Near Miss of the Day 662: Close pass bus driver forces oncoming driver to stop

We’re off to north Oxfordshire today in our Near Miss of the Day series, with videos of a bus driver who decided to try and overtake a cyclist on a country road despite a car approaching from the opposite direction, forcing its driver to stop.

Barry, the road.cc reader who sent this one in, with both forward and rear-facing footage, told us: “I was cycling to work and riding north out of Kirtlington. The road is not wide enough for central lines, but is wide enough for sensible overtakes and isn’t particularly busy.

“I was aware of the bus behind me, and also of the red car coming towards us from ahead, so I was surprised when I realised the bus was going for the overtake.

“Luckily the driver of the red car was alert enough to come to a complete stop, and the doors of the bus were only just level with me before the driver realised he would have to abandon the overtake. At this point I was prepared to have to ditch in the hedge as the driver might simply barge me off the road.

“Happily the driver decided to brake and cut back in behind me,” Barry continued. “It didn’t feel that close at the time, but the footage appears that the bus must have been frighteningly close to my back wheel. A few seconds later the driver was able to perform a perfectly safe overtake.

“Having viewed it as crap driving rather than endangering me particularly, I decided simply to email the company with driver feedback rather than reporting to police. “After a week I had heard nothing, so I sent a chase-up email. Again I had no response, so am now releasing the footage publicly so people can make their own minds up.

“What is concerning is that the driver of this kind of vehicle would have such little awareness or hazard perception that this overtake looked at all safe to them,” he added.

> 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