Near Miss of the Day 470: Terrifying head-on close pass (+ video)

As you can imagine, we sadly get a lot of submissions to our Near Miss of the Day series, and it was as we were sifting through some of those today that had been hanging around for a while in the road.cc inbox that we came across one of the scariest we've seen, with a cyclist in Cornwall finding an overtaking driver coming straight at him at speed.

It was sent in by road.cc reader Joe, who said: "It was a quiet evening out and I was cycling to Portreath.

"It’s a nice stretch of road with a cycle path next to it which I chose not to use as the road was quiet enough.

"I saw the van driving toward me and the VW pulled out to overtake. Instead of tucking back in they gunned it and cut up the van whilst nearly taking me out.

"I was pretty close to jumping off the bike and diving onto the path!"

He added: "I didn’t report it to the police as they said the video wasn’t long enough (needed 7 minutes before and after the incident of continuous footage that was unedited I think?)." 

> 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