Today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series shows not one but two cyclists getting a close pass from the same driver – but as the road.cc reader who submitted the footage has found out before, there’s something of a postcode lottery at work in whether police act on the video.
It was shot earlier this week by Mike, who said: “Here's a video of me and a fellow cyclist getting a dose of impatience from a driver on Tuesday.”
We know that some police forces are hot on acting on videos such as this – West Midlands Police, for example, who pioneered the close pass initiative since adopted by forces across the country, or Surrey Police, who on their Twitter account regularly correct motorists’ misconceptions about the law as it applies to cyclists.
Not so in Mike’s part of the world, however. “I’m not even considering police, last time I enquired with Wiltshire Police they told me unless there's a collision they're not interested,” he told us.
> 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
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.