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YS63 XLO Close Pass at Speed

Near Miss of the Day 309: Perhaps the quickest close pass we’ve seen (on a country road, with oncoming traffic)

Our regular series featuring close passes from around the country - today it's Buckinghamshire...
by Alex Bowden
Thu, Sep 19, 2019 12:15
31

Today’s near miss is remarkable for both the speed at which the car is being driven and for how little the motorist moderates their driving when confronted by the combination of a cyclist and oncoming traffic.

The incident occurred in North Buckinghamshire last Friday.

Steve (who puts his jaw-droppingly calm reading of the vehicle’s number plate down to the incident being over before he even knew about it) says he has reported it to Thames Valley Police using their online form.

He believes the driver was travelling well over the 60mph limit for the road. “Thankfully the DHL van driver was patient and waited behind the other cyclist.

“I would normally advise taking the lane to dissuade a close pass, but in this case that could have been fatal.”

> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?

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.

NMotD
Near Miss of the Day
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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31 comments

Avatar
HoarseMann | 5 years ago
1 like

In a well publicised collision involving a cyclist on a fixie, the police got expert evidence from CCTV that the bicycle was travelling at 18mph. This was then used to infer the stopping distances for a bike with and without a front brake. So something probably could be done.

Avatar
Hirsute | 5 years ago
0 likes

The bike camera would not be calibrated, so that is an easy out for the defence.

Avatar
Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Should be able to work out the speed from the road markings and the video timestamps or frame counts. Seemed to be going at least twice the speed of other vehicles.

Avatar
HoarseMann replied to Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Sriracha wrote:

Should be able to work out the speed from the road markings and the video timestamps or frame counts. Seemed to be going at least twice the speed of other vehicles.

I might have a go at that.

... ok, I used the shadows cast by the trees in the video as a guide for the initial location and counted the number of dashed lines passed for the endpoint location at 3 seconds. Then using the google maps measure distance feature to get a distance between those points, I estimated the average speed over a 3 second window to be 80mph.

As car speedos tend to over-read at that speed, it was probably an indicated 90mph in the vehicle. I also noticed they overtook the Mitsubishi 4x4.

But as that’s an average speed, if the vehicle was accelerating, then the speed at the point they overtook me would have been in excess of that figure.

Avatar
Sriracha replied to HoarseMann | 5 years ago
0 likes
HoarseMann wrote:

Sriracha wrote:

Should be able to work out the speed from the road markings and the video timestamps or frame counts. Seemed to be going at least twice the speed of other vehicles.

I might have a go at that.

... ok, I used the shadows cast by the trees in the video as a guide for the initial location and counted the number of dashed lines passed for the endpoint location at 3 seconds. Then using the google maps measure distance feature to get a distance between those points, I estimated the average speed over a 3 second window to be 80mph.

As car speedos tend to over-read at that speed, it was probably an indicated 90mph in the vehicle. I also noticed they overtook the Mitsubishi 4x4.

But as that’s an average speed, if the vehicle was accelerating, then the speed at the point they overtook me would have been in excess of that figure.

So assuming the idiot earns around £50k+, a fine of over £1000 for the speed, plus whatever for being a total knob.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/new-harsher-speeding-fines-dri...

Avatar
zero_trooper replied to Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Sriracha wrote:
HoarseMann wrote:

Sriracha wrote:

Should be able to work out the speed from the road markings and the video timestamps or frame counts. Seemed to be going at least twice the speed of other vehicles.

I might have a go at that.

... ok, I used the shadows cast by the trees in the video as a guide for the initial location and counted the number of dashed lines passed for the endpoint location at 3 seconds. Then using the google maps measure distance feature to get a distance between those points, I estimated the average speed over a 3 second window to be 80mph.

As car speedos tend to over-read at that speed, it was probably an indicated 90mph in the vehicle. I also noticed they overtook the Mitsubishi 4x4.

But as that’s an average speed, if the vehicle was accelerating, then the speed at the point they overtook me would have been in excess of that figure.

So assuming the idiot earns around £50k+, a fine of over £1000 for the speed, plus whatever for being a total knob. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/new-harsher-speeding-fines-dri...

Nice work HoarseMann. Unfortunately the evidence (for speeding) won’t stand up in court. However, the vehicle’s speed, which is obvious from your video, could make the difference between dangerous driving and due care (if you’re an optimist) or due care and a driver awareness course (if you’re a pessimist).

Believe me, the glass is half full smiley

Avatar
HoarseMann replied to zero_trooper | 5 years ago
0 likes

zero_trooper wrote:

Nice work HoarseMann. Unfortunately the evidence (for speeding) won’t stand up in court. However, the vehicle’s speed, which is obvious from your video, could make the difference between dangerous driving and due care (if you’re an optimist) or due care and a driver awareness course (if you’re a pessimist).

Believe me, the glass is half full smiley

Yep, my rough calculations could not be deemed evidential! But it was an interesting exercise to get a ball park figure for the speed. It was flippin quick.

We will see what the police can do with this. The initial response has been positive.

Now if only Garmin would update the Varia rear radar to read out calibrated speed and build in a camera...

 

Avatar
Sriracha replied to zero_trooper | 5 years ago
1 like
zero_trooper wrote:

Sriracha wrote:
HoarseMann wrote:

Sriracha wrote:

Should be able to work out the speed from the road markings and the video timestamps or frame counts. Seemed to be going at least twice the speed of other vehicles.

I might have a go at that.

... ok, I used the shadows cast by the trees in the video as a guide for the initial location and counted the number of dashed lines passed for the endpoint location at 3 seconds. Then using the google maps measure distance feature to get a distance between those points, I estimated the average speed over a 3 second window to be 80mph.

As car speedos tend to over-read at that speed, it was probably an indicated 90mph in the vehicle. I also noticed they overtook the Mitsubishi 4x4.

But as that’s an average speed, if the vehicle was accelerating, then the speed at the point they overtook me would have been in excess of that figure.

So assuming the idiot earns around £50k+, a fine of over £1000 for the speed, plus whatever for being a total knob. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/new-harsher-speeding-fines-dri...

Nice work HoarseMann. Unfortunately the evidence (for speeding) won’t stand up in court. However, the vehicle’s speed, which is obvious from your video, could make the difference between dangerous driving and due care (if you’re an optimist) or due care and a driver awareness course (if you’re a pessimist).

Believe me, the glass is half full smiley

HoarseMann's calcs might not stand up in court, but is there anything stopping the prosecution/police doing a similar calc, based frame counts and measuring the distance between road markings, with sufficient rigour for a court? After all, speed cameras rely on the same concept (calibrated road markings, frame interval) to yield evidential speed.

Avatar
zero_trooper | 5 years ago
1 like

Really boils my piss that recently when going to the road.cc site on my mobile by far the most consistent advert has been for a Mercedes SUV! Starting price £52K!!!

So much for targeted ads.

Avatar
zero_trooper | 5 years ago
1 like

Terrible driving, nice editing.

Have you had any response from TVP? This really needs chasing up. They have 14 days in which to issue an NIP and the incident was a week ago.

Avatar
HoarseMann replied to zero_trooper | 5 years ago
6 likes

zero_trooper wrote:

Terrible driving, nice editing.

Have you had any response from TVP? This really needs chasing up. They have 14 days in which to issue an NIP and the incident was a week ago.

Chased it up at lunchtime, apparently a NIP had already been issued to the registered keeper, so let's see what happens. 

Avatar
zero_trooper replied to HoarseMann | 5 years ago
3 likes

HoarseMann wrote:

zero_trooper wrote:

Terrible driving, nice editing.

Have you had any response from TVP? This really needs chasing up. They have 14 days in which to issue an NIP and the incident was a week ago.

Chased it up at lunchtime, apparently a NIP had already been issued to the registered keeper, so let's see what happens. 

Excellent update!

I presume that they would include a form for the registered keeper to identify the driver at the time of the incident, with the NIP. That would be the next step.

Avatar
HoarseMann replied to zero_trooper | 5 years ago
3 likes

zero_trooper wrote:

HoarseMann wrote:

zero_trooper wrote:

Terrible driving, nice editing.

Have you had any response from TVP? This really needs chasing up. They have 14 days in which to issue an NIP and the incident was a week ago.

Chased it up at lunchtime, apparently a NIP had already been issued to the registered keeper, so let's see what happens. 

Excellent update!

I presume that they would include a form for the registered keeper to identify the driver at the time of the incident, with the NIP. That would be the next step.

Yep, that’s been done. They've got 28 days to respond, so this might not be a quick process.

Avatar
zero_trooper replied to HoarseMann | 5 years ago
2 likes

HoarseMann wrote:

zero_trooper wrote:

HoarseMann wrote:

zero_trooper wrote:

Terrible driving, nice editing.

Have you had any response from TVP? This really needs chasing up. They have 14 days in which to issue an NIP and the incident was a week ago.

Chased it up at lunchtime, apparently a NIP had already been issued to the registered keeper, so let's see what happens. 

Excellent update!

I presume that they would include a form for the registered keeper to identify the driver at the time of the incident, with the NIP. That would be the next step.

Yep, that’s been done. They've got 28 days to respond, so this might not be a quick process.

Hey, the ball is rolling. Got five months and three weeks now to conclude it.

Avatar
LastBoyScout | 5 years ago
0 likes

I got rather close-passed by a motorbike going at speed on Wednesday - in a 40mph zone, reckon he was doing at least 60.

Pretty sure I saw the same rider again yesterday evening in traffic - need to compare the footage, can't be that many gold coloured Fazers around - but again riding like a hooligan.

Avatar
Rik Mayals unde... | 5 years ago
3 likes

I have had a close fast pass exactly like this on the A59 near Ribchester. And yes, that too was an Audi. Sadly, in my experiences almost all Audi drivers are twats. They have overtaken BMW drivers on the dickhead scale. 

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Sriracha replied to Rik Mayals underpants | 5 years ago
0 likes
biker phil wrote:

I have had a close fast pass exactly like this on the A59 near Ribchester. And yes, that too was an Audi. Sadly, in my experiences almost all Audi drivers are twats. They have overtaken BMW drivers on the dickhead scale. 

It's an image problem Audi has been unsuccessfully trying to shake off since at least 1985:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQ-283wKgg

Avatar
Sriracha | 5 years ago
1 like

Maybe edit to label it YS63XLO (no space) so it shows up in google on a number plate search.

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bikeman01 | 5 years ago
2 likes

I've never been close passed like that -  and I hope I never will.

That Cycliq camera works well. What model is it?

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HoarseMann replied to bikeman01 | 5 years ago
1 like

bikeman01 wrote:

I've never been close passed like that -  and I hope I never will.

That Cycliq camera works well. What model is it?

its the original fly12 on the front and the second gen fly6 on the back (with a diy battery replacement that’s still going strong). I don’t roll without them anymore 

Avatar
FluffyKittenofT... | 5 years ago
6 likes

I suspect many new cyclists would simply decide to pack the bike away in the garage and switch back to the car or bus, after a pass like that.  As long as that sort of thing is not a vanishingly rare occurance you're never going to get cycling above a small percentage of journeys.  Surely to God the cops will act on that one?  (Or will it be another cloned number plate?)

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Pedantic Pedaller | 5 years ago
1 like

A depressingly familiar incident!!!

no

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Philh68 | 5 years ago
2 likes

Steve must have superhuman vision to be able to read the licence plate of that Ingolstadt missile.

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carlosdsanchez | 5 years ago
1 like

Close passes at high speed are not that unusual on county roads. Norfolk constabulary are very good at issuing NIP's based on video evidence though.

https://youtu.be/RIDxFG8Rx7Q

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
3 likes

Probably late for his darling daughter Tamara's third birthday party, which is clearly more important than other people's lives.

Reminds me of a few years ago in Bristol of a grandmother moaning in the media about being caught speeding, because she was on her way to see her injured grandchild.  The more I see of humans, the more I'm convinced cognitive dissonance rules the world.

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srchar | 5 years ago
3 likes

An Audi tank. Colour me surprised.

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mrmusette | 5 years ago
4 likes

should be a lifetime driving ban

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JohnnyRemo | 5 years ago
5 likes

Jee-Zus!!! TBH, at that speed, I don't think he could have stopped. Doesn't bear thinking about if it had been a group...

 

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lukei1 | 5 years ago
4 likes

sweet jesus christ

Avatar
Rick_Rude | 5 years ago
4 likes

That looked like he'd have chosen to take the cyclist out rather than actually slow down.

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