55km into my 60km ride on Sunday, all I was thinking about was getting to the end. It had been a grey day, I wasn’t feeling particularly fast or motivated, but I’d done it, and soon I could simply bask in the sense of achievement that comes from a long ride. I was cycling with three others into Bristol in south west England along the Portway, the main road into the city from the west, and I was just trying to get it done.
The Portway isn’t a nice road to cycle along, it’s busy with traffic, even on a Sunday early afternoon, but it’s flat and useful. While there is a bus lane for some of it, this peters out, and it’s currently a mess of roadworks, which ironically is aimed at boosting active travel routes, while hampering it at the moment. There’s also the option of cycling on the pavement, which would mean no motor traffic, but that comes with its own problems.
The scene is now set. I say I was cycling with my group, although the truth is I’d hit out a bit just to get this bit of the ride over with. There’s a short road tunnel underneath the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge to guard against rockfall, which is when the road also becomes one lane in both directions. It was here, when I was going about 25km/h, when I briefly thought I was about to die.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
The violence of an extremely close pass is hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it, and is not at all experienced by the person committing it. As I cycled through the tunnel, the driver of an industrial lorry, probably carrying some kind of aggregate, decided this was the perfect time to overtake me. It was not. There was not enough room, with a line of traffic on the other side of the road, and nowhere for me to go apart from the rock face. If I had wobbled, hit a pothole, moved an inch, I would have gone under the wheels of that lorry.
It would be nice to imagine that the driver hadn’t seen me, at least then it wouldn’t have been a deliberate, malicious act. But it was the middle of the day, and he had already passed the three other members of my group. I don’t know the last time you thought you were about to get seriously injured, but it’s not a nice feeling. It was over in seconds, of course, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re centimetres away from tonnes of metal at speed. Imagine standing right next to a railway while a train rumbles past, and you’ll get it.
Fortunately, I was fine. The lorry carried on its merry way, its driver probably oblivious to the fact he had just gambled with my life for what, a slightly quicker drive? A sense of achievement? A win in the forever war against cyclists? It was sickening, though, and has stayed with me. It could have so easily been worse. I didn’t film it, I don’t have a camera, and therefore this is it in terms of retribution, a column that the driver will never read.
If this feels like a straw man argument, seeing as I was not hit, then consider what the regularity of these does to cyclists. We live in a car-centric society where too often those on bikes are seen as a nuisance. Drivers are encouraged by sections of the media and online forums to see cyclists as the enemy, not as fellow road users. Close passes might be non-events to drivers, but to cyclists every one is violent, and might force people off the road. I know people who have stepped back from cycling, or prioritised off-road, or never even started riding, because of the fear of dangerous driving.
Some people come off worse, with almost 4,000 serious injuries to cyclists on the roads of Britain in 2023. It might be getting better, but change is slow, too slow to make a noticeable impact. Bad drivers continue with impunity; a group of friends was undertaken by a lorry while out cycling a couple of months ago, with the driver deciding that the grass verge was a suitable place to pass, rather than being patient. We live in an age of hyperindividualism, where everyone demands to get places as quickly as they can. A brief moment waiting behind a cyclist does not fit into this.
Things need to get better, and quickly, if we are to encourage more people onto bikes. Perhaps this column won’t reach the drivers that need to read it, but please consider the violence of your acts when you come close to hitting a person. You might think nothing of it, speeding a long, but trust me, it will linger with the victim. Be patient. Give space. Put yourself in their shoes.
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