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news
Near Miss of the Day 598: Motorist overtakes on blind bend
We're over in Dorset today for our Near Miss of the Day series, with the moment a motorist decided to overtake a cyclist on a blind bend - in the process almost sending the rider into a hedgerow.
Robert, the road.cc reader on the receiving end, sets the scene: "On a wet, windy grey day in October 2020, my legs needed a stretch so I headed north out of Verwood, Dorset on Batterley Drove towards the nice quiet lanes of Cranbourne Chase.
"Unfortunately being lit up like an early Christmas tree and wearing dayglo wet weather gear didn’t help this driver with his vision issues.
"As you can see in the video, I am approaching a 90 degree left hand bend with a hedge along side the field, offering no view of what is around the corner," he continued.
"Most drivers here wait until after the bend on the short uphill straight, however, to my surprise, LS63 VJO made the decision to squeeze me to the left and perform an overtake through the bend.
"Usually when I get a close pass, I get a look at the driver, however in this case my focus was 100% on the few centimetres of distance remaining between my bike wheel and the car wheel!
"I used Dorset’s Operation Snap to submit this footage and received the usual automated response advising that the driver would be sent a NIP," Robert added.
"I followed up a few months later, but have never heard back with an outcome."
> 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
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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23 comments
Pfff! You'd get an Advanced Driving Commendation for driving like that In Lancashire. This one below is at well over the 30 limit speed, over the unbroken white line, on a blind hump-backed bridge with a hidden left bend just over the crest- you've already guessed: no response whatever from Lancashire Constabulary
That sounds like a good driver.
There are two blind railway bridges with double whites in my village, a favourite place for motorists to ovetake me, and they always swerve left if there is oncoming traffic
My putdown when I catch them up queuing at the junction 100yds up the road is "I don't mind you overtaking on a blind summit mate, but next time go for the head on collision. Please don't involve me in your accident"
I say it politely, but it usually gets me some abuse.
That happened to a friend of mine... except their overtaker ran into an oncoming car. Thank goodness somehow my friend was not injured, but it took him a long time to get confidence to ride on the road again.
Whenever there has been a pass on me on a blind bend/brow of hill (and shockingly a humpback railway bridge with a blind bend) the offending motorist has taken the easy option and decided to swerve into where I would have been if I had not seen the nonsense coming and braked and swerved.
Often some better awareness by the oncoming vehicle operator too...
No surprise there. Blind bend overtakes happen every ride. At least in Surrey.
A basic failure to look ahead, plan ahead or make the minor adjustments to speed early on* in order to avoid the conjunction of car, cyclist and blind corner. The corner is fixed, the cyclist is a constant, the only variable is the speed of the car which is entirely under the driver's control.
3 points on a NIP is more than justified, but will this driver learn from their error or bemoan a cyclist "hogging the road" and causing them points?
*The main reason I am in favour of high viz in helping drivers see a conspicuous cyclist at the greatest possible distance, not the minimum safe distance in which the vehicle is able to stop.
And I wouldnt be in favour specifically on that point because the cyclist is totally visible, there is nothing in that pass that implies the motorist saw the cyclist too late to prevent themselves "accidentally" overtaking into a blind bend, or that hi-viz would have compensated for, the responsibility sits squarely on the motorist to make safe overtakes.
I had one similar the other week, it was preceeded by a short hill first & I know the motorist behind me saw me because they sat behind me the whole way up this hill at reduced speed, as I'm not very quick up hills, only when we reached the top and they lost patience at my further reducing speed, did they choose to overtake into a 90 degree right hand bend on a country lane with 6ft hedges bordering the road, that they clearly couldnt see around and guess what there was a car coming the other way as anyone with half a brain could have predicted would happen.
Fortunately who was driving almost
to expect such an event,they had their windows down so maybe heard the car approaching, and so was going slow enough could steer just enough out the way & stop to avoid the driver to driver side collision that otherwise was inevitable.
Of course it was the cyclist (ie me) who then got sworn at for being in the damn way, yep I was highly visible alright, but totally not at fault for any of it.
I honestly wonder if this is taught by driving schools - as some of the driving you see beggars belief. No planning, no awareness, no adjustment of speed, etc
Yet watch an advanced driving/riding video, and they are the basic tools of good driving.....
I doubt it, overtakes by drivers under instruction are among the worst I have experienced. If they do that with an instructer in the car, no hope of anything better in the future.
Terrible overtake, no view whatsoever, plus inclement weather. And the driver knew it; hedging their bets with a close pass, just in case something was coming the other way
Brings back memories of a few months ago when a car did exactly the same manouvre and space allowance as we both turned into a side road. As it is WMP, I don't even know if they have even downloaded it from the video submittance portal.
Their open cases appear to go into a special container, which is emptied by a cleaner every night.
oo interesting robert! i drive down this way almost daily.
here is me on that same road, driving behind cyclists.
the driver following you is a cyclist - the driver following you is a cyclist - YouTubeTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ9Y2pbKXGY
You can see from your video footage just how poor the road surface is, not to mention how narrow and twisty the road is, with poor forward visibility. A 40mph speed limit would be much more appropriate for that road than the current 60mph limit and even 30mph might suit better. It does how how unsuitable the 60mph National Speed Limit is to many rural roads. I know plenty in Kent with similar poor surfaces that are narrow with high hedgerows and utterly unisted to the 60mph limit. Yet some drivers still batter along them as if they're doing a rally stage.
Quite correct, on a lot of 60mph roads drivers see the speed limit as a target even when the road surface width and other factors mean that it is dangerous.
Had a discussion on social media with someone where I asked the question "if you go round a blind corner and crash into a cyclist who is travelling the same direction as you only going slower, who's fault is it?"..... "the cyclist's fault because they were going too slow" came the response
No amount of reasoning would convince this particular person that if they are going at such a speed that they cannot react in time to an unforseen obstacle that, in that circumstance, they are going too fast. As far as they were concerned as long as they were going less than the posted speed limit they couldn't possibly be going too fast
You should have asked the same question but featuring a parked lorry (or fallen tree) - would they have blamed the parked lorry for any collision?
I did, I used examples of a large boulder (could easily be pushed off a dry stone wall by cattle into the road), a sheep/cow standing in the middle of the road, a pedestrian. They just could not accept that they could be at fault if they were going less than the speed limit
Sounds like they'd have an interesting conversation with their insurance company if they did drive into something stationary.
Maybe troll them into starting a petition for all large boulders/sheep/cows/pedestrians to have mandatory 3rd party insurance for such an event.
I just got so pi$$ed off I terminated the discussion with "no matter what you think if you are driving on a narrow twisting road and you go round a blind corner at such as speed that you can't react in time to stop the chances are you are to blame. It might only be 50% if the other road user is approaching the same bend going too fast but you are still to blame"
Oh dear, I can well believe that. Whatever happened to being able to stop on your side of the road in the space you can view? Do drivers actually know this? Adjust your speed to your view of the road.......
They know it, they just don't want to
Quite, we've got this the wrong way round. Roads should be risk assessed for speed limits. Roads unassessed should be blanket 20. If a road is deemed of frequent enough use to warrant it, it gets risk assessed and assigned a maximum speed.
The other thing that grinds my gears is idiots who go "it's a 50mph road!". No, it's been assessed that the maximum permissible speed for safe driving is 50mph, when conditions are perfect. Which they virtually never are, so going at that speed is virtually never appropriate.
Ffs, the implication of going at 50 in a 50 is that you are driving flat out, on the edge of legality and safety. HTF is that appropriate?
Well put!