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Near Miss of the Day 664: Audi driver makes ultra-close pass – then slams the brakes on

Our regular series featuring close passes from around the country - today it's South Yorkshire...

One road.cc reader who recently upgraded his GoPro to get better quality footage of incidents while riding has quickly got a result after an Audi driver made a close pass on him then immediately hit the brakes in what to us clearly looks like an attempt to intimidate the rider.

The footage was shot by road.cc reader The Gnarly Rebel, who told us: “This driver nearly hits me, then slams the brakes on causing me to brake hard, then very slowly pulls away obviously looking for a reaction, he got one! I sent the footage to the police and he/she was ticketed.

“This was on a very busy Friday afternoon on one of the busiest roundabouts in the Doncaster area. If I'd been hit there would've been 100s of witnesses.

“Over the years I've had too many near misses to talk about as I'm sure most of us have. But now I've had enough!

“My friend was recently wing mirrored by three lads in a little Peugeot. He was out on an early morning Sunday ride they decided to have a bit of ‘fun’.

“I upgraded my GoPro to get better quality footage. Now if anyone comes near me they're being reported.”

He added: “Stay safe, keep pedalling!”

> 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

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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7 comments

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iandusud | 2 years ago
1 like

An Audi, surely not? 

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mdavidford | 2 years ago
5 likes

The Gnarly Rebel wrote:

My friend was recently wing mirrored

Is this deliberate baiting?

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BIRMINGHAMisaDUMP | 2 years ago
2 likes

sad to say but that looked like a fairly normal 'day at the office' to me. It's good the `police kinda did something. 

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wtjs | 2 years ago
2 likes

Yes, what we want to know is the actual action: you can tell this from the not very subtle police wording. When was this?- in Lancashire you generally get no response at all, and they try not to even look at online incident reports until after the magical 2 week NIP deadline. It takes months for anything at all to happen here and court cases will be 18+ months, so I'm suspicious about quick action. If they actually state something unequivocally it's probably true, but they usually try some weaselling. If they say they took action, but won't tell you what it was, it was some feeble warning letter at best. One new trick, obtained via my MP and in classic police NewSpeak is 'Everything is assessed using a 'Threat, Harm and Risk basis' which translates as 'we decide on the law, not Parliament of the courts, so get stuffed you cyclist b******s!' I suppose it depends if you assess towing a caravan at 50mph through the lights 2 seconds after they turned red as a risk, or not.

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Bungle_52 | 2 years ago
2 likes

Thank you for putting in the time and effort to report this and thank you to the police for taking action. This needs to happen a lot more if our roads are to become safe to cycle on.

Out of interest which gopro did you upgrade from and to and how much difference was there?

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Hirsute | 2 years ago
5 likes

Don't leave the door open to them though. You should ride centrally through those lights and best not to sneak to the front but wait in line if it is red.

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brooksby | 2 years ago
1 like

Does "ticketed" mean a FPN or did they get points, I wonder?

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