Near Miss of the Day 706: Driver towing caravan pulls in too early

As you may be aware, motorists are allowed to tow a caravan or trailer up to a certain weight without the need for a special licence – and with towing them likely to be an occasional rather than regular practice, that means that it’s easy to forget the risks that can be caused to vulnerable road users, for instance by pulling in too quickly, which features in our Near Miss of the Day series.

The footage was shot on the B5246 in Lancashire heading towards Tarleton from Wiggins Lane by road.cc reader EHE Life Cycle who, in a message to the motorist, said: “Probably this is the only time you have ever towed a caravan!

“The clue is in the homemade (can’t really see) number plate. You've forgotten that the caravan makes your combined length longer and you appear to just overtake me with the car length forgetting that you are towing quite a large caravan.”

The footage was sent to the police but they did not respond – “probably they don’t monitor the inbox,” added EHE Life Cycle.

Lancashire Constabulary were in fact on the scene – you can see one of the force’s patrol cars being driven in the opposite direction towards the end of the clip – but even if they’d been there a few second beforehand, it’s questionable whether the officers in the vehicle would have seen just how close the driver had come to the cyclist.

> 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.