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news
Near Miss of the Day 48: Rider finds lorry driver overtaking car on wrong side of road around blind corner
The latest video in our Near Miss of the Day series is one of the scariest we've seen, with a cyclist in Wiltshire capturing the moment he rounded a corner in a village near Trowbridge to find a lorry on the wrong side of the road coming straight at him.
Grahame Hale, who initially posted the footage to the Trowbridge Cycling Club Facebook page, was riding at 23 miles an hour according to his Strava data as he came down Common Hill in Steeple Aston on Monday.
Coming around the corner, he was confronted by the articulated lorry and barely had enough room to the left to avoid being crushed.
The lorry driver was heading towards the blind junction when he decided to move to the wrong side of the road to overtake a car, which can be seen still moving in the video.
Rule 167 of the Highway Code says, "DO NOT overtake where you might come into conflict with other road users," with one of the examples given being when "approaching or at a road junction on either side of the road."
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 [at] 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.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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19 comments
I can't see that the HGV was overtaking a moving car when he made the move.
Cyclist should have gone slower round an unsighted bend.
The cyclist is at fault here. The HC states in Rule 170
The cyclist should have slowed down as he approached the junction as he didn't have clear visibility. The lorry driver was about to turn and needed more space due to the size of his vehicle - I don't see how he could have done that differently.
HGV driver had right of way. He had priority. Basic Highway Code.
We don't know where exactly he was going, or what was happening with the car, who may have been behind the whole time. We can't even see if there was another obstacle which he was indicating right to overtake. We don't have the full picture.
In order to turn left, he would need to swing his vehicle out to the right. It's common practice for longer vehicles. He was indicating right, but that may have been unrelated. We just don't know.
He was already on that side of the road before the cyclist turned in. Similar to a pedestrian already crossing a road before a vehicle turns in.
Cyclist bloody lucky though. Squeaky bum time.
Artic driver is signalling to turn left at the junction, when they reach the give way line, if you look carefully at the video & rear light clusters.
cyclist takes the turn just like a motorist and worse keeps his foot in, unsighted as to what might be behind the lorry as well as the junction itself, clearly taking it for granted it would be clear.
His positioning into the junction is wank too, everything wrong.
Basically cycling like atwat and a dangerous twat at that!
Never mind the change of shorts, what do you think the cyclist's heart rate was?
Don't hug the left hand kerb when turning left. Stay out and enjoy the view.
Lorry driver is about to turn RIGHT, is on the left to give him room to round the corner. The car was following.
almost, mirrorman.
Which vid did you watch? Not, apparently, this one.
Is about to turn right and is on the right. Don't think he could have been much further to the right. Not sure how anyone can describe this as left.
Errm, that truck seems determined to cut the corner and is clearly in the wrong. The bike's speed is merely a contributing factor and you'd have a reasonably expectation to not meet an artic head on.
1/10.
Pure speculation on what the car was doing. It must've been stationary for a while. The lorry driver had to make a difficult decision to choose to pass that car, that close to the junction. The driver would've had to think how he was going to swing the trailer around that junction next.
I agree that the rider took the junction too fast and, as has been said before, it could have been a parked car rather than a lorry. If that was me I would've given myself a telling off, shortly before changing my shorts.
Trucker had every choice... knowing the length of the vehicle and where the front of it would be by the time the rear has passed the car he could have waited, or honked, asked them to move, etc etc. Given that road layout it's not far off passing on a blind corner as far as the cyclist (or a car) would be concerned. If it was a car they'd just hit the truck probably and the trucker would have been at fault I imagine... mean the car is still moving, why would you pass a slowly moving car approaching a blind junction in a HGV?
It may well be that the car was stopped when the HGV driver started to pass it, and the car seems to be far enough away from the junction as to not be dangerous parking, so who's fault would this have been if there had been a collision?
Still as scary as f**k though.
Exactly my thoughts.
As both an HGV driver and a cyclist I would take a guess that the car was stationary when he started to move out.
Agreed. If you can't see the road ahead then proceed with caution just like this rider didn't! If there'd been a badly parked vehicle on the left and oncoming traffic he'd have been in even more trouble.
Bad riding, the trucker had no choice.
The car is moving when we seee it, this is after the truck has passed, so it may have been stopped when he started the manouever.
However entering that corner at 23 mph seems a bit reckless, "all road uses should be able to stop in the distance they can see is clear ahead" is a mantra that needs to be drummed in to everyone using our roads.
I don't even see any noticable slowing down from the rider in this instance, once he gets passed the front of the truck getting out quickly makes a lot of sense but take a lot of bottle, I think I woul have been slamming the brakes on in terror.