Near Miss of the Day 875: Red-light jumping driver almost hits cyclist, responds with denial and abuse

A nurse in Manchester was cycling to work this morning when he was almost hit by a motorist who drove through red lights at a pedestrian crossing, and then went on to swear at the cyclist and deny that the light was red. Unfortunately for him, the cyclist had got it on camera.

Alex has been cycling to work ever since he became a nurse 10 years ago — and the route he was on today has been part of his daily Monday to Friday commute for almost a year now.

Coming up to Rochdale Road from Russet Road in Greater Manchester at just past 8AM today, he stopped and waited for the light to turn red at the pedestrian crossing, so he could join the main road safely. But as he was about to do so, an Audi driver jumped the light and came very close to hitting him.

When he let out an exclaim pointing at the state of events to the motorist, he was met with a deluge on abuse and denial.

"I'm unfortunately used to it, but in my opinion this was very good footage of someone doing something very naughty," Alex told road.cc.

Rochdale Road, Greater Manchester (Google Maps)

As visible in the video, the Audi driver is stationary and waiting for the drivers in front of him to pass. When the light turns amber, there's still another vehicle in front of him, which goes straight ahead just as the red light comes on.

"When I turned they decided to run the red light and almost hit me," he said.

He can be heard saying: "It's a red light mate!"

The driver replies with: "Oh f*** off! No, it f****** wasn't!"

Alex said: "The thing I think is a bit different about this is that the offending car is so clearly captured being stationary behind the red light and so they have very intentionally driven through it. It was no simple accident or episode of inattention."

Russet Road, Greater Manchester (Google Maps)

He told road.cc that he has submitted the footage to Greater Manchester police and is awaiting a response, but his experience with them has been "hit and miss" so far.

"If I had to describe their responses in one word it would be opaque," said Alex.

> 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 Twitter or 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