Electric taxis may be billed as being friendly to the environment – but not all cabbies using them are friendly towards cyclists going by today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series.
It was filmed on St Pancras Way, Camden, an area with a lot of cycle traffic both on the road and the towpath – the Constitution pub on the left lies on the Regent’s Canal.
Ian, the road.cc reader who filmed it, told us it was "certainly the worst incident of the type I’ve had in 13 years of riding in London.
"One thing that really alarmed me was not even realising the taxi was there until it was in my peripheral vision. I’d always assumed that electric vehicles would be audible from the road noise, but am now very aware that’s not the case.
"It’s clearly a punishment pass for me not using the cycle lane on the right, however I’m obviously perfectly justified to do that (not least because I’m comfortably doing 20+mph).
"The cycle lane actually runs out only slightly ahead and switches to the left, which puts cyclists in danger of drivers turning right after the zebra crossing."
One point worth noting here is that as Ian mentioned, while you’d get plenty of notice of a diesel London cab coming up behind you, unless you’re shoulder checking regularly you’d get no such warning of the electric version, making a close pass like this even more unnerving.
> 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