Near Miss of the Day 515: Aggressive and abusive van driver gets the sack

Today's video in our near Miss of the Day series resulted in the driver, who apparently had a history of reckless behaviour towards cyclists, getting sacked by the company he worked for.

"Let me start this one off by saying it’s good news with a positive ending," said road.cc reader Lyndon, who sent in the clip.

"A far cry from most incidents I find myself subjected to. Had a run in not but 500m from home in a 20mph school zone at 4:30pm a few weeks back.

"I was doing exactly 20mph, keeping to the middle of the lane at times to avoid parked cars. You can see a van overtake the car in front of him to then unroll his window to shout abuse at me, while coming within an arm’s reach of me.

"I was told to 'get off the road' and 'get in the cycle lane.' I contacted the business, to which they were fantastic. The owner was very apologetic and promised he would investigate and get back to me.

"He did, and it turns out the driver in question has done this before and had been disciplined and warned against doing so in the future.

"The company has since terminated the driver for his dangerous and reckless behaviour, and again apologised for his apparent anger.

"Such good news that small businesses like this take these incidents seriously. The owner was a real gent and sympathetic to what cyclists endure.

"Kudos to him and the company, they have my utmost respect. Let this serve as a positive post and a reminder there are good people looking out for us," Lyndon 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