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news
Near Miss of the Day 87: Left-turning coach driver squeezes cyclist into fence
Today's video in our Near Miss of the Day feature took place outside the Royal Air Force Museum at Cosford in Shropshire.
Submitted by road.cc reader Paul Roscoe, it happened on 26 January and shows the moment a coach driver continues his left turn as the rider approaches, forcing Paul to take evasive action but with the perimeter fence giving him very little room for manoeuvre.
Paul, sho believes the coach is connected with the base, which remains an RAF training facility, told us: "Once I had swung off the road the driver stared at me as though this was my fault (well he is a professional driver) and with no gesture or comment and drove on, turning in to the main entrance to the base 100 metres further along.
"I tried to complain by phoning the base after watching the recording but the person I spoke to on the switchboard was unhelpful and did not know who would deal with any complaint."
Paul added that he had sent stills from the video to West Mercia Police and completed an online 'bad driving' report.
The police have since got in touch and asked him to submit the full video.
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.
I have sent copies of stills taken from the video to West Mercia Police and filled in an online “bad driving” report form but as yet have had no response
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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62 comments
What about it? Are you talking about submissive defensive where everyone walks all over you or aggressive defensive where you'd have moved into the middle of the road to make sure that the semi-blind incompetent coach driver would have had a much better chance of seeing you thusly and not attempted to kill you?
Im talking about being aware of your situation and namely aware that folk make mistakes and are numpties and avoiding a confrontation its nothing about letting folk walk all over you but if you want to let a blind numpty drive all over you so beit;there's no point in being right and six foot under though.
This old chestnut is getting a bit of a workout on here these days.
Bit of a non sequitur, given that the video didn't end with the cyclist being squashed and that people posting on here tend not to be dead.
It's also a really shit argument. I might counter with 'no point being wrong and allowing the current moton movement to rid the roads of cyclists and therefore not being able to ride your bike anyway', but that's not as dramatic, or snappy. There are also countless examples of causes having been furthered by people's deaths. I'm not advocating martyrdom - I don't think we're quite there yet - but I am advocating stopping that waste of words.
So, please, take your advice yourself, but don't preach it as if it's some pearl of wisdom or anything remotely noble, and not just some way of justifying cowardice.
Sorry you don't like it but to me there's a line between beinng brave and brown trowser moment or even worse potentionally being dead (thankfully it didn't happen). I personally would rather be dominant and brave on the road and hopefuly avoid something happening through that but anticipate blind numpties and avoid the brown trouser moment or potentially worse
Yeah...
That's not really what 'there's no point in being right and six feet under' implies, though, is it?
Do as you like and good luck with it, but I'd rather cyclists had a bit of backbone and gave drivers shit for driving shittily. And guess what - they won't die doing it.
Don't worry I can give driver plenty of sh1t for sh1tty driving
I just like to plan ahead and anticipate to avoid squeaky bum moments it just makes it a more pleasant ride for me 
The 6 foot under is just an old adage and hopefully not a literal thing.
Did Joeinpoole also forget about the bit in your quaint British Highway Code about vehicles emerging from minor roads onto major ones needing to give way to traffic (Im pretty sure cyclists count too) on the afore mentioned major roads? Because Im pretty sure that this counts regardless of which way you are turning out of the junction.
An interesting rule of thumb I learned from a DVLA tester one time was that if your actions during a test make another road user take undue evasive action, then you’ve failed, sunshine. Had this been a test, that driver would have failed. Ergo his driving isnt up to scratch. Ergo it wasnt the cyclsts fault and no, he isnt required to be an accomodating door mat, a jolly good chap or any of that nonsense.
Had this been me I would have had a proper go at the muppet of a seat - steering wheel interface in the coach about his complete lack of judgement, with a side order of swearing.
The cyclist would have been cleaarly visible the moment he emerged from under the bridge if, anda big if, the highly trained professional had bothered to look. Where are the calls from Joeinpoole for the coach driver to share the road, or to stop, or at least to slow his manouvre Just a little bit, we are not that big.
Sorry, but to me the cyclist is in the wrong here. It's a sharp bend and the coach driver knows he needs all of the road to complete it. When he commits to the manoeuvre there are no other vehicles in sight to give way to. Having started his turn then any traffic subsequently arriving should either slow down or stop.
If the cyclist was driving a car instead would he have just ploughed on and crashed into the coach? That's basically what he did here. He should have slowed/stopped and allowed the coach to complete the turn. I have no doubt that he coach driver would have responded with a friendly wave of "thanks".
Decent road users know that sometimes you have to cede the right of way to other vehicles, particularly large and dificult to manoeuvre vehicles. You share the road.
I hope the police respond with some appropriate words of advice on road manners to this ignorant 'cyclist'.
I’ve read your comments and watched it again. I think you’re wrong.
If the coach driver saw the cyclist he should have waited. I think he didn’t look properly.
Seconded: the coach driver *may* have done a quick glance one way or the other, but going on the speed he was travelling he had no intention of actually stopping- if he even saw the cyclist, it was Just A Cyclist so he couldn't care less...
As I pointed out, he is already on the wrong side of the road before the bend (7-8sec mark) and confirmed by a look at the junction on Google sat view, this is the only way to get a coach round the bend. So yes, he could have stopped just before the bend and seen the cyclist, but he would still have been on the wrong side at that point. He had no other option than to be on the rhs before the cyclist came into view, and still make the bend.
Probably should not have had that vehicle on that road, then...
Very much this, if the coach was too large to use the road safely, it should bloody well be there. And as for trying to defend the driver. Seriously? No wonder standards of driving are falling if you think that that is acceptable.
I've got a wee example of piss poor driving, and reaction, that you can further make fools of yourselves if you like in an attempt of apportioning blame.
As the coach driver did not have to check for emerging traffic on his right his full attention should have been on the advancing cyclist and he should have stopped before making his manoeuvre. Even if he was on the wrong side of the road, stopping his vehicle would have negated the cyclist from being pinned against the fence. Both would then have had ample space to carry out a safe pass of each other. The blame is entirely on the coach driver in this instance as he could/ should have given way .
He may not have any other options with respect to his road position to make the turn, but he certainly had other options with respect to his speed in taking the corner and with respect to squeezing the cyclist against the fence.
It might be that the cyclist would have found the bus blocking the road after the turn, but the cyclist would then have had options to manoeuver around a stationery bus or to then give the bus sufficient space to safely take the turn. This would have been infinitely preferable to what actually happened.
Exactly this. The best possible solution would have been for the coach driver to slow to a stop rather than continue his ill advised manoeuvre; irrespective of his forced road position.
You have made a couple of mistakes there.
Firstly and most importantly cyclists are classed as vunerable road users. As a motorist if you come across a vunerable road user who is in your path it is your duty to avoid causing an incident by slowing down or stopping. (If you are a bitter old codger you may shout at them but expect to be given a mouthful back if that vunerable road user happens also to be a motorist of any kind.)
Secondly while this is an adult cyclist the cyclist could have easily been a teenager or younger child. So they simply wouldn't be expected to know that a coach would use all the road to turn.
So yes the cyclist may be ignorant but as a vunerable road user they are not expected to know the large turning circles of coaches or HGVs so the coach driver - who has more training than a car or light van driver - should have been the one to stop.
Oh come on! Watch the video. The cyclist can clearly see that his way is going to be blocked from some distance back ... but he simply carries on at full speed regardless until he runs himself (yes, himself) into a fence. It appears that the coach driver did stop too. The cyclist's lack of road-manners didn't give him much choice.
How many of you experienced cyclists can put your hand on your heart and say you would have ridden in exactly the same manner as the cyclist in the video?
It seems to me that many of these GoPro riders deliberately create or worsen-by -their-own-actions situations that could have been avoided by simply easing off the pedals for a few seconds. Had the cyclist involved here done that then there would have been no video for him to post, no report to the hard-pressed police and both parties would have continued their journeys without incident.
I agree there are attention seeking YouTube cyclist warriors out there. I also agree I would have ridden differently, but everyone does all of the time. However, the black and white of it is that the coach driver should not have pulled out. Whether they did so knowing the cyclist was approaching or not is the only debate and the motorist is in the wrong either way.
The cyclist can’t be ‘in the wrong’ as he did pull over against the fence as soon as he saw the coach would have hit him, had he had continued ahead.
Couple of observations here. If as you say there was no traffic visible to the coach, how come in the video we can see him approach the turn and then pull onto the wrong side of the of the road in the face of oncoming traffic?
Your point about sharing the road is very valid and the coach driver should follow your advice. He should not have driven onto the wrong side of the road until he was certain that other drivers had become aware of what he was doing and stopped for him to continue. Instead he took a view of 'I'm bigger than that cyclist, they'll have to give way to me'.
Oh yes, I forgot, he's an ignorant professional driver.
Can't wait for near miss 100. I bet it's going to be sometime we will tell our children about.
Yes there are rather large blind spots caused by large A pillars, but all of these blind spots can be eliminated by movements of the drivers head and neck. To believe that the drivers head should remain fixed when carrying out such manouvers in their large and dangerous vehicles is frankly ludicrous.
Well done to the cyclist for keeping calm. I’d have been letting the driver know what i’d thought if his driving.
I guess Loughborough University got it completely wrong then.
If the driver sits completely still and makes no effort to check then there will be blind spots, but surely drivers should be expected to make some effort? Or we could just ban the bloody things as too dangerous.
They should be banned on city and town streets.
Not saying this is the case at all, but this link shows it is possible for the cyclist to be invisible in an extreme circumstance.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33622318
I'd suggest that your link actually proves that if drivers can't be bothered looking thoroughly they won't see things. If every driver who behaved like this instantly lost job and licence, suddenly invisible things would become visible.
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