Near Miss of the Day 852: Motorist's dashcam catches another driver's close pass on cyclist

Keep your eyes focused on the right-hand lane to catch today's Near Miss of the Day submission...

The motorist who filmed the close pass told us the other driver received a fixed-penalty notice for the incident from July which was reported to Sussex Police via the Operation Crackdown online reporting page.

"I thought it put an interesting different perspective on these videos, being from an observer's position rather than the victim," James told road.cc. 

"The driver can be seen to be distracted, reaching across the dashboard with his left hand, whilst apearing to have a mug in his right hand, and simultaneously passing the poor cyclist super-close. I am not really sure why this was not a dangerous or careless driving charge rather than an FPN to be honest."

The report also raised questions about the Operation Crackdown portal, which our reader notes "now states that for 'GDPR' reasons you have to inform other drivers that you are filming using a dashcam in order for them to be useable."

The portal has the following statement which needs ticking before making a report.

I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR

 "Clearly it is not possible to tell the drivers of all the cars around you that you are recording them," James told us. "It seems a very strange statement to me."

road.cc contacted Sussex Police for clarification but never received a reply.

> 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