Near Miss of the Day 44: White van close pass

Riding in the driving rain can be highly unpleasant and challenging enough without some motorist deciding to ruin your day with a close pass – but that’s what happened to road.cc reader Jon Griggs as he rode along Birmingham’s Hagley Road.

West Midlands Police launched their widely-praised close pass operation just over a year ago, with the message getting through to most motorists that they need to provide a safe passing distance when overtaking a cyclist.

Clearly, it didn’t get through to the driver of the white van 1 minute 50 seconds into this video who not only overtook Jon on a bus lane with inches to spare, but also undertook a car that was being driven in the outside lane.

Writing on YouTube, he said: “Typical standard of driving on Hagley Road. And so soon after someone from work was killed in another part of town on her way in.”

> Near Miss of the Day 42: Cyclist in Birmingham on way to vigil meets aggressive driver

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.