Near Miss of the Day 656: Driver cuts across rider at cyclist priority junction

A driver cutting across a cyclist at a junction that was altered last year to give cyclists priority, forcing the rider to brake to avoid crashing into the vehicle, features in today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series.

The incident happened at the junction of London Road and Gordon Road in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames – one of London’s three Mini Holland boroughs – where a cycle path adjacent to the main carriageway crosses it.

The cyclist who filmed the incident, Twitter user Bigdai, is a bike mechanic and cycling instructor and can be heard on the video telling the motorist that he needs to apologise to the rider who was forced to stop, and that he cannot drive across the junction when cyclists are approaching.

Commuter fun on the London Rd cycle lane. I was lucky enough to see it happening the on-coming rider didn't have a clue until he had to slam on the brakes. There was an apology pic.twitter.com/Ug5NPzFPXN

— Bigdai🍷🍺🚲🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🤘 (@Bigdai100) November 8, 2021

He told road.cc: “The lane has been in place for about two years, previously there was no infrastructure, not even paint,” (as shown in this Google Street View image from 2019).

“The current layout is pretty much LTN 1/20 compliant (until it meets the bus stop further along),” he added.

In a post published in April on the Kingston Cycling Campaign website, local cyclist Henry Medcalf highlighted that the junction had attracted criticism because of the absence of signage.

He wrote: “The stretch of cycle route isn’t without its criticisms, however. There has been lots of scrutiny of the junctions with Gordon Road and Birkenhead Avenue.

“There is a lack of clear signage for drivers that the cycleway has priority. As a result, drivers encroach out into the cycleway, creating risk for injury.

“This would be rectified by adding more obvious signage or moving the current signage to a more primary position in full view of the driver.”

> 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