Near Miss of the Day 823: The shocking moment a driver nearly crushes a child being towed in a bike trailer

Of the more than 800 videos we have featured in our Near Miss of the Day series to date, and thousands more that have been submitted, but not published, it is very difficult to think of a more shocking one than this – a driver who appears to make a deliberate manoeuvre towards a trailer being towed by a cyclist, in which the rider is carrying his infant son.

It left us speechless when we saw the video on Twitter earlier this week. Another couple of inches over and a family’s life would have been changed forever.

As you can imagine, the video attracted plenty of attention when it was first shared on the social network when Simon – @ChesterCycling – posted the footage, shot in Northgate Village, Chester.

“I had my one-year-old son in the trailer behind me, and my son (aged 7) and daughter (9) were riding their bikes ahead of me,” he told us.

“We were using a residential road to get from the local greenway to the centre of Chester. This was the route that involved the least time on a road.

“The driver pulled out of a side road, on to the wrong side of the road, passed two legal scooter riders, a car, and then tried to pass me.

“We were moving towards the centre of the road to pass a parked car on double yellows, and two vehicles were heading towards us on the opposite side of the road.

“He then stayed behind us until the top of the road, at which point he went right as we went left, and according to the passenger in the car behind me that he'd previously overtaken, he then continued up that road for a distance on the wrong side of the road.”

Simon reported the incident to Cheshire Constabulary, who confirmed to him today that “they have sent the registered keeper a letter” – although, echoing a frustration we hear from a lot of readers who submit footage to the police – he added, “I probably will never find out what specific action will be taken against the driver.”

> 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