Video: Angry Arriva bus driver’s close pass of cyclist

This is another example of conflict caused by crap infrastructure. The cycle path (inadequate width, sandwiched between two streams of traffic) is interrupted through the junction where it is most needed, and the carriageway is bordered by steel railings which remove any possible escape route and form a crush hazard. This is the antithesis of sustainable safety, which, among other things includes Forgivingness -- the principle that the consequences of a mistake by a road user should not be fatal. Two other principles, Homogeneity and Predictability, are also disregarded. Vehicles of different masses and different speeds should not be mixed, e.g. cycles and buses, and the provision of a cycle lane that summarily disappears when needed most, only to re-appear after the hazard, has clearly set up expectations in the bus driver (cycles should be at the left of the carriageway) that the environment does not support.

The cyclist was perfectly correct to take prime position, and do so ahead of the hazard when it was safe to move into the flow of motor traffic, and he moved back into the cycle lane as soon as he was clear of the junction and a rather large pothole in the cycle lane.

The bus driver clearly needs better education about the needs of vulnerable road users, at the very least. 0.7m is not enough passing space and it was a clear attempt to intimidate a rider using a large vehicle. Arriva should be ashamed. But let's put the primary blame where it is due -- bad road planning.

It should be noted that the place with the railings is actually the second potentially lethal part of this junction. For the cycle lane to be in that position between two streams of traffic -- those turning left and those going straight on -- the left turners must have had to move to the left across the path of cyclists going straight on, at an angle where visibility of the cyclists would have been very poor. We had an example of a collision caused by a similar situation only last week (http://road.cc/content/news/172152-video-driver-left-hooks-cyclist-upgra...). Again, the cyclist was absolutely right to move to prime position before that reaching that hazard -- and the planners were absolutely wrong to build it like that.

References:

Sustainable Safety: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2012/01/campaign-for-sustainable-sa... (scroll past the Strict Liability section)

Junction Design: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/04/state-of-art-bikeway-design...

Get Aviva to put their drivers through a Safe Urban Driving course..........they need to be educated to see a different perspective before they change their behaviour.  All too frequent throught the country!  Here's an example provider!  http://www.outspokentraining.co.uk/training-scheme/safe-urban-driving-co...

guys its not a competition to see how close to sliding your knee down the side of a vehicle you can get before you consider it a close pass.

its a bus, its at least 18 tonnes block of metal with all the aerodynamic properties of a breeze block, that regardless of not lopping physical chunks off the cyclist is still going to have caused problems due to the turbulence of such a large vehicle at that speed passing within hand touching distance. if I can stick my right hand out and knock on the window, its too close.

it was a very obvious punishment pass, and frankly that a driver of a vehicle like that,suffers road rage in that manner, ought to make him totally unsuitable for the job he is doing.

that road has an awful surface, if its not broken bits of tarmac, there are sunken access covers, and potoles, its littered with things that can easily throw a cyclist off a bike, and the bus driver isnt giving any room to make a mistake, and a mistake at that point will cost you your life.

and its precisely stuff like that which means cycling levels will stay miserably low, my friends arent going to swap their cars for riding a bike to go toe to toe with a bus like that, you show that to a non cyclist and it will scare them off ever considering riding a bike on our roads.

and maybe it wouldnt be a daily occurence if we actually complained about it abit more.

I was mightily impressed by how much the cyclist gave space to the bus whilst overtaking it

My own incident with a bus recently. Although the bus company agreed with my view after viewing the cameras on the bus and were going to have words with the driver, wether they did I don't know.

http://youtu.be/oRYdVFmLyP4

And now a rather happier article about this morning's interaction with an Arriva bus driver: http://wp.me/p2xK0U-jn

You think that's bad? check out this guy, running a red in a bus narrowly avoiding a cyclist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-YBEK-JLqM

As someone who commutes into manchester 3 times a week im struggling to see what the major issue is here??  not really news is it...........

Whilst I don't agree that use of the cycle lane there is particularly dangerous, I myself use it every day of the week, I do feel that there is an issue in general with bus driving in Bolton.

On Tuesday I was heading out of the town towards Manchester and found myself being tailgated by a First Bus on route 37, he passed me far closer than this on two occasions so at traffic lights I politely indicated he should give me more room.
His response was to pass even closer, pushing me into a curb.
At the next set of lights I noticed this collision had left me with two large bulges in my sidewall, so I turned home in an effort to get back, albeit very slowly.
Sadly the tyre blew immediately, leaving me with a 5km walk in rain, and a bill for tyre, tube and wheel truing.

Something does need to be done about this very poor attitude amongst bus drivers here, regardless of company, as this was far from an uncommon occurence.
 

Quote:

Hazard lights might be for the car that turned right just in front ?
Crazy how the two lanes just become one - that's not right.

Cars pulling out in front of you and even blocking the two lanes when turning right from the side roads in quite normal on that stretch.

The road continues as two lanes, although not marked, for another mile or so.
 

This is clearly a punishment pass & I find Arriva's response staggering.  Although, I do agree it was maybe not quite as bad as the riders reaction would have you believe.

The cyclist does everything right here, he takes primary position in the near side lane going through the junction & rightly so, these are locations where given two lanes, motorists often exercise poor judgement and it becomes tight to have a bike & two cars directly alongside each other, battling for the same space. He is right to take primary position to force vehicles behind him to use the offside lane only and it is clearly this that has inexcusably hacked off the bus driver.  After the junction the cyclists moves back into the secondary position & despite having much more room to give the cyclist, he flicks him the bird and does a close, if not quite dangerously close, punishment pass.

The issue here is the poor conduct of the driver, he has not got the right to be hacked off about anything whatsoever here, but clearly he is & then the reaction from Arriva, is beyond poor & is downright despicable to be honest.

The cyclist is a road user and is entitled to take what he considers to be a safe line. The so-called cycle lane is merely paint on the road. The bus driver was so busy gesticulating at the cyclist, as he passed too close and failed to notice the car turning right immediately in front of the bus to the extent that he almost "T-boned" the car. His driving style was agressive with no consideration of safety zones which are of particular importance for all PCV drivers in respect of the safety and comfort of his passengers.

The driver should be relieved of driving duties and reassessed. He clearly has issues of temperament.

As a retired police officer my current knowledge of the finer points of specialist legislation is incomplete in this aspect but he must hold both a Category D licence and Driver CPC - both of which should be suspended pending review.

As a Director of a Community Transport where we believe that a driver needs support we will always restrict them from driving duties, reassess and, where appropriate, retrain to the standard that we require of all of our drivers.

It looks like there was nothing in the lane to the right.
Hazard lights might be for the car that turned right just in front ?
Crazy how the two lanes just become one - that's not right.

Could have been worse

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/cyclesafety/article3322652.ece

Incidentally, I've asked the Council to sort out the road markings at the start - it is hard to tell which are the current markings that have worn away, and which are the old ones that they have failed to remove !

https://www.fixmystreet.com/report/724134

The cyclist's road postion was good and correct. In a system where cyclists are forced to share the roads with buses and large vehicles, not taking the cyclelane is all too often the safest option.

It's high time the drivers of larger vehicles learn their place in the world and respect that the road is not theirs, and it never will be.

I've seen and experienced much worse. However, if I was him I'd point out to Ariva the highway code illustration about what a safe pass is meant to look like.

Crap driving defended by idiot manager. You can tell by the car following the bus how much space the bus driver should have given

I love the one constant where the defense of the motorist always refers to the cyclist as being "in the middle of the road".  In every case, the cyclist is in the middle of a lane, one of many.  It's interesting how often this slip of the tongue happens in story after story.  It's like they're really complaining that the cyclist got in their way, but they know they can't say that.

It is a bad stretch of road. The cycle lane is useless wasteof paint. It's worth pointing out the rather large crack in the lane, next to the island just before the old Motor World shop (about 10sec in), it's enough to keep me  in the road.

Not so bad to get too irate, could of been wider.

That doesnt look too bad...i've had much worse........that said 99.9% of bus drivers are utter wankers - without a shadow of doubt the worst offenders on the road.