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Near Miss of the Day 240: Traffic calming gone wrong?

Our regular series featuring close pases from around the country - today it's West Yorkshire...

Something we see regularly in our Near Miss if the Day feature is motorists carrying out dangerous overtaking manoeuvres on cyclists at points in the road where measures have been taken to prevent such incidents from occurring.

Today's, from West Yorkshire, is a classic example as the driver of a Boots Pharmacy van squeezes past a cyclist at a point in the road where white hatching followed by a traffic island is meant to highlight to motorists that they should not overtake because it is dangerous to do so at that location.

It was submitted by road.cc reader Philiip, who told us: "Yet again I find myself in Skipton falling foul of traffic calming measures.

"Just in the space of a few hundred yards I am accosted twice by drivers who can't understand that two into one wont go.

"This is a regular occurrence on this road and I wonder if any cyclists have actually been hurt or even killed here?"

He added: "I have contacted Boots asking then to have a word with their drivers, just awaiting a reply!"

> 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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15 comments

Avatar
ktache | 5 years ago
2 likes

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Avatar
giff77 replied to ktache | 5 years ago
4 likes

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

Avatar
Deeferdonk replied to giff77 | 5 years ago
2 likes

giff77 wrote:

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

Whatever, the employing company still has an obligation under health and safety legislation, to have practicable systems in place to control risk to thier employees and the gerneral public. If they're  driving commercial vehicles in public you would think that this should be more than just checking they have a licence.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg382.pdf

Avatar
giff77 replied to Deeferdonk | 5 years ago
2 likes

Deeferdonk wrote:

giff77 wrote:

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

Whatever, the employing company still has an obligation under health and safety legislation, to have practicable systems in place to control risk to thier employees and the gerneral public. If they're  driving commercial vehicles in public you would think that this should be more than just checking they have a licence.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg382.pdf

Except the Health and Safety representatives in all these companies are doing a pretty shit job in ensuring that employees who have access to company vehicles actually drive within the guidelines of the Highway Code and obey the Highways Act. Daily most of us have some interaction with motorists of liveried private class vehicles who drive with impunity towards other road users. It never ceases to amaze me that people drive shockingly while behind the wheel of a marked vehicle. 

I stand by my comment that if somebody is to drive for a living on a standard licence they should sit an extended test or their employers put them through a recognised in-house test before they are handed a set of keys.

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
1 like

I never use Boots unless there is no option since they went off shore and stopped paying tax.

This is just another reason not to use them.

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brooksby replied to burtthebike | 5 years ago
1 like

burtthebike wrote:

I never use Boots unless there is no option since they went off shore and stopped paying tax.

This is just another reason not to use them.

Are there any large companies which *haven't* go offshore to stop paying tax?  I wonder if we should start calling it "Doing a Dyson?"?  

(BTW, what do you use as an alternative to Boots?)

Avatar
burtthebike replied to brooksby | 5 years ago
2 likes

brooksby wrote:

burtthebike wrote:

I never use Boots unless there is no option since they went off shore and stopped paying tax.

This is just another reason not to use them.

Are there any large companies which *haven't* go offshore to stop paying tax?  I wonder if we should start calling it "Doing a Dyson?"?  

(BTW, what do you use as an alternative to Boots?)

Lloyds.  I've been using them for years in prefernce to Boots because, when I was working to promote active travel, they took our leaflets and featured active travel in their magazine.  Boots refused.  They seemed far more interested in keeping their customers healthy, when Boots seemed to want to keep them sick to sell them more overpriced snake oil.

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
9 likes

This is a failure of design by highway engineers, who know very well that gaps which are between 3m and 4.5m will encourage drivers to overtake cyclists going through a traffic calming feature like this.  There is research and advice going back probably 25 years, but they still do it.

Like the other comments, I agree that the only way to tackle them is to take prime position, central in the lane, well before the island, but this requires experience, nerves of steel and faith that one driver having a bad day cares enough not to kill you.  No novice rider would do this and would be subject to many of these passes, and would probably give up after a day.

Incredibly, this kind of traffic calming is still happening, even in places with pro-cycling policies.

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Awavey replied to burtthebike | 5 years ago
4 likes

burtthebike wrote:

Like the other comments, I agree that the only way to tackle them is to take prime position, central in the lane, well before the island, but this requires experience, nerves of steel and faith that one driver having a bad day cares enough not to kill you.  No novice rider would do this and would be subject to many of these passes, and would probably give up after a day.

glad you highlighted the nerves of steel bit, because its not just novice riders who struggle taking prime in those cases, as you are basically putting your whole trust in the driver of the vehicle behind, to then make that choice not to drive into you, when the only reason you are making that move into prime in the first place is because you actually dont trust them at all that left to their own devices they will make the right safe decisions.

I had a very close pass near one of those things last year, closest Ive been to being another KSI statistic for a while, and Id swear the car actually drove over the island, because I was well into a prime position, there wasnt a car sized gap next to me and the kerb of the island, but the car was coming through regardless and somehow warped space and time and did

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CXR94Di2 | 5 years ago
4 likes

With multiple islands ride central on the road.  

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dassie | 5 years ago
8 likes

I say we in good time, shoulder-check, indicate, take the lane - and stop the dangerous pinch point manoeuvres. It's the only way to be sure.

It's what I do...

 

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alansmurphy replied to dassie | 5 years ago
0 likes

dassie wrote:

I say we in good time, shoulder-check, indicate, take the lane - and stop the dangerous pinch point manoeuvres. It's the only way to be sure.

It's what I do...

 

 

Indicate what?

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StuInNorway | 5 years ago
4 likes

With forward planning like that, probably as well the driver doesn't work for their family planning advice section......

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Kendalred | 5 years ago
9 likes

Yup, typically impatient 'professional driver'. Quite frankly I am sick to the back teeth of those who drive for a living. If I were to do something so badly that I did so often, and for a living, I would give it up knowing it's just not for me. Ridiculous pressure and time limits put onto these drivers is also a factor.  I drove a town bus for a few months, and some of the routes had alloted timetables that were nigh on impossible to keep to.

PS - Skipton is North Yorkshire, not West.

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xerxes replied to Kendalred | 5 years ago
2 likes

Kendalred wrote:

PS - Skipton is North Yorkshire, not West.

It's north of Watford Gap, so it's just "up north" innit bruv.

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