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news
Near Miss of the Day 200: Driver overtaking cyclists almost hits another rider head-on
Today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day feature shows the moment a cyclist was almost hit head-on by motorists overtaking a group of cyclists riding in the opposite direction.
It happened on Layhams Road in Keston in the London Borough of Bromley and was shot by road.cc reader Yayarecki.
In the clip – scroll through to just after a minute in – the first vehicle, a Range Rover, is close enough but it’s the second, a Ford, that provides the really scary moment.
It’s worth noting that the driver of that car would not have been able to see the approaching cyclist because their view was obscured by being too close to the vehicle on front.
The footage was submitted to police, but they decided not to take any action.
> 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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22 comments
I ride that road 4-5times a week (opposite direction) and there are so many near miss incidents and close passes literally every ride !
Lethal.
Run it at quarter speed Full HD from 1:08.
I thought initially the Fiesta overtook blind, but you can see both lights of the Fiesta at 1:09, so the cyclist was visible before the Fiesta committed to the overtake - albeit the Fiesta was almost on the two oncoming riders and braking woul dhave been difficult.
It seems the Fiesta did not see the cyclist, because the driver's right hand is visible on the wheel and neither it nor the direction of the front wheels change.
If the driver had passed the two oncoming cyclists wide, this would have been a fatality for any pedestrian, cyclist or motorbike.
Fiesta's registration is LB62 LSJ
Police need to visit this driver.
Cyclist eased from 43km/h to 37km/h and held his line. I'd guess oncoming Fiesta was within a foot of his bars.
Range Rover overtook well although surprised at the speed of the cyclist and pulls in a bit quicker than planned.
Following Merc. does the right thing and waits until visibility is clear.
Very green for London.
it's the first bit of countryside you get to heading south from SE London, the beginning of the green belt before you get to the M25. As someone else said earlier, it is the way onto the North Downs, and is usually very busy with young, fast cyclists at the weekend, overtaking me...
I did the route down to the North downs the other weekend. It's suprising how quickly the suburbs of south London change to the greenbelt and the North Downs. My route took me down Featherbed Way though. A couple of overtaking motorists, but nothing hairy. Not sure if this is a better route?
As a contrast, here's a snippet of footage that I sent to Avon & Somerset Police the other day and they responded:
20181016-tiny.mp4
Looks like they actually swerved at you, but could be impatient and squeezing between the traffic calming chicane. Either way, poor driving. Glad the police didn’t dismiss it.
I think he was just trying to get through the ironic traffic calming section.
Seemed actively aggressive, but to be honest, I was half-expecting the clip to reveal the oncoming vehicle to be driven by a squirrel.
Does anyone what sort of camera that is?
Judging by the watermark (top left - not easy to see), it's a Garmin Virb.
Here's an image of the 2nd car and that's definitely too close.
cap_dangerous overtake [720p]_00:01:12_01.jpg
Could be any number of cameras, but he's using Garmin Virb Edit to overlay the GPS data, and unless you have a custom layout (and actively remove it) the logo is standard there.
How smooth is that road!!!? Dorset cyclists dream of surfaces like that.
That is a very small section of it which has been resurfaced fairly recently the rest of that road is absolutley terrible.
Scottish ones too. There isn't 1.2km of road that smooth in the whole of Scotland!
they've only just resurfaced it.....last year and in the summer.....its had craters in parts before !
Quite, surely this is a mistake by the highways authority, no-one resurfaces these types of road properly anymore, just chip and tar bullshit that lasts 5 minutes and is beyond crap. Think the last time I was on anything that smooth in the UK was a newly laid section of the A505 in Luton, shame I was sideswiped and got a fractured elbow for my troubles!
I hate Layhams - it's full of pricks such as those in the video that think they're some sort of Colin McCrae rally driver the way they tear-arse around those lanes.
They seem surprised when they caome across a group of cyclists on it, but in reality, it's the gateway to Kent from London and throngs of people use the route on a regular basis.
1:10 for anyone who can't be bothered sitting through general man on bike action.
And may I say "Chapeau!" to the rider! Sounds like a jet plane and going like one too, all at 137bpm...
But yes, dreadful driving. Lucky for the cars it was a bike coming, rather than an HGV...
Nah, they’d have been fine, they’d just have pulled back in and run the cyclists over. No worries.
Another graduate of the Dr Helen Measures School of Motoring