Near Miss of the Day 478: Cheddar Gorge punishment pass

A decent overtake followed by a punishment pass features in today's video in our Near Miss of the Day series, filmed by road.cc reader Matt in August as he rode up Cheddar Gorge in Somerset.

“There were a couple of cyclists ahead of me (including one wearing a road.cc top!). Obviously, progress up the Gorge can be slow, but the car behind me was courteous and patient, whereas the car behind him was not.

(Being based in Somerset ourselves, we asked around the office – well, the virtual office these days – but haven’t been able to work out whether it was indeed a member of the road.cc team in that jersey, with one saying, “That road attracts the whole range of idiot driver.”)

“Another cyclist overtook the queue of cars, which obviously enraged the second car driver. The first driver gave a nice overtake (thank you, whoever you are!) but the second swerved towards me as he was overtaking. What's not shown is that he did the same thing to the cyclists ahead of me.”

“It was a scary experience at the time,” he added. “I submitted the footage to Avon and Somerset Police and got the standard response.”

> 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