Near Miss of the Day 661: Horsebox driver makes close pass

eburtthebike wrote:

It's been some time since I read the HC, so could someone rather more learned than me tell me what those big white capital letters "SLOW" in the road meant?

So Long, Old Widgie

eburtthebike wrote:

It's been some time since I read the HC, so could someone rather more learned than me tell me what those big white capital letters "SLOW" in the road meant?

Sod Laws, Overtake! Wheeee!

Steve K wrote:

If only the two cyclists had been riding together two abreast.

 

Then it would have been easier for Nigel to blame the cyclists.

Quite. If ever a demonstration of why to ride x2, there it is.

Note not blaming the riders. Hard to ride x2 if there's only one of you......

Steve K wrote:

If only the two cyclists had been riding together two abreast.

Then it would have been easier for Nigel to blame the cyclists.

Yet the imbecile still contrives to blame the cyclist for the dangerous driving!

ChrisB200SX wrote:

Yet the imbecile still contrives to blame the cyclist for the dangerous driving!

Indeed, but he really had to work had to find a possible way to do so.

I know cycling is much more a social activity than driving, but I have no desire to just latch on to the side of every random cyclist I see 

I shouldn't rise to the obvious trolling but simply put, fuck off you dickhead.

S13SFC wrote:

I shouldn't rise to the obvious trolling but simply put, fuck off you dickhead.

^what he said.

Well said!
I'd suggest he gets banned for those comments, but he'll just float back to the top, like the scum he is.

Your eagle eyes did not spot the brake check and failed left brake light though? 

Garage at Large wrote:

My rationale for this is that the cyclist with the camera was riding with wider tyres (28mm or 30mm) and was also catching up quickly on the downhill section - his increased weight would be a natural advantage on the decent. comments about people's size and weight have wound people up and caused a bit of a shitstorm in the past, and that's really all I'm here for, rather than making any meaningful contribution to the discussion.

joe9090 wrote:

Your eagle eyes did not spot the brake check and failed left brake light though? 

I wasn't sure about that brake light: I'd thought it was light refecting and that neither brake light was working...

Garage at Large wrote:

Disappointing lack of action by the police here - in my opinion the horsebox driver should have received more than a warning.

And that's where yo could have ended, instead of trying to torment.

Garage at Large wrote:

That notwithstanding, there are two mitigating points in favour of the driver. First, as can be seen from the speed reading, the cyclist accelerated into the overtake making it far more difficult than it should have been. 

The RPM tells a different story.  Most likely a local connection, it is more likely to be reliable than the speed which, since it tends to remain steady then shifted up slightly when the van was very close alongside (and the RPM was going down), was more likely to be GPS-based and vulnerable to averaging delay, and possibly interference both from the van and the surrounding environment.

Garage at Large wrote:

This feeds onto point number two, which is the incident may in some way have been confected to titillate a YouTube audience, rather than have been a genuine piece of bad driving. This probably weighed on the mind of the police decision maker in coming to their judgement.

Which we can dismiss, because:

1.  there is no basis for it
2. the description of the behaviouir is based on a response to the initial input, which is the poor overtake

GMBasix wrote:

The RPM tells a different story.  Most likely a local connection, it is more likely to be reliable than the speed which, since it tends to remain steady then shifted up slightly when the van was very close alongside (and the RPM was going down), was more likely to be GPS-based and vulnerable to averaging delay, and possibly interference both from the van and the surrounding environment.

There's also the not insignificant draft effect to consider, given the size of vehicle and prevailing speeds (and -4% gradient).

BTW - I run a wheel sensor along with the GPS; theoretically ELEMNTs use both to calibrate each other to get more accurate measurements (GPS calibrates sensor when signal is good, and sensor backs up patchy signal when GPS is poor)

Interesting. In any case, your data do not support the bot's troublemaking comments.

Garage at Large wrote:

The cyclist was pedalling at around 90rpm pretty much until the horsebox driver had finished the overtake. If you look at the rider in front, by contrast, they were coasting pretty much the whole time.

Quite so. Which is why I was catching him up, until I was blocked off by the horsebox, and - once the horsebox had got out of my way - is why I then overtook him.  Were you really after a physics lesson, or did you have another point to make?

Well he was initially indicating you were a fat bloke and blocking the view to the other cyclist. And his reasoning for that is because you were going faster downhill. Now he has decided you were pedalling too fast so deserved it...... Make of the troll what you will, but don't expect any apologies. Afterall, you only got close passed to get more viewers on youtube. (Next he will be telling you off for whispering "effs sake" and you deserved it). 

Garage at Large wrote:

If you're a big guy, you're likely to obscure the view of a smaller cyclist infront of you. Take that into account when assessing passing traffic.

Unless you're being followed by a righthand drive vehicle in a country where we drive on the left, in which case the driver will have line of sight of all cyclists and your size won't matter a damn;

Garage at Large wrote:

If you're being overtaken, and the space looks tight, ease off the pedalling. Yes, you might not be able to draft the vehicle as effectively, but it's a much safer course of action.

See the video above for an absolutely textbook example of this, where the rider has a cadence of 93 rpm as the overtake begins and has slowed to 28 rpm as the rear of the vehicle passes.

I suspect Boo needs to apologise to Bucks Cycle Cammer for essentially stating he is the size of a small van when he seems to be a reasonably fit and fast cyclist. Of course, like with anything from him, any apology, if it comes will be will be mealy mouthed and with an extra caveat of some stupid extra trolling. 

And as for the RPM, from an earlier reply, apparently the vehicle being shown on both front and rear facing cameras at the same time is actually a fully successive overtake. Bucks stopped pedalling within 1 second of the vehicle appearing on the front camera, so did exactly what Boo indicated, yet he was still to blame apparently. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

Unless you're being followed by a righthand drive vehicle in a country where we drive on the left, in which case the driver will have line of sight of all cyclists and your size won't matter a damn;

And we should all have TT bikes and ride in a TT postion. TT bikes, the safest on the road.

Oh bollix. Again. I and many other on the forum cycle within the HC guidelines. We don't go out of our way to wind motorists up. We cycle to the conditions we find ourselves in. And daily we have our lives compromised by selfish, irresponsible driving.  We endure threats and verbal abuse from passing motorists and in some cases pedestrians. 
 

Maybe you should jump into a motoring forum and extol the motorists there to be kind and respectful to cyclists and we'll see how long you last. I've seen some of the venom there and various threads and it's not pretty. Some of the responses here are tame and couldn't hold a candle to the stuff that you read on motoring forums. Let us know how you get on if you do so. 

Garage at Large wrote:

The cyclist was pedalling at around 90rpm pretty much until the horsebox driver had finished the overtake. If you look at the rider in front, by contrast, they were coasting pretty much the whole time.

The RPM start to drop the moment the box is in view.

Waste of time arguing with trolls and conspiracy twits. Obviously a vehicle that shows on both front and back cameras has finished it's overtake as you well know. He got that from the Nicmason school of video watching and commenting. 

Well thank you for citing me. FWIW this is  bad driving . I  might even have bailed out into the verge.

Only cited you as you stated a very similar "well car has fully overtaken so cyclist should have slowed" statement on a video where the cyclist was still level with the front wheel of the car. Hence the Nicmason school of video watching. But you are welcome. 

Not everything the Nigelov Garagesky bot says is inherently troublemaking. I'll take at face value its comment on facts and discuss those facts, but when it descends into nonsense, I am learning to laugh into my hanky at its nonsense.

The speed v RPM was briefly useful to analyse, since it does refer to a reasonable line of debate about how we should reasonably respond to being overtaken too close, but when the bot starts suggesting that RGB codes (0,0,0) = (255,255,255), the bot has ceased to serve any purpose.

GMBasix wrote:

Not everything the Nigelov Garagesky bot says is inherently troublemaking. I'll take at face value its comment on facts and discuss those facts, but when it descends into nonsense, I am learning to laugh into my hanky at its nonsense.

I took that approach for a while - essentially because it was the view from the man on the Clapham omnibus or maybe even black cab driver, dressed up as a gigantic strawman. "Good at least to have the 'mainstream' represented albeit satirised" I thought. Unfortunately the account appears to actually be mostly for baiting clicks / stirring / knockabout however. Fortunately there are some people who hold quite different positions and will debate them rather than just being contrarians (once you make allowances for the fact that everyone likes a fight on the 'net...)

Garage at Large wrote:

The cyclist was pedalling at around 90rpm pretty much until the horsebox driver had finished the overtake. If you look at the rider in front, by contrast, they were coasting pretty much the whole time.

Stone cold lie. Overtake begins, 93rpm, overtake ends, 28rpm. You're a joke.