Near Miss of the Day 385: “I had to overtake you” says driver after dangerous close pass on blind bend

Today’s near miss occurred in Celbridge, County Kildare in Ireland. After a close pass, the driver reverses so he can confront the cyclist. He claims the cyclist could have caused a serious accident by being overtaken. “I nearly ploughed into that woman’s car,” he says.

The incident occurred on Friday February 15 2019, at around 5pm.

Eugene said: “As you can see, the driver overtook me with little room, an oncoming car, and at a blind bend.

“I expressed my displeasure with a hand gesture – but not a rude one. I made a pinching motion to indicate he'd squeezed me, before turning into the entrance to my housing estate.

“I can look at this now and shake my head in amusement and disbelief, but in the moment that the driver stopped to follow me, I thought he was going to run me over. All I could think of was my new-born daughter.

“Thankfully he just really wanted to get his ignorance of Irish Road Traffic Law recorded for posterity.

“My favourite quotes are where he dismisses the law, and where he admits he put the other motorist in danger, while being ignorant of the fact that he has admitted this.”

The driver’s main arguments seem to be: (a) Eugene should have been on the footpath and (b) there was nothing he could have done to prevent his own dangerous manoeuvre.

“I had to overtake you,” he says at one point. (This is such a perfect summing-up of the mentality that causes so many close passes that someone really should put it on a bumper sticker.)

Eugene reported the incident to the Gardaí via their Traffic Watch service, “and while it took six months to arrange to give my statement, and 10 months to come to court, the driver was eventually convicted of Careless Driving and fined €200, at the end of February this year.

“My subsequent reports to An Garda Síochána have been dealt with much more promptly, and even though there was a delay in this incident, when the assigned Garda worked with me on it, they were very helpful and kept me updated, right to the resolution.

“If I've learned one thing from this, it is not to engage with a road user who has put you in danger, even if that engagement is forced on you.”

> 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