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Near Miss of the Day 55: Overtaking driver’s near miss with oncoming car

Our regular feature highlighting close passes caught on camera from around the country – today it’s Northamptonshire

Today’s near-miss is a curious one. Rather than passing within an inch of the cyclist, as is the convention on British roads, the overtaking driver for some reason opts to pass within an inch of the car travelling in the opposite direction.

As long as someone’s life’s in danger as a result of your inexplicable driving – that’s the main thing.

The incident took place in September between the Northamptonshire village of Pytchley and Kettering. Chris, who provided us with the footage, tells a familiar tale.

"I’ve had a few like this and it’s nearly a weekly occurrence,” he said. “I’ve raised a different one in the past to the police. They said they would speak to the driver but never got back to me, so I don’t bother going down this route any more.”

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.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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7 comments

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ajft | 7 years ago
1 like

Happened a lot last weekend to the ride I was on.  Couple of hundred people on an organised ride, plenty of motorists playing the leap-frog game overtaking anything from 1 to 20 riders at a time.  But so damn desperate to  pass that half a dozen times they ran headlong towards cars coming the other way leading to horns, flashing lights, and oncoming traffic swerving off into the gravel. 

Needless to say some of the _oncoming_ drivers then pulled up at the marshall points and unloaded at the organisers telling them how F'ing dangerous the cyclists were in blocking the road.  Bizarrely, I also saw the same behaviour four or five times with them overtaking tractors and other farm implements, but apparently that's different....

(edit for typo)

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TriTaxMan | 7 years ago
0 likes

But.... as far as the tin box driver will be concerned its the fault of the cyclist somehow

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smcc1879 | 7 years ago
0 likes

My experience is that Northants Police don’t give a f**k unless you’re knocked off. 

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clayfit | 7 years ago
0 likes

Northamptonshire drivers are indeed a race apart.  On single track roads they just aim for you and accelerate.  Grim.

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cbrndc | 7 years ago
1 like

Experience this a lot.  What is also remarkable is that the overtaking driver in some cases stays on the opposite side of the road longer than is necessary seemingly to intimidate the oncoming driver. Video available.

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harman_mogul | 7 years ago
2 likes

Every Sunday morning in Essex!

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dassie | 7 years ago
5 likes

Shockingly close that one.  It happens frequently to me on the faster A-road sections of my bike commute, a car overtaking and leaving me decent room, but in the face of an oncoming car - which proceeds to either flash it's lights or sound car horn (if they have time).  Very dangerous and puts everyone's lives at risk.

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