Near Miss of the Day 481: A very scary close encounter with 'Farmer Giles' (includes swearing)

A cyclist who was riding downhill and suddenly encountered a convoy of tractors as he headed under a railway bridge says the incident is “one of the top five near misses I’ve had, filmed or not.”

The incident happened in Houghton near Preston, Lancashire, with road.cc reader Jon, who shot the footage, saying: “On a commute to work in the evening I changed my route so was going downhill and approaching this corner when out of the darkness there appeared a massive tractor taking the whole road – hence the swearing as it was very scary.  

“What made all this harder is the poor road surface, people on a pavement and taking a corner so having to lean over so needing more space.

“I’m not blaming the driver it was just one of those incidents,” 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.

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