Near Miss of the Day 539: Close pass ... at 60mph ... !

Even at 20mph, a close pass is an unnerving experience for any cyclist … but when the driver is doing 60mph, it takes it to a whole new level, which is what we have in today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series, sent in by road.cc reader Joel.

“Today's special is a dual carriageway,” he told us. “Not one that I meant to be on but I'd set the route on Google Maps and left in a hurry ... and when I found myself with 10 minutes on the dual carriageway it was empty enough that it didn't seem too problematic,” Joel said.

“However a near empty road was clearly more than one person could cope with, as (s)he decides to pull in from the clear right hand lane after passing the lorry to give me a special close up of their 60mph pass. 

“It's difficult to conceive what makes a person take deliberate action like this in order to pointlessly pass more dangerously – for absolutely no gain to themselves.”

“Running back through the footage, I was passed by 143 vehicles on the dual carriageway section of the ride, the vast majority of whom passed very safely, moving entirely into the outside lane to do so.

“The longest time any vehicle was waiting behind me to pass was 7 seconds, and that was someone merging in behind me from a slip road.

“Our driver earned themselves a report to Warwickshire Police,” Joel added. “I will never know what the outcome is however, as they don't even acknowledge receipt of such reports.”

If you follow our Near Miss of the Day series, you’ll probably be aware that we have a number of regular contributors, and this isn’t the first one we’ve shown that has been submitted by Joel.

Indeed, the PassPixi video we featured yesterday was one of his, although he told us afterwards that now that drivers are aware that he is filming, he hopefully won’t have occasion to send in a near miss video again. Fingers crossed.

> 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