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OPINION
road.cc on GCN: Why we do Near Miss of the Day (pt 267. Or is it 268?)
Fri, Apr 26, 2019 22:16
23
Oh look it's us on GCNOver the weekend the Sunday Times declared victory for motorists in the ‘War on cyclists’ with a story claiming that according to a Sport England survey in the last 12 months 355,000 recreational and commuter cyclists had been driven off the roads by a combination of angry drivers and potholes, seeking sanctuary in Watopia and other virtual purgatories accessed from your spare room.
We dealt with the predictable but laughable attempt to divide cyclists and drivers in to two warring tribes in our coverage of the piece on Sunday, and also why the methodology used to obtain the figures quoted was flawed. We also followed up on Tuesday with Cycling UK’s response - in which they too condemned the Sunday Times’s writer’s attempt to cast the situation for cyclists on Britain’s roads as a purely Us Vs Them scenario.
Yesterday Youtube cycling channel, GCN entered the fray with the presenters of its magazine show, Simon Richardson and Dan Lloyd, having their say on the Sunday Times piece which Simon was made aware of by our story. Both deplored the “irresponsible rhetoric” of tribalism and war but also agreed that some cyclists were partly responsible for that tribal rhetoric - cyclists like...? Well, road.cc and our regular Near Miss of The Day feature apparently.
Simon: “To my mind it’s just fuel on the fire. It makes cyclists feel like they're unsafe on the road because they have a daily reminder, and also it makes it seem like motorists are just out to get us.”
Dan: “yeah I’d agree.”
But…
Dan: “the fact is though that there are incidents on a daily basis where a cyclist gets knocked off by a motorist.”
Me: “eh?”
(okay, that bit’s not in the vid).
I’m not going to have a dig at Dan and Simon: they are more than entitled to their opinion and I’m sure it’s shared by a lot of their viewers (and of you lot too) but as any student of NMoTD could tell them Near Miss of the Day doesn’t make it look like “motorists are just out to get us” for the very central reason that a goodly proportion of the incidents involve motorists who clearly hadn’t noticed there was a cyclist there to ‘get’ before they drove way too close on their life or death mission to get to work/home/Asda/B&Q or the drive thru McDonalds in as short a time as possible. That’s not stoking tribalism. It’s just taking a clear-eyed look at the way things too frequently are… if you’re not looking through the rose tinted lenses kindly supplied by your official eyewear sponsor*.
Anyway, what the above exchange makes me realise is that it's time for our annual (or is it bi-annual?) explaining of the reason we run Near Miss of the Day – for the benefit of those that don’t read far enough in to click on the big blue 'Why we run Near Miss of the Day' link near the beginning that takes you to the place where we explain. Or those, who like the drivers that so often feature in the clips, sail right past without noticing it's there. We're all more alike than we'd like to think .
First though: some things we don’t do it for. We certainly don’t do it for the clicks - it’s not a massive traffic driver, we don’t do it for the ads, or sponsorship (we have been offered that) or even to make ourselves popular with you, the users of the site – we know a sizeable minority of you hate it.
From a purely business sense doing it probably hurts us too. Sources in the cycle industry often tell us that some of our rivals seek to use NMoTD, and our news coverage generally, as a stick to beat us with. Oh well. The difference between us and most of them is that road.cc is owned, managed, edited and written by cyclists, who ride every day (mostly to work) and we’re interested in everything that's happening out there, including the bad stuff. And we assume that you will be too because in the end the bad stuff is outweighed by all the good stuff that riding a bike brings.
So here’s our standard response to questions about why we run Near Miss of The Day.
"We’re frequently asked in the comments on Near Miss of The Day (NMotD) videos what’s the point of running them?
"The point is to make a point about driving standards and the lack of consideration for vulnerable road users on UK roads. It’s also to show solidarity with our fellow cyclists, because as beezus fufoon pointed out commenting on NMoTD 31, real life through a lens doesn’t always look as scary as it actually is.
"In our view it’s worth acknowledging that for the person on the receiving end of a near miss or close pass it was a damn scary experience and one pretty much any regular cyclist in the UK can empathise with.
"We’re not trying to put anyone off cycling - we love it and it hasn’t put us off, you all clearly love it too and it hasn’t put you off. And yes, at the moment close passes and near misses are a fact of life of UK roads - but that doesn’t make them right. Pretending they don’t happen isn’t going to help anyone - it’s certainly not going to help solve the problem.
"We recognise that changing attitudes towards less vulnerable road users amongst all road users – including cyclists – is something of a water-on-stone exercise and that NMoTD is more than likely going to run to a big number before the stone starts to crumble, but it’s not something that is happening in isolation. Attitudes are changing, particularly police attitudes - led by the trailblazing work of the West Midlands Police and Cycling UK’s great Close Pass Mats initiative.
"Incidents highlighted in NMoTD are already regularly picked up by local news outlets and regional television and radio news and they’ve been the starting point for discussions on local radio stations and newspaper websites about how road users treat each other – so the water is starting to make a mark on the stone."
We are aware there’s a balance to be struck and between paying witness (if that’s not too grandiose a phrase) to what too often happens on on our roads and over-emphasising the scary bits. We don’t run anything like all the near miss videos we get sent (we watch them all) and as we’ve gone on the bar for publication has inevitably risen. I sometimes worry that our eye has gotten a little jaded and I’m keenly aware that as mentioned above what doesn’t look that close on camera often does look and feel a lot closer in real life.
I'm also aware that sometimes when I look at the homepage it often contains a dizzyingly diverse – shading in to random – mixture of cool, weird, interesting, bad, dumb, shocking, funny and unexpected (in pretty much every flavour of unexpected) stuff to do with cycling and I fret that maybe it's all too diverse and possibly random. Then I reflect that each of those words could also be used to describe different bits of my hour long ride to the road.cc office each day. And it often/usually contains a close pass too. The only thing the homepage doesn't have is sweat, and we probably want to keep it that way.
*road.cc – friendly, but will bite
road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.
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23 comments
NMOTD and such like pretty much finished road.cc for me. There was once a few things worth a read ever day. Now I just look at the blogs page, perhaps once a fortnight, to see if Jo Burt has penned anything; that's how I ended up looking at this.
The issue I have with NMOTD is that it ends up preaching to the choir, producing a fair amount of anger and (to more neutral observers) presenting the impression that we're all rabidly anti-motorist and think that taking a bike out onto the road is certain death.
I can't speak for where the other posters here ride, but I rarely get problems. I'm sure if you watched me ride, you'd see close passes (under 1.5m) but it just doesn't bother me. Otherwise, I've found far many more considerate drivers than inconsiderate ones, and I make sure to thank them appropriately.
road.cc in general suffers from a contained outrage problem. You see great comments and passionate people talking about injustices and problems for cycling, such as motorists getting off scot free because their offenses involved a car, even where there is intent. But the problem is, talking about it and demonstrating it here, on road.cc, accomplishes nothing for changing wider society. It just makes us all that little more paranoid and fearful out on the roads, and when you look at some of the comment sections over here, the sight of such vitriol (justified vitriol, but vitriol nonetheless) against drivers can be off-putting.
I might be wrong here. I can't know whether many of you are activists outside of road.cc, and I'd welcome being corrected if that's the case.
I wouldn't class myself as an activist, but since visiting road.cc and getting enthusiastic about road bikes, I've taken to using cameras and uploading suitable footage to the rozzers. I've also sent various letters to political "leaders" and "representatives" after reading both articles and comments on here.
I don't know if it's because I'm older, but when I used to ride my MTB around town, I'm sure that I was a lot angrier about bad driving - maybe it's because I'm more analytical of it now due to seeing NMOTD footage of other cyclists.
I do think the Sunday Times use of "victory" was misinterpreted, but Im not here to defend their article, it was a badly constructed piece, even if the point it was making was probably valid in a backward manner.
but I dont need to come to road.cc to get a virtual daily reminder the roads are unsafe, I get that reminder in full vivid reality of life nearly every second of every day Im on the road on a bike.
Certainly on every commute I will get close passed within 1.5metres multiple times on a journey, often more like well within half that distance, some Ive reported, some Ive thought why do I bother,as it hasnt changed anything.
A cyclist was killed just the other week on a road Ive ridden on several times in the past,I dont feel I really have to imagine too hard or create some wild theories around the circumstances of how that might have happened, and that could so easily have been anyone of us, me, one of my cycling friends, even GCN Dan or GCN Simon.
So for me watching near miss of the day, it firstly recognises there is an issue that close passes even exist and its a real issue, Road.cc are right not to ignore it.
But more importantly it makes you feel like you arent suffering alone, its like a sharing of ok this stuff is "normalised" to an extent, Im not the only one who attracts all the crazy/distracted/downright dangerous drivers like a magnet on my ride.
maybe some riders are so inured to being passed within inches, they normalise it,whilst they forget beginners are totally put off by that environment
Your website, so your choice what appears. Personally I found the near miss of the day feature unhelpful and antagonising.
That’s why I changed from being a daily visitor to an occasional one.
I already encourage my 10 year old grandson to ride on road, just as I did my son, in fact my 5 year old GS will ride on the road at every opportunity though this is currently only down the dead end residential streets but under my trict supervision it's fine, of course that is a million miles away from the general roads but it's a start.
The little un is cycle mad, he did a 9 mile ride on Saturday on his star wars bike, he rides every day to school (with his dad on foot) no matter the weather. As he gets a bit older and if he wants to we can move to go on road.
I'm not sure what people think they are achieving by advising others against riding on the roads, surely the more people on road the fewer people in motors right? If/when they do drive they'll have a better understanding of the problems of people on bikes, that might actually filter through to another family member.
Yes it can be crap but road riding has so many upsides it's definitely worth it for this individual, maybe let others make their own decisions rather than making them for them before they start?
20-30 years ago I never ever considered I needed daytime running lights and a camera (or two). They are now 'essential items' along with a puncture repair kit and a pump.
Most drivers (of cars/buses/lorries) are careful and considerate. But there is a growing minority of road users that don't give a f**k. The significant cause of this growing threat to us vulnerable road users is there are too few traffic Police and the cases where the driver is prosecuted, the driver is often treated as being very unfortunate, where the cyclist (or pedestrian) "appeared from nowhere" and collided with their car.
I now do 40-50% of my cycling indoors.
When I do go road cycling, if I have an incident-free ride I count myself lucky.
Im not a fan of near miss of the day and the reporting of all the anti cycling nonsense on here.
I've no doubt in some cities cycling there is statistically more 'risk' of being hit by a nob it a car than in other cities. But cycling is not dangerous and the so called 'risk' is much lower in most of the country. We need more cyclists on the road and shouldn't propagate the message that cycling is dangerous and you could die at any moment...
The quintessential dichotomy!
On the one hand we all want to promote and encourage more cyclists and more cycling.
Yet we need to highlight serious and fundamental flaws in Legislation, Policing and prosecution of dangerous road users.
Several of the recent examples on "Close pass of the Day" have featured roads I cycle on. They reflect the experiences I have.
I find the NMOTD useful from time to time as an exercise of what I can learn... positioning, observation etc.
Cycling suffers relatively from over-reporting of injuries and deaths, making it seem more dangerous (air travel suffers similarly). If they reported every pedestrian and driver fatality it would seem far worse. Which actually might not be a bad thing.
I think you have a point, if national newspapers were made to run a table of statistics on that week's accidents, showing just how many fatalities, injuries etc occured in categories of motorist breaking the speed limit, using the phone, hitting a pedestrian, hitting a cyclist, failure to stop, then it might actually raise the general awareness of just how much more dangerous cars etc are.
This morning on my way to work (I drove in) I saw two near accidents, one where a car had to swerve the wrong side of a mini roundabout to avoid another that had pulled out, and one where a car barely managed to stop for someone halfway across a zebra crossing, it's the lack of awareness and attention that gets to me. 99% of the drivers aren't out to do anything deliberately, they just don't give the consideration they need to before they act, as for the other 1% unfortunately unless they're caught doing something very little is done, at which point it probably means someone else has come off worse already.
I find it curious that everyone - even cyclists, as the above demonstrates - is all too willing to give a free pass to those who engage in lethal behaviour because '... they just don't give the consideration they need to before they act' or some other similarly fatuous excuse.
When I drive, I am acutely aware that the means of transport I am using represents a potentially deadly threat to those around me. Because of this, I act very carefully, because were I to hurt (or worse) someone, it would be the end of my driving.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to say 'He didn't do it deliberately', because the poor sap he ran into is no less dead or no less fucking maimed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting they get a free pass, hence why I was saying prior to that that highlighting just how many injuries and deaths cars cause each week might actually make that 99% of drivers pay more attention to what they're doing, either that or get them all out on a bike for a week as part of learning to drive, once they're realised what it's like maybe they'd be more aware. Whether they intend to cause an accident or not I think anyone who does should be punished to the full extent possible, which is another thing that doesn't happen, all I was saying is that the majority of drivers aren't actively trying to injure someone, they're usually ignorant of the consequences.
No they're not.
No one is 'ignorant of the consequences' when a 1500 kg object travelling at sixty mph hits someone.
And this is why the posters exhorting drivers to 'think bike' are useless. This is why the little smiley faces on LED boards that go to a
if you exceed 30 mph are useless. People are selfish shits who put themselves first. They're not 'ignorant' of the consequences.
They just don't fucking care about the consequences.
I'm not going to argue with you because I think you're missing the point slightly, but I don't think all drivers are psychopaths which is what you are suggesting if they don't care about the consequences. Most do care, but they're ignorant of the consequences their actions will have, the lack of education and awareness is what needs to be adressed.
Sadly, vulnerable road users cannot avoid the them v us that is very real. It's caused by dangerous drivers and effects everyone else, but the vulnerable subset within everyone is clearly at a far higher risk of danger. It's never been drivers v cyclists/pedestrians, anyone who tries to dress it up as such is part of the problem. Note, I don't believe an us v them exists.
).
If one nation starts firing weapons at another and the target country just sticks their fingers in their ears and says there is no them v us, it doesn't stop there being an them v us. Only one "group" needs to be fighting to create the sitaution.
However you travel, you'll notice that there is no shortage of dangerous drivers.
The more people we get cycling the safer the roads will be, putting people off cycling is never going to help (unless you are advocating walking
Can't agree with the above, and I'm sorry to see that these things seem so frequent.
While Shrewsbury has some ignorant and aggressive drivers, IME it's not that common. I find the vast majority are considerate, or at least not actively endangering me.
I know that many people feel too scared to cycle on the road and it's desperately frustrating and sad that no-one in government, council etc gives a toss. When they're not lining their own pockets and favouring their pals, Shropshire councillors are too enamoured with building big, wide roads for cars and lorries and talking up a trial of driverless cars in a town centre that is not suited to them and which instead should be pedestrianised.
Regarding NMoTD, I think people are giving it a significance or influence that it doesn't deserve. It's sometimes shocking and of course it's all too familiar and very unpleasant. But it's one daily post among many.
So how many road.cc readers/visitors have either stopped or won't ride on the road as a result of NMoTD?
<tumbleweed>
Ditto.
I just do not recommend road riding/commuting to anyone.
It is just plain dangerous.
I simply dont care anymore and just have my safety camera on to have something to be given to the coroner in the event of.
You cannot ride home for a lunch break without someone trying to basically kill you.
Just had a Hungarian lorry driver swerve across me..... and I voted remain.
Words fail me DV62 RCF.mp4
Um - that's a very nice view of all the parked cars, but not a lot of use of evidence of anything else. For all we can see there that car could have been ahead of you all along, and you just barreling along head down until you nearly went into the back of it. I think if you want something 'to be given to the coroner' you probably want to adjust it so that it's pointing somewhere vaguely near your direction of travel.
I was asked by someone last week if I thought they should start road cycling... I had to think about it and I answered no, that they should stick to offroad.
If I'm scared enough not to want my wife and daughter on the road why should I advocate another human doing it.
I ride on the road with hyper-awareness that something might happen. Almost every ride there's a close pass, or SMIDSY incident. Things DO happen.
The NMOTD vids don't change how I perceive riding on the road, I see it myself all too often. I enjoy the NMOTD articles and count myself lucky that I live outside of London or Exeter.. in a region which isn't ass bad as others. In fact I fart in the general direction of London based cyclists, I'm reasonably sure that their mothers were hamsters and was once told that their fathers smelt of elderberries.
FYI I was pulled out on, over a main road two weeks ago, I'm okay, bikes a bit bruised, police ambulance the works.. driver is being prosecuted for driving without due care and attention. He was also very SMIDSY, most are right.
My boss asked me to recommend a bike for him to get in shape.
'Wattbike,' I responded.
I've been cycling for many, many years and like you, I am absolutely focused when commuting. Yet I still get close passes every single day, and threats several times a week.
We're seen as easy targets because obviously, it's rare that we can catch up with a driver, and even when we do, he's inside a steel box.
All we can do is ensure that for those who do get out of their car, the systematic, default response is overwhelming, life-changing violence. Every. Single. Time.
That's how I got banned from Tesco's car park.
(Top tip - start with the blue badge parkers first as a warm up)
My boss asked me to recommend a bike for him to get in shape.
'Wattbike,' I responded.
[/quote]
I enjoy the turbo or Wattbike to a point, but can barely last over an hour on either before the boredom really starts to kick in. I've also tried Zwift but couldnt really get into it. As such, as soon as the salt and ice is gone from the road, I cannot wait to get the summer bike out despite having had a few incidents and near misses over the years. I would add that my habits have changed slightly over the years probably as a result.
1) Weekend rides now start at ridiculous oclock and usually in line with a sunrise to avoid any busy/peak periods, tourists etc. A bonus to this means it keeps SWMBO happy that I'm home mid/late morning for the family.
2) Commutes are done almost exclusively on shared paths, and athough it takes an extra 10 mins to cycle the 15 miles, I get far less stressed, and is their any point trying to beat a strava segment on the daily hack with panniers???
2) Routes are chosen that avoid arterial routes. Yes I know I have the right to cycle on them, may be more direct and quicker, but do i want to be exposed to 44 tonne artics passing within a few meteres of me doing. Absolutely no chance.
3) PeteD76 notes "hyper-awareness" and i think this is spot on.....I'm always alert now, but adopt "hyper-awareness" and prepare myself for the worst at potental conflict points such as junctions, parked cars etc.
4) Thank mototorists (usually with a thumbs up) whenever they give me room or allow me to pull out, even though I've signalled well in advance and without danger.
Finally, and possibly as a result of the incidents and acceptance of the poor driving standards seen almost on a weekly basis, I've found myself having very few moments of rage against motorists if its a near pass or other, but instead have found myself getting more frustrated and noting (not always politely either) to other cyclists when I see them performing dangerous manoeuvers or batently ignoring the rules of the road, most commonly the red light jumpers.