Near Miss of the Day 833: Oncoming driver forces cyclist to swerve

One of the big talking points on social media when it comes to cycling this week has been the video of a five-year-old cyclist, riding ahead of his father, nearly being hit by an oncoming motorist who failed to stop despite there being parked cars on either side of the road, meaning the driver passed the child with inches to spare – and we have a similar scenario today in our Near Miss of the Day series, albeit one involving an adult cyclist.

In this case, cars were parked on just one side of the road in the Gloucestershire village that Richard, the road.cc reader who filmed the incident, was riding through – but as you can see, there was barely enough room for the approaching driver to pass him safely, and the cyclist had to swerve to avoid being hit.

Richard said he was prompted to send it in to us after seeing that video of the child, pointing out that his one also “involves a driver not giving way while passing parked cars.”

He said: “I always stay well out from the kerb at this part of the road and most drivers now behind the parked cars until I have passed.

“If they don't, I stay out until they slow down or stop before moving in. This is the first driver since the Highway Code changes who has done neither.

“My front camera in on the handlebar stem and the bars are around 450mm wide. The rear footage shows how close it was.

“I reported it to Gloucestershire Constabulary using the online reporting system and the response was: ‘I have sent a warning letter to the driver’.”

“Personally I was quite happy with this in view of previous submissions getting NFA [no further action],” he added.

> 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