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news
Near Miss of the Day 901Near Miss of the Day 901: Taxi driver gets police warning letter over close pass that cyclist "nearly felt the wing mirror"
A close pass by a taxi driver, that the cyclist on the receiving end says felt like the vehicle's wing mirror barely missed him, was dealt with by Derbyshire Police issuing the professional driver a warning letter.
road.cc reader Kev was cycling to work in Derby on the A609 High Lane, in West Hallam, when the close pass happened, the taxi driver overtaking over the top of the brow of a hill, despite oncoming traffic and the road's markings, the professional driver's overtake the manoeuvre we are going to focus on in the clip.
As per the Highway Code, when there are double white lines where the nearest to you is broken, "This means you may cross the lines to overtake if it is safe, provided you can complete the manoeuvre before reaching a solid white line on your side."
Backed up by the Road Traffic Act 1988 sect 36 & TSRGD regs 10 & 26, for double white lines where the line nearest you is solid, "This means you MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road. You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less."
In this case it appears the driver began the overtake on the section with the solid line nearest, the road not clear due to the oncoming drivers in the opposite direction.
"I nearly felt the wing mirror," Kev told us, before explaining he deliberated over sending the footage to the police due to having submitted videos in the past and heard nothing back.
"It is pretty common on my commute, to be fair," he explained. "I cycle to work on a mountain bike so I can go off road as much as possible, but there is only one small section which is purely off road. There are no cycle lanes from Ilkeston to Derby that I am aware of. I try to go via the 'Great Northern Greenway' but this only covers about a third of my commute, the rest is on roads."
A week after the report was made to Derbyshire Police, the force replied to Kev explaining that they would be sending a warning letter to the driver involved.
> 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
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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I've watched it, at no timer were you in primary, you moved out to secondary and then dived back to the kerb asap. It's clear now why we disagree given what you consider primary and what I consider primary.
You're certainly not the only one, I always do it...we're actually making driving easier for them as it is taking the decision making out of their hands. I've never had any negative comebacks from it....yet.
You always ride in primary if a car is oncoming in the other lane? Really. I ride a lot with a lot of people and have never seen this!
Not really the same as this case is it, no line of oncoming traffic and the taxi is approaching from behind not waiting behind, what you describe is very different from this case
But 'ride in the centre of your lane, to make yourself as clearly visible as possible' IS 'ride in primary'. AIUI, anyway.
Centre of your lane is secondary plus a bit imo. Primary is towards the right of the lane I reckon.
That's not how it's commonly understood. Primary is usually used to describe centre of your lane. Secondary is somewhere to the left of there (but away from the kerb). Right of centre might be used when positioning for a right turn.
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/road-positioning-cycling-explained
Cyclists shouldn't have to take up primary whenever a car is oncoming, but in my experience, if you are confident enough, you definately should do.
At the very least, you should be following the highway code advice to keep a minimum of 0.5m away from the kerb.
I think we disagree in what primary is tbh, primary is to the right of the centre of the lane imo, that's what I was taught on advanced motorcycle training.
I'll leave it here as I think we kind of agree but are arguing on crossed purposes. I agree the cyclist was too close to kerb just not that he should have been in primary, secondary would have done.
Or, as quiff stated earlier:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/road-positioning-cycling-explained
That's all well and good but in now point during the video are you in the centre of the lane
I know, cos I wasn't in the video
I was as-near-as-dammit in the middle of the lane. Front camera is mounted slightly to the left, but the rear camera is on the seat post, right in the middle:
A warning letter, if it exists at all, that says simply "Now don't do that again, m'kay? Otherwise we'll have to send you another letter."
You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a
pedal cycle,horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less, or a cyclist whatever his speed and whatever the oncoming traffic (Lancashire Law)https://upride.cc/incident/sh63ymkdg64yvn_corsacrv_uwlcross/
https://upride.cc/incident/sj15agx_sprinter_uwlcross/
etc. etc- all ignored by LancsFilth
The Taxi was way too close for comfort. Surprised the police did not do a bit more, that pass was really poor driving for a professional driver.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a 'professional driver' behind the wheel of a Taxi is in any way shape or form more capable than the average 'non-professional' driver. In my experience they are sometimes amongst the worst drivers on the roads! Not because they're incompetent, but because they presumably think since they drive so much, and do so for a living, that they don't need to comply with all of the usual silly little rules and polite etiquette that us 'normal' drivers are supposed to. Places to go, people to pick up innit! No time to do stupid unimportant things like give way properly, overtake safely or observe things like box junctions and no parking/drop-off areas!
I agree, intuitively one would assume that spending eight or more hours a day on the road would make them better drivers but it's not like sport practice, often the longer you spend driving the sloppier you get as bad habits are just repeated over and over again and if you get away with them they become ingrained. I know that when I did a few months as a motorcycle courier my riding definitely got worse simply because I stopped concentrating as much as I had previously and became more blasé about risk.
+1 on this. In my experience, driving professionally tends to bring complacency and arrogance over competence. I've had far more issues/run-ins with "professional" drivers than any other type. Taxis are by far the worst too - I've actually been kicked out of two taxis in the last couple years for calling them out on their driving. One was doing double the speed limit in residential areas, getting wheel-spin away from all the junctions. The second buzzed an elderly cyclist with a couple of inches room at about 60mph and I went ballistic at him.
Agreed. I don't recall a bad experience in the UK, but some of the scariest car rides I've ever had have been in taxis, and this was before the Uber/Lyft era.
Doing something for a profession does not necessarily make somebody a professional.
But getting paid for it is the very definition of professional.
What it doesn't mean they have to be any good at it. What I do for a living I try and do the best I can be and am always looking to improve and be better. And when I fail I feel somewhat ashamed. But a lot of professional drivers seem to lack pride in what they do. Especially some of those who only do it for part of their job...
If the police only consider that worthy of a warning letter, then I'd have no confidence there's any deterrent to stop that happening again.
I'd also consider cycling carefully on the pavement there would not result in any police action against the cyclist. So that's what I would probably do if riding a mountain bike.
It's probably the courts are full, the letter is equivalent, get out clause.
You'd expect someone whose livelihood relied on being able to drive, wouldn't simply accept points or driving course automatically.
But then you'd like to think professional drivers wouldn't drive like that in the first place, though its scarily common ime.
Doesn't make any difference if you are hit by the wing mirror- when the police are determined to take no significant action, that's what they do. I have been hit twice- the first was before I got the camera and the police wrote it off as 'only a momentary loss of concentration' and the second time (with video) they just ignored the report. As for this licensing authority stuff: they do indeed pretend to be taking it seriously, but in practice it's just 'having a word with...'. That's what they did with this
https://upride.cc/incident/nu62myh_blackburntaxi_closepass/
TBH all the cars need a letter at least with the Taxi being the worst but this is a good example of the need to ride in the Primary Position. The rider is far too close to the kerb and drivers are unthinkingly using the lane . Requires confidence to do this though especially with cars travelling at that speed .
Personally, I wouldn't cycle on that road, it looks like hell. At the speed he is cycling at, I'd go onto the pavement.
Except I'd wager that he wouldn't just get a warning letter from the police for that? Suddenly he'd become a dangerous antisocial behaviourist and they'd enforce the Very Letter of the Law.
If that's only a warning letter what the hell do you have to receive to see the driver get fined? If you have the taxi details report it to the license authority too.
Most certainly report it to the licensing authority, they may (rather than 'will) take it more seriously than the Police.
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