thumbnail, looked worse in motion.
Any chance of more details with the car story as well. What happened and what porkies did the driver say to get you almost prosecuted?
Shocking on all fronts.
Shocking on all fronts.
Sweet jesus that’s horrendous
Sweet jesus that’s horrendous, you can actually hear the hay brushing the cyclist
As for the incompetence of the police, you can’t even laugh about that, it’s like a skit show
Terrible behaviour by both
Terrible behaviour by both the driver and the police.
I’m not sure I entirely get the NIP/14 days thing – it seems to exist purely to act as a get-out-of-jail-free card for drivers.
Is the point to give drivers a chance to remember the incident? Or to give registered keepers a chance to remember who was driving?
If the former, what possible excuse could drivers come up with that would have any impact? And if being notified within 14 days of an alleged offence is essential in order to give the accused a fair trial, why does it only apply to motoring offences?
Regarding registered keepers, maybe the 14 day rule could be an excuse to the offence of failing to provide the driver’s details. For a lot of offences, this would achieve a similar result to the current situation: NIP doesn’t arrive until >14 days; when it does the keeper can ignore it with no further consequences for themselves as the keeper, and unless the driver can be identified through another means then there’s no prospect of a conviction for them either. But where the driver’s identity can be ascertained through other means (e.g. camera footage), I don’t see why the driver shouldn’t still be prosecuted.
OMFG! You did very well to
OMFG! You did very well to remain upright and in three dimensions, there…
I think footage like this,
I think footage like this, especially after the Police have done fuck all, needs sending to the newspapers, road safety groups, your MP and anyone else you cares about human life on the roads.
That is utterly insane
That is utterly insane
Reasons why I don’t cycle anymore:
1….
2….
Complaint needed to the PCC.
Watching that made my bum
Watching that made my bum squeak!
That this video and the
That this video and the accompanying story isn’t immediately big news across all media tells you all you need to know about how little people/the media/the nation/the world cares about road safety.
This should be in every newspaper and all news websites, along with a story about how the police didn’t even contact the driver in any way, let alone prosecute, and how this is a miscarriage of justice. The fact that this sounds like craziness shows how immune we’ve become to the normality of bad driving (bad driving equating to life-threatening driving in this instance).
Because of this, the driver has probably long forgotten that this happened (if indeed he/she noticed), and that’s a crime in itself.
Maybe worth a shot submitting
Maybe worth a shot submitting it to a newspaper with a few column inches to accompany it? Who knows, they might like a story about Boris’ golden age or whatever angle, and actually run with it. The Graun seems to most likely, they do regular stuff on bikes/cycling.
Thats straw, not hay…
Thats straw, not hay…
******* scary though!
anagallis_arvensis wrote:
I’ve lost count of how many times people on here have been told to stop using the ridiculous straw (man) argument.
But hay, who cares?
What is the basis of the 14
What is the basis of the 14 day limit? I mean, other crimes don’t just get ignored if the police don’t do anything within 14 days.
Institutionally anti-cyclist
Institutionally anti-cyclist
That’s as bad as it gets –
That’s as bad as it gets – then comes the trailer.
Shocking that the police took no action. It was reading cases like this, where they’d not even looked at the footage, that prompted me to chase my submission up after 7 days. I think if I hadn’t done that, there’s a chance it could have been overlooked too.
Lucky the cyclist didn’t
Lucky the cyclist didn’t relax and move out after the first trailer. I’ve had a double DHL lorry pass fairly close once, nowhere near as close as this but it was still very uncomfortable waiting for it to finally pass.
I’d be complaining to the IOPC. There are numerous people within the police that are complicit in this driver getting off scot-free when he shouldn’t ever be getting behind the wheel of a vehicle ever again. The cyclist was very close to becoming another statistic.
Incompetency of the highest
Incompetency of the highest order from the police on this one, can only hope that if they had not let it expire before looking they would have done the right thing. Absolutely atrocious driving and appalling that it was let go with no consequence.
Presumably this is from the bad old days before they could accept emailed/uploaded evidence.
That is proper scary!
That is proper scary! Absolutely nowhere to go for the rider, and just centimetres from being knocked into either the trailer or the hedge, with either outcome meaning almost certain death or serious injury. Truly dangerous driving by the lorry driver.
This incident is also another example that shows how the system in place for dealing with such things is completely unfit for purpose.
That needs a formal complaint
That needs a formal complaint about the mismanagement of a case in which there was ample evidence. Shameful.
Their Chief Constable says this, “My desire is to make North Wales the safest place in the U.K. and this vision plays an integral part in achieving this aim.”
You are, of course, a long way from fulfiling your desire, CC Foulkes
I may be wrong but I think
I may be wrong but I think the police can still send a letter to the driver informing him/her that the standard of driving is not acceptable, even after 14 days. A poor substitute but at least the driver will know his driving was not good enough. I’m convinced that some drivers think this sort of driving is perfectly acceptable. Did the police do this?
Absolutely attrocious goes without saying and I’m glad you are OK. Thank you for trying to get the police to do something on behalf of us all.
So when the complaint is made
So when the complaint is made by a driver against a cyclist, they leap into action and follow the rules and everything gets done pronto, but when a cyclist makes a complaint about a driver, nothing gets done and some extraordinarily pathetic excuses are made; that’s a very special kind of incompetence. Definitely time for an official complaint.
Even more frightening is that if the trailer had hit the cyclist, the driver wouldn’t even have noticed and would probably never have been traced or charged.
That’s not police
That’s not police incompetence, that is misconduct. This should be escalated. That they wasted no time in persuing you for dangerous cycling but deliberately ignored this report clearly showing dangerous driving with possible intent to injure shows that the police in this area detest cyclists as much as the Clarksonites. If you had been killed, because of the previous warning you were given it would have probably not even been investigated for foul play by the driver and presumed you were dangerous cycling.
It is an accepted fact in
It is an accepted fact in Wales that the Police will never touch a farmer, its all a Freemason thing.
This is not a conspiracy theory just a fact I know from living in Wales.
This is why they turn a blind eye to all the hunting foxes with dogs that takes place even though its illegal.
Even my father in law is a freemason and he is just is a pest controller for many of the farms and they all scratch each others backs.
Why does this 14 day limit
Why does this 14 day limit even exist? It doesn’t apply to other crimes, does it?
Isn’t it time it was abolished- or at least extended??
Why does this 14 day limit
Why does this 14 day limit even exist? It doesn’t apply to other crimes, does it?
Isn’t it time it was abolished- or at least extended??
Because the police don’t want it to be abolished! This is simply a handy dodge for them, like the other ones: we must have 2, 3, 5… minutes video before and after the incident etc. They just make those up. They know they are protected from complaints by other dodges: only a week ago Lancashire Constabulary refused to tell me who was responsible for the decision to take no action over a gross and fully documented red light passing offence and stated I would have to make a FoI request to find out. This is obvious obstruction of a justifiable complaint, so I wrote (as some naive person on here has previously suggested over another case) to the laughable Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner. They have written back today saying they had referred the matter back to Lancashire Police and ‘Goodbye’. It has gone to the even more laughable LC Professional Standards Department- this is the body responsible for the decision that a police officer was right to insist upon a confirmatory video from the offending vehicle in this case (sorry, I know you have all seen this before!) which was not, of course, available. What a surprise!
If you have alreay asked in
If you have alreay asked in writing that is already caught by FOIA so this is more bulls**t.
Velo-drone wrote:
That’s a very good point; what other crime is expunged after 14 days? robbery, assault, murder? No? So why is assault with a motor vehicle different? A crime is a crime is a crime, and there appears to be no good reason why car crime isn’t a crime after 14 days.
Just had a thought; does this apply to crimes committed on a bicycle?
Velo-drone wrote:
For low level crime (Magistrate’s Court) there’s a limit of 6 months, for more serious crime there’s no explicit time limit.
I think there does need to be a time limit for an NIP, and it needs to be fairly short. If you’re the registered keeper of a vehicle you have to say who was driving it at the time of the offence. You probably have a pretty good recollection of where you’ve been and what you’ve done over the last 2 weeks. I doubt you could recall where you were and what you were doing on a particular date 3 months ago.
Sending an NIP isn’t difficult. The problem is with the police (lack of resources or lack of giving a shit) not the law.
Have to say I used to submit
Have to say I used to submit footage that way too, but that was years ago and things have moved on a bit. The system piloted by north Wales police, operation Snap, has been adopted across Wales.
That said the overtake was truly apalling but I’m amazed there was actually a number plate visiblem not usually the case.
that was years ago and
that was years ago and things have moved on a bit
Not in Lancashire, they haven’t! LC refuses to join these schemes for downloading big video files, and simply claims they are ‘looking into it’. This ‘looking’ has been going on for years, and the reason for that is that they most definitely don’t want to be bothered with any of this indisputable evidence stuff.
Police Scotland can only take
Police Scotland can only take video by e-mail or physical media.
in the past, after I’ve reported it through 101, I’ve had to submit a poor, low quality video, highlighting the problem. You have to call 101 first and get a reference number, and have the reference in the subject line or it gets ignored.
If you’re unlucky enough that it needs a better look, a couple of officers will come around, watch it in high quality – and ask you to e-mail it at the HQ settings.
You explain that you can’t, as the e-mail size limit is to small, so you offer to Dropbox / OneDrive / G-Drive or even WeTransfer … only to be told they can’t accept them like that as they’re not allowed access to these sites.
You can’t put them on YouTube because it risks comprising any trial…
Eventually, an officer had to make a 30-odd round trip to my house – in lockdown – with a memory stick …
And then you hear nothing …
Police Scotland can only take
Police Scotland can only take video by e-mail or physical media.
Yes, that’s standard police dodging tactics all right! For anyone who wishes to see more police tricks, see my post below with the APC van photo (it’s not about that offence here), then now read on….
The complaint to the police was intended to be about the decision to ignore a red light crashing incident, but the police refused to tell me who made the decision. I complained to the PCC about Lancashire Constabulary obstructing a complaint, the PCC referred the matter back to the police who replied today suggesting I could use the LC website to make a complaint about a specific officer! The online form requires you to give the name of the officer. Even LC is not genuinely that thick- obstruction, obstruction, obstruction at every step…the story continues
More proof that UK Police are
More proof that UK Police are F&*£ING useless.
That driver should have been prosecuted.
I’m raging watching this.
As usual the police don’t want to know.
One of the main reasons why I
One of the main reasons why I have a helmet mirror and a Fly6!
Agreed – shocking behaviour from the driver and the Police.
how does the helmet mirror
how does the helmet mirror help in that situation ? other than to give you a terrifying premonition of whats about to near damn kill you, you cant alter your line to disuade a vehicle like that coming through, its already overtaking with oncoming traffic knowing its got to rob you of the tiny amount of space theyve given you to avoid not colliding with the cars, and theres no gap in the hedge or gutter you can escape to, thats youve got to hold on to the handlebars,hope and pray to any deity you believe in kind of pass.
I ride with a mirror. If I
I ride with a mirror. If I see something as dangerous as that coming up behind I will look for an opportunity to pull over safely and let it pass, or move right into the middle of the lane (and then some) to make it totally clear there is no room to pass. Even turning round to look at the driver, so they know I’ve seen them.
Most of the time it’s very effective as I see vehicles from a long way off, so have time to do this (although occasionally I’ll miss a fast approaching vehicle and it’s a pain having to regularly glance down). I’ve got my eye on a garmin varia radar, but can’t justify the cost at the moment.
I was terrified by a lorry
I was terrified by a lorry pass a long time ago. He like this guy gave me sod all room and the slip steam was buffeting me. I am pretty sure this one is worse. I think you will remember this one for a long long time.
Chist on a bike. That is
Christ on a bike. That is appalling driving. Especially as it is so easy to relax after a lorry has gone past, and go under the trailer.
And it is appalling policing too.
Jesus wept. I flinched in my
Jesus wept. I flinched in my comfy desk-chair. I’d have properly crapped it on the bike. Utterly useless response from the police.
Appalling. Utterly appalling.
Appalling. Utterly appalling. That driver should not be allowed on the road. Period.
Horrific, totally horrific.
Horrific, totally horrific.
That must have been terrifying.
Typical incompetence by the Police as well.
I think some drivers of long
I think some drivers of long vehicles forget that they are not in their compact hatchback. Once out of their perifieral vision you have been overtaken, so they move back to their normal road position, forgetting there’s another 14.7m (48ft) still to pass. There’s a local firm of cowboy coach drivers that have squeezed me into the kerb a few times. On one occassion I noticed the driver looking over through the passenger door – I guess once I was out of view he felt he had overtaken.
That is horrendous. And
That is horrendous. And actually makes me quite sad. If he had wobbled he might not be here now. He might have children. They might make a positive impact on the world, in the future. They would be torn apart, multiple lives changed forever.
What do you all think about taking primary more or less the whole time. They’ve not then got room to threaten your life. Sure the Highway Code (expect anyone on HM’s highways to know that?) says tuck in, but I’d argue that people will much less frequently drive through the back of you than try to squeeze through a nonexistent gap. Whadya’all reckon?
Yours, depressed.
I appreciate that this is a
I appreciate that this is a few years old, but what was the actual resolution of the OP’s complaint? He’s been given an explanation why his complaint (re the hay wagon) was mishandled (basically, our admin procedure is crap), but no apology or some input how they are going to improve procedures? Did the constable pass on the envelope as promised and if so, why did the duty inspector not act on it?