On 15/10/2020 23:46, JNugent wrote:
On 15/10/2020 22:55, TMS320 wrote:
On 15/10/2020 14:31, Simon Mason wrote:
QUOTE:

A cyclist who was riding downhill and suddenly encountered a
convoy of tractors as he headed under a railway bridge says the
incident is “one of the top five near misses I’ve had, filmed or
not.”

The incident happened in Houghton near Preston, Lancashire, with
road.cc reader Jon, who shot the footage, saying: “On a commute
to work in the evening I changed my route so was going downhill
and approaching this corner when out of the darkness there
appeared a massive tractor taking the whole road – hence the
swearing as it was very scary.

“What made all this harder is the poor road surface, people on a
pavement and taking a corner so having to lean over so needing
more space.

“I’m not blaming the driver it was just one of those incidents,”
he added.

https://road.cc/content/news/near-mi...r-giles-277965




Based on the following tractors, it looks like the lead one did
not need to be that far out. It's a two lane road with a centre
line which does not disappear under the bridge.

It was wider than half the carriageway width. Tractors often are.

Gosh. Remarkably enough, on some roads, they can even take up the full
width. On some roads there can be plenty of space. The difficulty is the
intermediate.

I guess the cyclists' immediate concern was to give the
pedestrians space, which meant moving to the right of the riding
line on a right hand bend.

Why would he be concerned to do that?

Because cyclists are like that.

(Any *good* driver also makes a different assessment of gaps to kerbs
and to walls or elbows.)

They were on the footway, some distance before the tunnel under the
bridge. He had passed them.

Comparing the video with Google Earth, they were approximately 10m from
the bridge.

Continuing to follow the curve while making a step move to the
left and mashing the brakes shows good control.

Travelling at a more moderate speed (a speed from which he could
stop within the distance seen to be clear) would have been the
correct thing to do. Prevention better than cure, etc.

Your mantra involves a making a hasty change of plan because of a scary
development to avoid a crash. Steering into a gap alongside an obstacle
is just as valid, particularly when the "obstacle" is about to consume
the space you would have stopped in.

The video is too dark to show us earlier information that was available
to him, which might have determined his planning beyond the pedestrians.
I agree that, given that the pedestrians where on a critical point of
the curve, some slowing, no matter what, would have been wise to gain
time to get back on line.