Near Miss of the Day 314: So what is “the minimum threshold of the offence”?

Pete sent this video and a statement off to Cheshire police, “hoping that something, anything, might be done to educate the driver.” He was told that the force would not be taking action because the incident “doesn’t meet the minimum threshold of the offence.”

“I had the misfortune of having this driver overtake me on 23rd of September,” says Pete. “I'd just exited the single lane slip road off the A483 onto the B5445 near Grosvenor Garden Centre near Chester.

“Sorry about the quality – the roads are poor and it’s raining – but you do see clearly enough what happens. The driver makes no attempt to give me anything like half decent space, because they can't, as there's a Transit in the other carriageway.”

Explaining the decision not to take action, Cheshire Police told him: “This is because the incident in the footage you’ve supplied doesn’t meet the minimum threshold of the offence so unfortunately on this occasion no action will be taken against another party but thanks for letting us know, I’ve logged the details in case it comes to our attention again.”

“This is the latest in a long line of point blank refusals by Cheshire police to do anything at all to protect cyclists,” says Pete. “It's got to a point now that I only send the occasional one just to test the waters to see if they can be bothered – which apparently they still can’t.”

Pete adds that if you go over the border to Wales, “Operation Snap will at the very least issue a warning letter.”

> 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.