Near Miss of the Day 214: Two close lorry passes on one ride (includes swearing)

I've spoken to lorry drivers before about the number of gears on their trucks and their need/desire to never apply the brakes.

On the one with the turning car, he actually seems to set out to give decent room. It seemed to change the moment his metal tonnage may come into contact with another or god forbid he'd have to use the brake. It's probably quicker over a lifetime of 'professional driving' just to squash the odd cyclist!

Don't bother reporting to police because they only think a child on 13mph e-scooters are "extremely dangerous" and having a 40 ton lorry pass within inches at speed is just one of those things.

I hope the drivers die of a horrible excruiating heart attack!

This is a classic case of cyclists trying to do the ‘right thing’ by sticking to the marked cycle lane, and because of the shiteness of the lane’s positioning, it’s absolutely the worst thing a cyclist could do at that point. Yet again whoever put that lane in had no clue what they were doing. 2 cycles riding abreast, would have made what either of those idiots in the trucks did, virtually impossible, but having that stupid cycle lane marking, encourages cyclists to put themselves in the absolutely worst position in that scenario. The idiot in the car, was just a brain dead fool, there’s not a lot anyone can do to mitigate for that.

Paint makes it safe

"The worst one was the 1st but probably the most dangerous was the second one.”
????
Not sure i understand that observation.

The first looked like a very common pass of a driver who doesn't show any respect to the space that should be given to a cyclist.

The second one was clearly horrendous. The driver nearly killed him.

Silly season seems about right. Had an unusually  high number of dangerously close passes on Sunday on a group ride.

On the first pass, not cycling within the cycle lane markings, but rather a strong secondary may have helped the HGV driver to see sense.  With the second pass, really poor driving, and the cyclist did well to slow up.

Both incidents were due to the "infrastructure". I have to deal with those half wdith cycle lanes on my commute and people see them as a seperate lane rather than the gutter that they are.

I've had buses and lorries almost brush my elbows as they go past 15mph faster than I am. They see the cyclist but they're in the inside lane so it doesn't matter. I would send the videos to TVP but I suspect the response is that I'm in the cycle lane and the lorry is in the main running lane so what is the problem?

That first one was your typical half asleep driver who thought he had room to pass (he was quite wide initially) but then the silver car turning right was in his space so he closed off the rider.  Drives me mad when that happens, the driver isn't paying enough attention to the road conditions.

That cyclist at the end seemed rather close too.

In both cases seem classic examples of poor infrastructure. Both seem to be lorry drivers looking at the white lines on the road rather than cyclist and the cycle lanes have them the feeling that it was fine. The drivers are responsible for their actions and poor driving, but the cycle lanes seemed to give both of them the idea that it was acceptable.

In the first case he had committed before the end of the cycle lane, which only ended because of the junction, and encourages over takes in a bad place. In the second all of the drivers (as normal) seem to think it’s fine if you don’t cross the white line.