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Near Miss of the Day 31: Delivery moped rider in left-hook
Our Near Miss of the Day feature has taken a bit of a break recently, but we're back with one that will be increasingly familiar to anyone who rides a bike in a busy city.
The rise of the gig economy and in particular food delivery services has seen huge growth in the number of mopeds out on the road, often with inexperienced riders who, moreover, are under time pressure to get the job done and move onto the next one.
It was filmed last week by Camden Road station in North London by road.cc reader Emma Robinson, with the rider almost left-hooking her as he rode past then immediately turned across her.
She told us: "Today was particularly bad for road users being thoughtless idiots but here's the most piss-taking one of the day I thought."
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.
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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26 comments
A Lima at that.
I've got to admit it doesn't look like much on video but it definitely seemed brazen and needless at the time, in real life. When anyone using a vehicle makes any manoeuvre like that there is the chance they will cause a problem for someone who wasn't expecting it - not necessarily to me but what if someone was crossing and didn't expect left turning traffic? I had recently been to the vigil for Ardian Zagani, who was killed on Camden road. It's pretty close to home when it happens on your commute. Then when you add up all the little daily things - the close passes, being cut off, exhaust fumes, motorcycle gangs in the asl's, all the little joys of commuting in London, sometimes you just want to post up a video of someone being an obvious knob and get some like-minded people agreeing on how annoying that is. I think it's good that road.cc are doing this, because one day things might change and the majority might start noticing that our hostile road environment is a problem. In the meantime, I will try and do my bit of being a good and courteous road user, but I'm glad I have my cameras now for any encounters involving anything more serious than a cheeky scooter driver.
I was literally on the actual edge of my seat watching that.
These people should bew banned from the road. The loonie left is preventing Queen Theresa from clamping down on this sort. They're probably all young and do things like having fun. I heard that young people take drugs too. Is it any wonder there are so many unemployed sponging off of us pensioners?
During the war....
Hi all,
The point of us running these vids is to make a point - not to you lot the readers of road.cc most of whom I’d imagine are already cognoscenti of the close pass - but, eventually, one day to the people that might actually do something about driving standards in this country. In fact not even driving standards - just standards of consideration for other people who you could easily kill or maim if you just happen to sneeze or they just happen to hit a pothole while you’re passing them with inches to spare. It’s also about making a point to those who will at some point (lot of points going on here) inevitably complain about police resources being ‘wasted’ on close pass operations.
Close passes may just be a part of life on the road, but as has been said already - that doesn’t make them right and equally it doesn’t help anybody to pretend they don’t happen and that riding on the road is all sweetness and light. Yes, better infrastructure would go some way to solving the problem, but the thing that would go a lot further is that when a road user any road user cyclists included encounters a more vulnerable road user they don’t do something thoughtless or stupid that makes the vulnerable road user even more vulnerable.
I don’t see why it’s impossible to change people’s attitudes, close passes happen everywhere but you can ride in plenty of places in Europe that don’t have particularly great cycling infrastructure and where you can still feel as a cyclist that your fellow road user in a big metal box has your back* (in a good way).
I’ll admit this is likely to be a water on stone exercise and we’re probably going to need to get to a pretty big number, by which point many of you will have stopped watching them (but that’s okay), but we’re not going to run out of near miss vids any time in the foreseeable future. Indeed if we ran all the vids we’d been sent since we started running this feature we’d be closing on three figures already.
As beezus fufoon points out above real life viewed through a lens doesn’t always look as scary as it actually is. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary though and it also doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t acknowledge that too.
Hopefully that hasn’t come across all preachy, but that’s why we run the close pass vids and why we’ll keep on running them too.
*and that's not to say that there aren't plenty of considerate drivers out there on UK roads just that there are also a lot of thoughtless and inconsiderate ones too
unsure who the target audience for these videos are - anyone who has ever used the roads will already know the dangers and know that there are a percentage of pisstakers using them - that only leaves the under 5's, the Briggs family, and chauffeur-driven politicians
also, there is a proliferation of videos which show very little happening - "someone came within a few feet of me!" - while that actual number of videos which show anything resembling the sort of impacts which cause real damage and deaths are... I was going to say few and far between, but in fact I don't think I've never seen one...
I suspect that, because of the way video changes the perception, it would still look fairly weak (eg. if you fimed a real gunfight without effects like bullet time and people flying into the air when hit, it would look like nothing much was happening). It's not so much that we're used to this type of filming and video game culture, but rather that, in order to actually experience it, you either need these enhancements or to actually experience it first hand.
These delivery riders on mopeds are a danger to themselves and others. I've had countless close calls with them, both ony my bicycle and my motorbike. In fact they often are even more dangerous when I'm on my sports bike as they try and wring the neck of their little scooters to make overtakes. Perhaps the law should be changed so that only full motorcycle licence holders should be allowed to be delivery riders.
I would have thought that those who use a bicycle would understand the significance of evidence that cyclists are being endangered by motorists on a regular basis.
These videos highlight the problem which could quite easily be reduced very significantly if the political will were there. The driving test could be made more stringent for a start. Law enforcement of bad driving is appallingly lax and cycle infrastructure is generally very poor.
If you don't like such videos then by all means don't watch them but the provision of the evidence of a serious problem where vulnerable road users are being endangered, injured and killed is an obvious step in progress towards a safer and more civilised society. The idea that these things just happen and should just be accepted is an extraordinarily complacent one. It is precisely because of video evidence like this that we should be lobbying harder for the improvements which are urgently needed and which should shame the authorities into appropriate action.
One persons opinion, but I do not believe most cyclists are being endangered by motorists on a regular basis. I only cycle 18 miles each day in/out of Glasgow City Centre, so I might be lucky that I'm not seeing the same volume of traffic as folk in London etc.
My take is these videos significantly overstate a problem, and draw attention away from where it should be - cycling infrastructure and encouraging more people (for health reasons if nothing else) to get out and about on a bike.
I read once that over a 1,000 folk die each year in the UK from falling down stairs. Maybe everyone should all wear GoPro's all the time?
That's what I'm talkinbout. Good initial post - good response.
Totally valid points both. On the latter I've seen that 1,000 deaths per year stat too. Cycling is safe - Boardman regularly makes that point (though even he seems to have had enough of road cycling). Maybe we need more positive stuff encouraging non-cyclists instead (I'm a firm believer in 'safety in numbers' and that more cyclists will make us all safer).
Or maybe the whole site dedicated to how great cycling is and the stuff you can waste your money on sort of already does that, and there is a niche for some road reality. Hmmm.
"The DfT reports that the number of miles travelled by pedal cycle in 2016 rose six per cent to 3.5 billion vehicle miles."
I can't help feel that the relentless coverage you give to near misses and accident video clips (and I'm as guilty as anyone else of rubbernecking at them) does present an unrealistically hostile and hazardous image of cycling.
3.5 billion miles is a lot, and chances within that huge number some folk are going to lose concentration, take a chance, stubble across a doddery driver, hit a pothole, get wiped out by a lorry, pedestrian, door jammer etc.
Most folk do fine, and it might be useful to remind ourselves that these genuinely rare occurrences. Things could be much better, of course, but I think this site ought to take a more measured, less tabloid approach to this sort of thing...
But that's 6% of a very small number. It's not 6 percentage points of modal share. It's more like 6% of 2% - so virtually nothing. Get back to me when it rises by 1000%.
Edit - it's also a measure of total distance, which means it may well be that hard-core cyclists are cycling further, not that more journeys in general are being made by bike.
And, while I can't say I'm sure what the purpose of these clips is, one purpose they serve for me is that the reaction to them makes me wonder whether existing cyclists might be the last people anyone should listen to about cycling.
Because so many seem to regard these sorts of incidents as just 'normal' and to be expected. I'm not sure if it's machismo or just defeatism - maybe a mixture of both?
I think it's simply the realisation that shit happens, and if we obsessed about it we'd probably talk ourselves into stopping. We do all get stupid passes, we do generally survive, we move on. Sure, better driving would be good, but fallible people will all do stupid things from time to time.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the purpose of these clips is either. They irritate me a bit and I'm really not sure why.
But the 'what is the point!' comments irritate me more.
1. 'We' are just too damn reasonable. A cycling site posts some 'look at what we face on the roads' propaganda (I think) and 'we' have a debate amongst 'ourselves' about whether whether they are necessary or working. Meanwhile, the whole MSM seems to have gone anti-cycling mad, and the most-liked comments on even the most ridiculous click-bait are by the knuckledraggers shouting about insurance and registration. 'We' really do not help 'ourselves'.
That is a tsunami of bullshit that needs to be faced down. Reason alone will not do that. And if road.cc thinks it's found just a minor way of doing that, I'm all for it, even if I don't quite get what 'it' is, or whether it's working, or I find it irritating....
2. I wish one of the 'what is the point!' comments would properly deconstruct the aim of these clips and why they are not working. Then we could probably consign them to the 'failed propaganda' pile (and I'd be happier that I had a reason to be irritated). 'til then:
Up With This Sort Of Thing (I think)
Really, was that it?
That was pretty bad. 'Must get past the bike! Whoa, must turn left!'
But at least someone's takeaway was infinitesimally warmer than it would have been otherwise.
Do we need any more of these videos really.
my thoughts exactly. no real point to any of them, its just a normal part of being on the road
Doesn't make it right though.
Ten years of London commuting has clearly desensitised me to this, because my immediate reaction was, "is that it?!"
Congratulations on your month of close passes.
Can't wait for the 12 close passes of christmas.
1 broken rib
2 broken fingers
and so on
Only 87 A&E days to go.
Clearly one of those moped riders who is paid to deliver pizzas. I thought that learner riders had been banned from such activity since they were not insured for it.
I hope this has been reported to the police.
Under a CBT you aren't allowed to carry a pillion, go on a motorway and are limited to a 125cc but a square box on the back is perfectly acceptable although not ideal, at least he did his lifesaver as he cut across in front
Why on earth would the police be interested?
Historical evidence for when the oxygen thief does the same thing to a black cab but this time gets him/herself killed?
Chances are the moped rider will end up being a statistic with riding like that anyway...karmas a thing.