Near Miss of the Day 277: Unsafe and illegal close overtake of cyclist with car approaching

Highway Code rule 163 tells motorists  to "Overtake only when it is safe and legal to do so," and that they should "give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car."

> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling

> What to do next if you’ve been involved in a road traffic collision

Today's video in our Near Miss of the Day series, though, shows the opposite - a driver squeezing past a cyclist on a narrow road despite the fact that there is a car coming in the opposite direction, making it unsafe and illegal, and with the rider given just inches of room.

Surrey Police's Roads Policing Unit, as you may know, regularly call out drivers on Twitter over their ignorance of the law, including setting straight misconceptions over what cyclists can and cannot do, but this close pass happened on their patch, near Weybridge.

It was filmed by road.cc reader Bryan, who told us: "I was out cycling and I caught this close pass ahead. The cyclist in front is an unknown and to be honest, I don't think he even knew how close the car actually was.

"I heard the car was behind me and unsure if was still approaching until it was beside me, I also saw the gap closing with the oncoming car.

"It goes to show, these close passes are probably a lot more common than we all realise," 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.