Near Miss of the Day 562: Three blokes in a van speed through chicane, forcing cyclist riding uphill with priority to swerve

New word I've learnt today - can't wait to use it!

Which word - "intransigent" or "fucktarded"?  I get to use the latter somewhat more often than the former

Could not agree more.  There are some down the road from me into a village, which simply cause un-necessary congestion and traffic noise, make no difference whatsoever to speeds, in fact they make safety worse.

The only useful purpose they serve is as a convenient starting gate for our local cycling club time trial!

LTN 1/07 Traffic calming - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

Quote:

2.7.18 Any of the physical means employed to slow
motor traffic have the potential to create problems for
cyclists. Cyclists are more vulnerable to any lack of
attention to detail in design of traffic calming measures
than are occupants of motor vehicles. Care should be
taken to ensure that cyclists are not endangered by
such schemes.
 

Quite - and good practice would therefore be to include channels that cyclists can proceed through.

Doubt it would have stopped this driver doing exactly the same though.  Unfortunately "entitlement bumps" haven't been invented yet ...

Except those channels will never get cleaned, and so will inevitably be full of leaves and tufts of grass, and serve only to give drivers an additional reason to barge through in the face of an approaching bicycle, because "you should be using the cycle lane".

That's because of poor design, again. It can't be too hard to get it right. But when they just install what are basically gutters as an afterthought either side of the regular car-centric design, then no, that won't work.

Since the purpose here is to slow motor traffic, and we are ways told that bicycle infrastructure does exactly that, surely some bright engineer can come up with an arrangement that actually does, for once, prioritise cycle space to the detriment of motor vehicle speed. Two birds, one stone.

I'm not sure changing designs would make much difference. It's more about councils having the foresight and the will to include them in maintenance plans. In the same way that cycle tracks are often rendered useless to many in low temperatures because no-one thought to treat them against ice, or if they did, didn't consider it worth doing.

I never use the channels, always full of leaves and you never know what else might be hising in there.  I'm thinking broken glass, not scary monsters.

hirsute wrote:

More than 5 seconds would have been useful.

How visible was the cyclist?

Indeed, at the start of the clip the van has already passed the give way lines.

It seems to me that the van driver's view of the cyclist is probably blocked by the blue car on approach, the van driver and cylist reach the chicane at about the same time, but going through the footage frame by frame, the van appears to cone to a dead stop in the restriction while the cyclist moves into the driveway to allow them to pass.

Yes, the van has delayed the cyclist when the cyclist had priority, but as the van stops the only way there is a crash here is if the cyclist rides into a stationary vehicle.

I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, that they didn't see the cyclist before the give way lines, and did stop as soon as they saw them.

I have the full 5-min clip from my Go-Pro . I only uploaded the short section as the span of attention is generally short.

Visibility-? HiViz cycling jacket and light on bike. Very visible. The blokes saw me alright as they were laughing and 'geezering'. 

Without more footage from before - you may be right the cyclist may have been obscured - then there was a car in front of the van which may have also blocked his view.  

I suspect the cyclist could be equally if not more at fault in this instance, the video is cut to start when the van is already past the give way and heading onto the other side to enter the chicane, and once you are past the give way sign and in the restriction traffic coming the other way should give way to you.

Most people seem to forget this, and is why cars always follow the one in front into these things - it may be impolite but not breaking the law.

Technically the van is might be at fault for failing to give way.

Edit : Looking at google maps image, I suspect the van had passed the give way line before the video started given how far it is from the chicane. If they have passed that point the cyclist should also yield (on the basis of collision avoidance)

While vehicles should give way unless they can see it is clear, in practice noone waits for the vehicle infront to clear chicanes etc unless they can see oncoming traffic. I would hope when cycling I pay more attention than the rider here given this is an obvious conflict point and common, plausible mistake...

The title implies something far more aggressive than what actually happened.

If its any thing like the one near us, it is actually impossible to see oncoming vehicles once you have embarked around the chicane as they built it on a right hand bend, so there are frequent near misses there.

My favourite one, on Frogmore Street in central Bristol:

https://goo.gl/maps/exYqm9qXfnTtGouE8

Going in this direction, the traffic coming from the other way has priority but you cannot see whether anything is coming because of the left-hand bend and the pub in the way...

(Traffic coming from the other direction also cannot see if anyone has already entered the chicane, obviously).

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

Looking at the hedge height and shadow AND the street furniture, I wonder if they even noticed the bike until they had cleared the giveway and he swung out around the first chicane. Yes, they are then arseholes for not slowing, being considerate when he was noticed. 

pretty much came to a dead stop in the first restriction of the chicane