Near Miss of the Day 467: Driver refuses to wait for sensible place to pass club run

I'm not surprised; I ride (and drive) around that part of the country and avoid the A39 and A368.  Both busy A roads with very few places to safely overtake.  Popped onto the A39 in Marksbury (the village that video is from) for a very short stretch recently and took 'primary position' going through some traffic islands earning a volley of abuse from a driver.  Last year I was in the car further down the A368 and stopped to help as there'd been a hit and run on a sportive.  The local clubs are always on them, but for me; no-thanks.

because certain drivers cannot be trusted to drive safely or competently, I personally would take a situation like this into my own hands and would adopt the primary position through the stop line, junction, and thereafter. There is a forum topic from a few months ago about this, called Primary Position. Basically I now will position much more assertively. Never to cause inconvenience for the sake of it. But always putting my safety ahead of their hurry. I'm interested to understand why primary is not a lot more prevalent by everyone  - especially amongst experienced riders. Is it out of politeness and helpfulness. I'd say safety trumps all else

Unfortunately it is a "victimless crime" because in law it is not considered a crime, therefore no one can be a victim.

It looked like the first 2 cars were a bit trigger happy at the lights as well.  I can understand why they didn't as it's initially quite a wide junction, but I'd have been tempted to occupy the primary position in the cycle box as well.  Though to be fair I wouldn't do that always and it would have been interesting to see a rear view or a couple of minutes beforehand to see the clubs and drivers behaviour.  It's easy to be an armchair critic with this stuff though! Doesn't excuse the nasty pass though.

Sometimes a driver seeing others "winning" the overtake encourages them to do something silly too I wonder if that's what happened here.

While I can't disagree that the driver did choose to pass dangerously close and should be held to account for it, in any group I've been riding with in the past few years, at least two of the riders would adopt primary position going through a road narrowing like that.  Physical prevention is the only thing some drivers understand.

 for a large vehicle, leave a minimum distance of 2.0 metres in all conditions?!

This happened on the 8th, was reported online on the 9th, and has still not even been allocated a Lancashire Constabulary incident number or received any other response. This school bus, operated by 'Coach Hire Executive' Preston, not only came a lot closer than 1.5m, but was almost completely over the unbroken white line in a dangerous position on the approach to a humped canal bridge which is immediately followed by a sharp left hand bend- and I was cycling at about 17+ mph. As soon as the coach passed me the driver began braking so that he could swerve back left to avoid colliding with the oncoming car which suddenly appeared at the bridge crest. The coach was filmed entering Garstang High School a couple of minutes later. The incident is fully documented in a comprehensive 11 page .pdf file which is full of photos, but experience tells me that the police have already begun the Standard Dodge Strategy which ends with ''it is now too late to process this case'.

All these laws, consultations, advice etc. are useless when the police refuse to enforce them because their only criterion for a 'real offence' is Blood On the Road.

More deplorable still is this screenshot from the laughable present Highway Code consultation. 2 metres in a 40 limit zone?! They're doing at least 40 in the 30 zones.

Below is a screenshot from the BBC website, describing the usual fiction of the 1.5m 'clearance'. I think most regular cyclists in the UK experience several 0.5m close pass incidents a day, and yet the police continue to regard this as a non-offence. When the police refuse to tell you what they've done it means they have done nothing at all.