Near Miss of the Day 751: Close pass with oncoming traffic ... but no action from police

Another day, and another Near Miss of the Day video in which the motorist clearly hasn’t given a cyclist enough space and cuts back in due to oncoming traffic – but police take no action.

James, the road.cc reader who sent in the clip, filmed it on 2 April in Moneyglass, a small hamlet in County Antrim.

“This clip shows the driver overtaking me coming up to a bend and another car approaches from the other direction, and is forced to the edge of his kerb,” he said. “Apologies for the raindrop on the lens, this happened only shortly before the incident.

“I brought this to the local police station (Antrim and Newtownabbey district, Northern Ireland), and the officer took my phone and then returned and said that they considered it was not dangerous driving, that the car had not crossed the white line, and that they could not see that the other car had been forced to the kerb.

“And they took into account that I had not had to swerve. They also said that the car had not seemed close to me, and ignored my observation that it was a wide angle lens,” he added.

As you may know, the recent changes to the Highway Code which now stipulate a minimum passing distance of 1.5 metres when overtaking cyclists do not apply in Northern Ireland.

Rule 163 of the Highway Code for Northern Ireland instead continues to use the same wording as applied in England, Wales and Scotland until earlier this year, saying that motorists should “give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car” – which clearly is not the case here.

> 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