Near Miss of the Day 603: Cyclist squeezed between overtaking driver and parked cars

Take a residential road that has cars parked on one side, add a cyclist and an impatient driver in a 4x4 and you have a recipe for one of the more common types of close pass - and that's what we're serving up today in our Near Miss of the Day feature.

 It was filmed using a handlebar mounted Apeman A66 by road.cc reader Richard – user name bungle 52 – who said: “As you can see I was forced into a very narrow gap and if the car door had been opened or I'd had a slight wobble it would have been very painful for me, not for the driver though, in their protective shell.”

He sent the clip, together with one of a separate incident, to Gloucestershire Constabulary, and told us he was “very grateful” to receive feedback from them, since “I know some forces don't give any.

Police told him: “The vehicle is quite close to you and he should have waited but this isn’t egregious enough for us to prosecute.”

Referring to both videos, they added: “In both cases the drivers should have been more considerate of you and your friend.
“But neither of these instances would reach the level where we would prosecute the driver.”

Richard said: “I thought I had a chance with this one but, again, I didn't have to brake or swerve and I suspect this may have been a factor. It was also slow. Interesting interpretation of ‘quite close’, I thought.”

> 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