Near Miss of the Day 2: Taxi driver turns into path of cyclist

A cyclist riding to work in Leicester says her leg got caught between the bumper of a cab and her bike when the taxi driver  made a right turn into her path - even though she had right of way.

The Leicester Mercury has footage of the incident, which happened at the junction of London Road and De Montfort Street last Wednesday.

Cyclist Andree Maclean had shared it on Facebook after been encouraged to do so by colleagues at work who showed her that day's edition of the newspaper in which Jeff Boulton, whose son was killed cycling to work in Leicester last year, was calling on cyclists to share footage of near misses with police.

She said: "I tweeted Leicestershire Police, but they said they didn't have a system in place for reporting near misses. I'm not blaming them, they have enough to do as it is with incidents which actually happen, rather than almost happening."

However, as we reported last month, Leicestershire Police is currently working on introducing a system that would allow cyclists to submit such footage, in common with other forces, and it has also introduced a close pass initiative.

> Leicestershire Police may invite cyclists to send in video of dangerous driving

 Referring to the incident she filmed, she added: "I asked him 'didn't you see me?' and he replied 'I thought you were going to stop'!!!"

 "I asked him why he thought I would stop there. I was wearing bright colours and I have reflective straps on my bag.

 "My leg was trapped between my bike and his bumper. I wasn't seriously hurt. He reversed slightly, easing the pressure, freeing my leg.

 "When I got to the refuge with the bollard in the middle of De Montfort Street my legs just turned to jelly and I had a bit of a wobble about what had just happened.

 "It just hit me all of a sudden and you think about what just happened, it was quite scary. It takes a big effort to get back on your bike.

 "At least the driver was apologetic and came over to check that I was okay." 

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 in to 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 Close Pass of the Day will keep rolling on.

If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it us at info [at] road.cc (subject: Near%20Miss%20of%20the%20Day)  or contact us via the road.cc Facebook page.