The latest video in our Near Miss of the Day series shows no fewer than four pieces of poor driving encountered by one cyclist during his 13.6-mile commute in Leicestershire.
The footage was sent in by road.cc reader Andrew, who rides to work from Coalville to Leicester each day.
He said: “Just a normal 40 minute commute,” before going on to describe each incident:
1. Close pass by tanker HGV. I could’ve touched the rear of the trailer it was that close. I felt the draft sucking me in.
2. Car started pulling out as I approached.
3. Impatient driver passed me as we approached a traffic queue, braking in front of me.
4. HGV truck passed me on a bend, the rear of the truck cutting in close to me.
“Luckily I’m still alive,” he added.
> 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@road.cc">info@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.
> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling
6 thoughts on “Near Miss of the Day 197: “Just a normal 40-minute commute””
Longer clip needed. I couldn
Longer clip needed. I couldn’t even tell if the car was moving in 2 and whether there was a queue in 3.
hirsute wrote:
I agree. Could use some better editing to get the point across. 2 makes it look like the car is just moving and doesn’t come in to the road, 3 the sun means you can’t see anything and 4 stops to early to clearly show the lorry pulling back in IMO. I don’t doubt the incidents, but many would, if that’s who these are aimed at rather than those of us who deal with this every day.
What would really be
What would really be different would be a 40 minute ride without a single close pass, left hook, cutting up, abuse or any other idiotic manouvre by a driver. If only. Sigh.
And that isn’t a joke. We are now so totally inured to the appalling behaviour of drivers that it really would be remarkable to take a journey where there wasn’t at least one incident of concern, even if it wasn’t life threatening.
To be fair, I think that was
To be fair, I think that was his point.
I got beeped at by some
I got beeped at by some jackass the other day because I moved out to avoid a pothole at the same time as he wanted to overtake me just ahead of a 90 degree blind bend with a transit van coming the other way. All in the game, yo. Like you say, it’s all just business as usual these days and we just have to put up with it.
Just back from popping to the
Just back from popping to the post office, one in the town centre was closed due to rain ingress (really!)I so it’s 3 miiles each way. I had more courtesy (being allowed into the flow of traffic from a siide road) and lawful passes than I had bad incidents, I even had one mid size van actually indicate he was overtaking on the 40mph through road (to the A1), I think that’s the first time ever in 30 years! There’s enough space for a good 2metres if they go up to the lane divider the road is that wide but few ever get anywhere near that and through the pedestrian refuge is always stressy as they accelerate off the bend.
That is all undone when you have someone tailgating you up to a pedestrian refuge or pinch point and literally alongside and you think they’re going to ram you from behind or side swipe you. It’s all undone when as above you have a criminal driving almost 40 tons of mass within inches of your person.
So no matter how much lawful or courteous driving you are on the end of it’s the stuff that threatens you harm that sticks, it’s basically PTSD but on a lower level, but when you get it day after day after day, it can and does build up, it builds up enough that many have simply jacked in cycling, it’s enough to say to people we aren’t ever going to cycle.
It can also build up enough that you want to physically hurt somene back and hurt them badly, at the extreme you completely lose control and batter someone senseless, there was a case a few years ago of a cyclist who had a door flung into him and he punched the guy who then fell backwards and died from banging his head (not the punch itself) or like last year a cyclist simply launched his bike into the wiindscreen of a car at the hospital car park IIRC.
But until we address the issue of not just dangerous driving but careless driving these problems will not go away and as we know will not encourage more people to cycle, waiting for decent level segregated infra across the whole country is pie in the sky and will never happen.