Passing side road - driver pulls out into overtake

bails87

Anyone else get these?

Where you're passing a side road on your right, a car pulls up to the junction wanting to turn right. It stops, and then when you're just about to pass the junction it pulls out. It looks like a SMIDSY but the driver knows you're there, so rather than doing a normal pull out and squashing you, they pull out but turn more sharply so they end up facing down the road whilst straddling the white line i.e. mid-overtake. They then carry on past and pull in when they're past you.

I've noticed it happening more and more. What they're doing is almost certainly against the advice in the highway code (overtaking at a junction?) but they normally leave enough space that if it was a 'normal' overtake I'd be happy with it. The problem is that when I get a genuine SMIDSY in the same situation it takes me that bit longer to recognise what's happening because I expect them to do the turn/overtake in one as described above, so I end up uncomfortably close to the National Grid van and it's driver who couldn't see my Magicshine on the bars or Knog strobing on my helmet. :roll:

I'm very well lit up and normally taking a 'confident' road position, btw. Not necessarily primary because this only seems to happen when there are no cars behind me.

Should drivers be doing this?
Is it one of those things that only happens to me, like drivers stopping and waiting for me to get within range before striking?!

greg66_tri_v2.0

I get this occasionally, and no, they should not be doing it.

It's not overtaking at a junction per se; it's failing to give way. If you replace yourself with another car, it's more obvious that it's a failure to give way: anyone waiting in the minor road with a clear road to their right *could* pull out into the oncoming traffic lane, irrespective of the traffic coming from the left, then overtake until they find a slot. But no one does, because it's a failure to give way in the first place.

They do it to avoid having to wait, pull out behind you, tuck in and then pull out and overtake.

arthur_scrimshaw

I've had this a few times on my rural commute, each time the (different) driver has been pulling out of the Rolls Royce car factory entrance at Goodwood - read into that want you want :?
Although I can't quite put my finger on why, I do find it a bit offensive/aggressive. Maybe because the time they would lose giving you a bit of courtesy is minimal and it seems to indicate you're a sub species of road user? That said, as per your example, they normally give me massive clearance, but I wonder if this is because they're feeling a bit guilty about doing it in the first place?
In busy towns with pressure from vehicles behind to pull out at every opportunity, I guess it's more prevalent?

scrumpydave

I get this too every now and again. I don't like it at all. It's one of those manouevres that makes you feel on edge even if it's clear that the driver has seen you. Nice to know it's against the Highway Code at least.

memsley89

I get it most evenings, a busy little section with loads of traffic... it usually occurs when the driver in the opposite lane flashes to let them out of the junction, I'm never sure if this means I should then slow (no traffic on my side) to allow them out as well? Usually I just carry on regardless, as I figure they'll just do what the OP has described if they're in that much of a hurry.

I was however feeling kind the other day (and had forgotten to switch starva on ) so slowed to let the driver out. He nodded his head in appreciation, proceeded to pull out before the car behind me took it as the perfect opportunity to overtake! One very near T-bone later, I just put my head down and carry on regardless!

*typo edit*

gbsahne001

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

greg66_tri_v2.0

gbsahne wrote:

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

Hmm. Good point. I've just realised I do most mornings exiting the end of my road.

daviesee

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

Hmm. Good point. I've just realised I do most mornings exiting the end of my road.

A bit of hypocrisy going on here then. :?

Back OT. It happens to me and I have come to a conclusion.

They look, and see you. But you are "only" on a bike so they think that they have plenty time and are caught out by your awesome speed. Works in my mind anyway.

veronese68

I had someone try and do this to me a couple of months back. I'm pretty sure it's because he didn't look properly. He started to pull out, saw me adjusted his line, only to find himself with a large 4x4 bearing down on him from his right lights on and horn blaring. It's the fact that he hadn't seen a large car approaching from his right that convinced me he probably didn't see little old me until the last minute.

bails87

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

Hmm. Good point. I've just realised I do most mornings exiting the end of my road.

How do you do this? You pull out of the side road onto a main road and overtake cars travelling along it?

Or are you saying you pick your way through stationary/queueing traffic?

veronese68

bails87 wrote:

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

Hmm. Good point. I've just realised I do most mornings exiting the end of my road.

How do you do this? You pull out of the side road onto a main road and overtake cars travelling along it?

Or are you saying you pick your way through stationary/queueing traffic?

I'll do it if I can move faster than the traffic. Turn right and keep filtering.

bails87

They look, and see you. But you are "only" on a bike so they think that they have plenty time and are caught out by your awesome speed. Works in my mind anyway

I don't think it is that. It happens, but they don't leave the space for an overtake, they just pull out and block my path. With what's in the OP they know where I am and how much space to leave, which is why it's hard to be angry. I'd rather they did that and left loads of room than they went behind me and squeezed through a few seconds later. But, as said, it makes me not recognise SMIDSYs. The alternative is to overreact to these passes and treat them as SMIDSYs rather than cheeky but not dangerous overtakes.

As for doing it on a bike, I hadn't really thought about it, but I'd probably be tempted to do similar, not that there's any opportunity to on my mostly rural commute. Thing is, drivers don't have to worry about cyclists wiping them out so the odds of giving someone in a range rover a heart attack by making them think I'm going to run them over (on my bike) are pretty low.

greg66_tri_v2.0

bails87 wrote:

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

I'm guilty of doing on the bicycle with cars in order to get to the side road opposite. If I don't do this then I can be sat at the junction for 15mins.

Hmm. Good point. I've just realised I do most mornings exiting the end of my road.

How do you do this? You pull out of the side road onto a main road and overtake cars travelling along it?

Or are you saying you pick your way through stationary/queueing traffic?

Typically:

I'm on a minor road, waiting to turn right onto a major road.

Traffic from my right is non-existent, because two sets of lights down the road are holding it back.

Traffic from my left is a slow moving, medium weight.

I pull out turning right and ride on the wrong (empty) side of the road, and accelerate until I match the speed of the traffic that is/was coming from my left at the junction. Once matched, I slide into the traffic stream.

wgwarburton

bails87 wrote:

They look, and see you. But you are "only" on a bike so they think that they have plenty time and are caught out by your awesome speed. Works in my mind anyway

I don't think it is that. It happens, but they don't leave the space for an overtake, they just pull out and block my path. With what's in the OP they know where I am and how much space to leave, which is why it's hard to be angry. I'd rather they did that and left loads of room than they went behind me and squeezed through a few seconds later. But, as said, it makes me not recognise SMIDSYs. The alternative is to overreact to these passes and treat them as SMIDSYs rather than cheeky but not dangerous overtakes.

As for doing it on a bike, I hadn't really thought about it, but I'd probably be tempted to do similar, not that there's any opportunity to on my mostly rural commute. Thing is, drivers don't have to worry about cyclists wiping them out so the odds of giving someone in a range rover a heart attack by making them think I'm going to run them over (on my bike) are pretty low.

I'm not so sure- most drivers don't want to kill you and many get very nervous driving around a soft vehicle.... This gives rise to that frustrating situation where you are descending towards a roundabout or junction where you have to give way and a driver sees you coming in at speed and thinks "ooh! he might not stop in time, I'd better slow down a little and make sure", so you slow down a touch in response, still intending to slip in behind them, and they recalculate the closing speed and decide you haven't left enough space, so they slow down a bit more, just to make sure you arn't going to get yourself squashed.

Repeat until you are both stationary, you at a give-way, them parked on roundabout or on the main road... Your momentum is gone and they are looking at you, worried, thinking they have avoided disaster and wondering why you are glaring at them for being so dim....

Cheers,
W.

bails87

Drivers don't give way to me when I'm the one on the RAB, let alone when they've got 'right of way'.

Lassic

I had one of these on my commute this morning, my first actually. It really got me on edge.

Going along a main road at about 20mph (which is quite fast for me) and a car just pulls out from a side road (on the opposite side, turning right) into my path. I edge a little left, closer to the curb as I pass the front left of the car.

Gave him a handsignal as if to say "What the F*** are you doing?!" and sped off.

Not sure if he saw me and edged out ready to pass or if he genuinely didn't see me. But it was daylight (approx 8:15am) and I had my front light on anyway. I also have a big high vis backpack which he could have seen.

Origamist

This happens pretty frequently in my experience, but more often if you're close to the kerb and the emerging vehicle has more room to the right of you to play with. I find it a bit unnerving because you can't be sure they'll not continue to pull out and block your progress or worse, hit you (eye contact is not really of much use, IME). When I see a vehicle pulling out, I either a) slam on the brakes, b) wipe some speed off, c) maintain speed and move left to give myself a bit more space (or a bit of both b and c), or d), if I am moving quickly, I pass them on the right/left as braking might not be an option. It's annoying, but at least you get more reaction time with right turn pull outs...

adskis

How weird!
This same thing happened to me this morning.
I was thinking about posting about it but decided to let it go.
It really gets my attention because of the uncertainty of the situation.
(i.e. are they a SMIDSY and about to squash me, or are they just being a c0ck)
This morning it was definitely the latter.
It was pea soup fog here in Cambridge and the roads were really wet.
I indicated my displeasure to the driver

This must happen a lot more than we all think.
Take care out there!

bails87

I imagine drivers who don't cycle don't realise how unpleasant and common SMIDSYs are, so don't realise what they're doing. All they think is "I knew he was there, I gave him plenty of room, what's he so angry about?".

rjsterry

bails87 wrote:

Drivers don't give way to me when I'm the one on the RAB, let alone when they've got 'right of way'.

This is a particular hate of mine. The only thing that seems to work (partially) is a glare and a pointed finger at the ground just in front of them as if to say "Stay!" Occasionally, I'll also shout "Wait!"

PedalPedant

bails87 wrote:

I imagine drivers who don't cycle don't realise how unpleasant and common SMIDSYs are, so don't realise what they're doing. All they think is "I knew he was there, I gave him plenty of room, what's he so angry about?".

This is exactly what the police officer driving a marked patrol car said to me after doing exactly this. I'd shouted "Oi" as he pulled out and then given him the standard outstretched arm "wtf" gesture. He felt compelled to stop and explain that he had seen me and given me plenty of room so what was I complaining about.

When I pointed out that there was no way I could tell whether he'd seen me or not and that as far as I was could tell he'd pulled out on me he just said "I'm sorry you see it that way" and drove off :-(

All this was accompanied by his colleague grinning to himself in the passenger seat :roll:

PP

coopster_the_1st

I have had this before and when it is done well it feels safer than a lot of other driving manoeuvres we experience.

We all have to exist together on the roads and rather than taking the moral high ground in these situations I would prefer to sort out the actual bad or dangerous cases of driving. To me this is no worse than a safe overtake.

Although someone did try to do this to me in a car when I was travelling at 50mph, now that was scary :shock:

daviesee

PedalPedant wrote:

All this was accompanied by his colleague grinning to himself in the passenger seat :roll:

PP

Should have called them plebs. That really upsets them.

davis

I think our view is very different to that of the driver performing the overtake, mostly because it's a fairly rare situation, and one that feels like someone's driving at you -- I felt the same when someone started what felt like a right-hook. In reality, he probably wasn't that close, but it's just the feeling of having a 2-tonne truck driving at you.

mikeeye

I see this quite often, especially at this staggered junction:



I'm heading south on Winchester Road, to go straight on down Willoughby Road. Cars coming out from Cosby Road on my right will often pull out and drive parallel with me. They then find themselves stranded on the wrong side of the road when it dawns on them that I'm not turning left down Cosby Road.

Having been knocked off by a car that didn't see me (not at that junction), it scares the bejesus out of me.

alidaf

This happened to me last week. The driver was parallel with me for a good few seconds by which time I noticed he was texting as he took the turn and continued as he passed me. It is a very wide part of the road so no real harm done apart from my nerves, but what a pillock! Unfortunately, I get an incident almost daily on this quite rural stretch of road.

SickAsAParrot

I get it a lot, the roads I take aren't that busy so theres plenty of opportunity for people to pull out. Normally it's the pull out onto the centre line like OP describes but one morning last week I had 2 in a 200 yard stretch pull out right into my path. I always assume they are going to do that so I was ready on the brakes.

mikeeye

Coopster the 1st wrote:

We all have to exist together on the roads and rather than taking the moral high ground in these situations I would prefer to sort out the actual bad or dangerous cases of driving. To me this is no worse than a safe overtake.

Although someone did try to do this to me in a car when I was travelling at 50mph, now that was scary :shock:

I'd have thought joining a road despite seeing that it's already occupied by a vulnerable road user is both bad and dangerous. Unlike a safe overtake, there is a period of time where the car is heading directly at the cyclist. It doesn't take much imagination to conceive a situation where that goes horribly wrong.

During busy periods at the staggered junction I outlined above, the drivers are so focused on getting across the main road that they're going for gaps which are really not big enough. They've already waited in a queue for their turn at the junction, so it would be unreasonable to expect them to waste a 'gap' just because it's occupied by a cyclist . And that's assuming that they've actually seen the cyclist. The big concern for me is that as you're cycling along you simply don't know if they've seen you or not. There comes a point where you're committed to continuing along the road, so you really have to rely on the other road users taking appropriate care.

So if you really are going to do something to sort out the bad driving, I'd urge you to add this scenario to your list. You've admitted it scares you, so go for it!