Near Miss of the Day 427: “With lockdown over, people are driving more recklessly again”

“With the lockdown over, people are driving more recklessly and carefree again” is the observation made by the cyclist on the receiving end of this close pass at speed by a motorist illegally straddling a bus lane on the busy A13 in east London.

Ho, the road.cc reader who filed the footage on Commercial Road in Limehouse, said: “Long story short, I was riding back home merging into the bus/cycle lane and a car needlessly drove to close to me at speed and more annoyingly was driving in a bus lane period where no cars are allowed from 7am-7pm.”

The rider caught the driver at a set of traffic lights further along the road, but received “No apology or acknowledgement he did anything wrong.”

As you can see from the video, Commercial Road can be intimidating enough for experienced cyclists, let alone anyone who has started riding a bike during lockdown.

Some London boroughs such as Hammersmith & Fulham have put temporary segregated cycle lanes in place on some busy routes similar to this.

While Tower Hamlets has been crowdsourcing views via an interactive map on where emergemcy infrastructure is most needed under TfL's London Streetspace programme, nothing appears to have happened at this location as yet.

> 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.

> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling