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news
Near Miss of the Day 385: “I had to overtake you” says driver after dangerous close pass on blind bend
Today’s near miss occurred in Celbridge, County Kildare in Ireland. After a close pass, the driver reverses so he can confront the cyclist. He claims the cyclist could have caused a serious accident by being overtaken. “I nearly ploughed into that woman’s car,” he says.
The incident occurred on Friday February 15 2019, at around 5pm.
Eugene said: “As you can see, the driver overtook me with little room, an oncoming car, and at a blind bend.
“I expressed my displeasure with a hand gesture – but not a rude one. I made a pinching motion to indicate he'd squeezed me, before turning into the entrance to my housing estate.
“I can look at this now and shake my head in amusement and disbelief, but in the moment that the driver stopped to follow me, I thought he was going to run me over. All I could think of was my new-born daughter.
“Thankfully he just really wanted to get his ignorance of Irish Road Traffic Law recorded for posterity.
“My favourite quotes are where he dismisses the law, and where he admits he put the other motorist in danger, while being ignorant of the fact that he has admitted this.”
The driver’s main arguments seem to be: (a) Eugene should have been on the footpath and (b) there was nothing he could have done to prevent his own dangerous manoeuvre.
“I had to overtake you,” he says at one point. (This is such a perfect summing-up of the mentality that causes so many close passes that someone really should put it on a bumper sticker.)
Eugene reported the incident to the Gardaí via their Traffic Watch service, “and while it took six months to arrange to give my statement, and 10 months to come to court, the driver was eventually convicted of Careless Driving and fined €200, at the end of February this year.
“My subsequent reports to An Garda Síochána have been dealt with much more promptly, and even though there was a delay in this incident, when the assigned Garda worked with me on it, they were very helpful and kept me updated, right to the resolution.
“If I've learned one thing from this, it is not to engage with a road user who has put you in danger, even if that engagement is forced on you.”
> 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
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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23 comments
If I've learned one thing from this, it is not to engage with a road user who has put you in danger, even if that engagement is forced on you.”
Actually I think it is because you engaged with him and he essentially made his confession on camera that you actually got a result with the Gardai.
This is one of my favorite NMOTD's .. that fella literally spews his thought process out to the cyclist and simply does not understand.
Such ignorance and I'm not actually inclined to 'totally' blame the driver, I think this is simply the culture we've been indoctrinated with, to believe that the car is the king of travel over the past forty years, which has led us here.
"Never mind the F-ing law". Sums him up really. Clearly someone with that attitude should not hold a driving licence. If that they should be behind bars.
Actual impunity tends to breed this level of arrogance. On the rare occasions where I've interacted with a driver, and made him aware that he (it's almost always a 'he') is being filmed, the usual response is to look straight into the camera and pull faces, and act like a complete fuckwit.
Because they know that there is almost zero chance of them being held responsible for their actions.
That’s another driver who should follow the yellow brick road, and hopefully the Wizard of Oz will give him a brain…
Always amazes me how so many drivers are in such a rush to get somewhere that they feel they have to make an unsafe pass, yet then afterwards have plenty of time for an argument if the cyclist so much as raises a finger.
Always amazes me how so many drivers are in such a rush to get somewhere that they feel they have to make an unsafe pass, yet then afterwards have plenty of time for an argument if the cyclist so much as raises a finger.
Always amazes me how so many drivers are in such a rush to get somewhere that they feel they have to make an unsafe pass, yet then afterwards have plenty of time for an argument if the cyclist so much as raises a finger.
Always amazes me how so many drivers are in such a rush to get somewhere that they feel they have to make an unsafe pass, yet then afterwards have plenty of time for an argument if the cyclist so much as raises a finger.
I think your amazement is clear !
One of the first many multiple posts on the new look website.
I have to admire the restraint shown by the cyclist in this clip. Faced not only with some pretty crappy driving, but also faced with a complete idiot with absolutely no comprehension he was wrong.
Just a worrying thought, juries are going to have a few people with attitudes similiar to the one the driver showed. No way that if a serious enough offense occurred that it required a crown court, that a jury could be truly balanced and fair.
Unfortunately, we cyclists are unfairly hated, and considered lower in the perceived hierarchy of road users than almost everyone else. Without much tougher sentencing, mandatory retesting and proper enforcement, this isn't going to change.
Most drivers consider themselves to be above average, rating their abilities as good or excellent. This is human nature, but seems particularly applicable to driving for some reason.
E.g https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/motr/when-it-comes-to-driving-...
Cyclists; overtaking them, showing patience around them, being able to observe ahead, adjust speed and generally operate a car safely around them, represent a challenge to driving ability that all too often is beyond the capability of the driver.
However, being an "excellent" driver, the problem cannot possibly be their fault. This video is a great example of a driver's total inability to recognise that they made an error. Even after attending court, my money would be that he regards the punishment with utter incomprehension.
It seems to me that 'I had to pass you' isn't so much a reflection of a driver's inability to wait five seconds, but more that for a majority of drivers in the UK (and, apparently, Ireland), the 'natural order' of things is violated whenever he or she has to wait behind a cyclist. And this belief seems to be predicated on a perceived 'superiority' of the driver, over the cyclist.
Whether it's financial (because let's not forget that all cyclists are 'broke' and can't afford to buy a car, since if we could, we wouldn't waste our time pissing about on a child's toy), or some perverted notion that 'progress' puts the internal combustion engine ahead of the human body as a means of locomotion, the fact is that to these drivers, we should not be on the road.
If you saw this person, driving a good car along the road you could think - a rational adult but scratch the surface of their brain = a non rational adult who's prepared to disobey the law and risk the lives of others for the sake of a few seconds of their time ;-(
Time which isn't really that important to them if they then waste minutes of it arguing the point with the rider and showing themselves to be a true idiot ;-(
Erm. No, you didn't.
Feckin' idiot.
Feckin' eejit
Please!
Correct; grammar is so important.
I wonder if the driver 'cares about the fecking law' now
This driver's attitude is hardly confined to Ireland, there are plenty of drivers in the UK with the same views, which is why we need to keep reporting them; eventually they'll learn the lesson that other people have rights too.
Exactly - I had pretty much the same experience in Edinburgh. Car overtook me, too close, into low winter sun, with another car coming straight at him. On confrontation, the driver claimed that he overtook me "to avoid an even worse accident".
There's something in these drivers' brains that tells them that unless they can make progress at the speed limit or above, a hole will open in the space-time continuum and they'll be sucked into it to a universe where aliens will feed on their frustrations.
Well done mrogorm, it's the oh so important driver thing that you are so impatient and your journey is so urgent that you have to put peoples lives in danger, but then you have time to stop, reverse and then argue the toss just to prove to the world how unbelievable stupid you really are.
Forgetting everything to do with the bike incident, when he moved because the cars were behind he literally pulled out on the following drivers causing them to brake.
just a generally poor driver across the board who was finally given some punishment because he did it to the wrong vehicle.