Near Miss of the Day 909: this time it's another cyclist as rider who recorded incident says he doesn't know how cyclist coming towards him "didn't end up in the canal"

While the vast majority of our Near Miss of the Day entries involve drivers of motor vehicles committing close pass offences on cyclists, occasionally we're sent rarer examples of cyclist-on-cyclist near misses. This particular incident comes from a canal path in Sale, Greater Manchester, leaving the cyclist who recorded it amazed that there were not more serious consequences. 

On a weekday morning last month, Bob Sweet was commuting on The Bridgewater Way in Sale, when another cyclist brushed past him with inches to spare. A female cyclist was approaching from the other direction, and somehow manages to avoid colliding with the passing cyclist.  

"How she didn’t end up in the canal I really don’t know", Bob told road.cc. 

"The overtaking cyclist appears to have a helmet mounted camera. Perhaps he will post his version of the video.

"The path is only 1.8 metres wide, shared use, bidirectional, which really is not wide enough."

Bob adds that the path is also shared use and unlit at night: "nice for a leisure ride, but not really suitable for commuting", he added. 

As well as highlighting the need for everyone to take greater care on shared use paths, it could perhaps be said that the clip raises the point that more spacious, high quality infrastructure would allow cyclists to commute more safely in this area. 

The Bridgewater Way, promoted by the Bridgewater Canal Trust, is part of a regeneration project that will incorporate a 39-mile shared use route along the Bridgewater Canal when it is fully completed. 

The Trust says the work will include "improving the canal towpath by creating new access points and, where possible, widening the surface to allow cycling and make the towpath a safer and more appealing route." 

> 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