Near Miss of the Day 253: Police admit they were wrong not to prosecute aggressive white van driver

Today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series is the third in a row featuring a white van driver – and it’s one that resulted in police apologising to the cyclist for deciding not to refer the case to prosecutors when it was submitted to them.

The footage was shot by road.cc reader James, who told us: “This one was late last year, in Hove.

“It was reported to Operation Crackdown, who sent the driver a formal warning letter but I thought it was definitely worthy of prosecution.

“After putting it on Twitter, the Sussex PCC, Katy Bourne, got involved and Sussex Police emailed me to apologise.

“They agreed it should have been prosecuted, but as the letter had been sent, it couldn’t be upgraded to a prosecution.”

@OpCrackdown @SussexRoadsPol @sussex_police
I took this video, showing a driver who is initially aggressive and intimidating, then makes a deliberate attempt to run me off the road and into parked cars, to my local police station and was told to report via Operation Crackdown. pic.twitter.com/y0ph9J5Y1B

— JT (@HootsyJT) November 14, 2018

Click through to James’s tweet for the full Twitter thread.

> 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