This clip is doing the rounds on Facebook and has a rather lively comments section on the go too where more than 4,000 people have weighed in on the video showing a van driver overtaking a cyclist on a narrow, twisty country lane. The ‘Idiot Drivers Caught’ Facebook page shared the footage, submitted by a cyclist, the video showing two riders descending on a narrow country road at speeds between 22-28mph (35-45km/h).
Now, despite many pointing out in the comments how that seems a quite sensible maximum speed for such a stretch of road, and despite the blind bends and steady stream of oncoming traffic, the van driver just has to overtake the cyclists because… well, God forbid you go down a hill at 28mph behind two cyclists rather than at 28mph in front of them.
In an alternate universe the clip gets thousands and thousands fewer views (and doesn’t appear on a page dedicated to “idiot drivers”), instead showing two cyclists descending a country lane at 25mph while a driver chills out, waits behind and then overtakes safely further along the route, all parties continuing their journey without incident and (almost certainly) in a very similar time as what happened above.
Instead, the driver blares their horn and forces an overtake, having to slow and pull towards the roadside hedges every time a car comes up the hill.
So, how did the people of Facebook react to this? Let’s just say it was… mixed.
Paul Yung Mao: “Clearly not many cyclists in the comments section here. The overtaking clearance on that road is 2 metres, the cyclists are probably pushing 30mph. He’s staying on the smooth road and doesn’t have to pull onto the rough surface. Van driver is in the wrong and the overtake accounts to dangerous driving.”
David Spencer: “Narrow track road with no proper passing places. The cyclist was spot on. The driver needs to review his driving, be more patient, drive according to the conditions and have a read of the Highway Code. Pure entitlement from the van driver.”
Mike Hughes: “There wasn’t a single safe overtaking spot until he actually overtook, but he’d have clearly tried without the positioning of the second cyclist.
And if he had overtaken, he’d have just ended up having to slow to pass traffic coming the other way.
“Yeah, the rear cyclist doesn’t help, but this is classic ‘must get in front’ mentality. In reality, those cyclists are travelling as fast as any car down there and it’d be no slower, but much safer to wait until the road flattens out.”
That last sentence seems a good place to leave this part of the reaction. Amusingly (and confusingly) there were also some suggesting the cyclists were in the wrong and looked like they were speeding. There was no word on the speed and overtaking behind, of course. Both speeding and holding up traffic at the same time? That’s a whole new level of Schrödinger’s cyclist.
Someone else used the video to ask what drivers are meant to do in this situation… “How can you give a cyclist two-metre clear when a lot of roads don’t have that clearance the vehicle would end up in the hedge?” If, having asked that question, you can’t work out the answer, then we really don’t know what to say…
If you had ‘random road tax comment’ on your bingo card then you can cross that one off, someone also asking “Do cyclists pay road tax?” Another commenter suggested the van driver should be allowed to pass because they are “going to work”.
That’s enough Facebook for one day…