Near Miss of the Day 752: “If anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning,” say police

A bit of an unusual one on our Near Miss of the Day feature today – the source is the Twitter feed of the Sheffield North West Neighbourhood Policing Team, showing the moment an approaching driver passed a group of cyclists too closely, and at what officers described as “excessive speed.”

The driver received a fine of £417 and had their licence endorsed with five penalty points, and police added that “If anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning.”

COURT RESULT: CARELESS DRIVING. The driver of this vehicle decided to pass a group of cyclists at excessive speed and far too closely. Fined £417 in total, licence endorsed with 5 points. If anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning. pic.twitter.com/zInKYa84cc

— Sheffield North West NPT (@SheffNW_NPT) April 21, 2022

Police said that the incident happened before they began accepting footage on the Nextbase portal, which enables members of the public to upload footage of driving for investigation, and that a repeat offence could see the driver’s vehicle seized.

The driver was also issued a S59 warning as soon as we were notified of the offence. If he is seen to drive in a careless and antisocial manner in the year since it was issued his vehicle will be seized.

— Sheffield North West NPT (@SheffNW_NPT) April 21, 2022

Despite police emphasising in the original tweet that the driver was entirely at fault, some people in the comments suggested that the cyclists should have stopped to let the motorist pass, pointing out the poorly parked car on the left hand side of the road – but once again, officers underlined that the issue here was the standard of driving, and not the behaviour of the cyclists.

Exactly. I expect some what aboutery with any of these posts, but people need to know what the police and courts think about this type of driving which the result shows

— Sheffield North West NPT (@SheffNW_NPT) April 21, 2022

Last year, we featured a Near Miss of the Day video filmed while cycling by Inspector Kevin Smith, who leads the Sheffield North West Neighbourhood Policing team, and which is one of the most frightening incidents we have highlighted in this series.

> Near Miss of the Day 651: “If I’d continued to go straight on, I would have gone under the wheels of this lorry”

And earlier last year, when she was still active travel commissioner for the Sheffield City Region, Dame Sarah Storey – Great Britain’s most successful ever Paralympian – joined the Inspector Smith and his colleagues on a close pass operation that saw no fewer than one in five drivers get pulled over.

> Dame Sarah Storey joins South Yorkshire Police on close pass operation – and almost one in five drivers get pulled over

> 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