Near Miss of the Day 609: Driver gives cyclist a soaking (and head-on close pass) ... on purpose?

One of the most fundamental pieces of advice to motorists in the Highway Code – to drive to the conditions – is also, we suspect, one of the most ignored rules.

And perhaps today’s entry in our Near Miss of the Day series is just a reflection of that ignorance – although we can’t help thinking that the driver here gave the cyclist a soaking (and a head-on close pass) on purpose.

It happened last Monday morning at 0540 hours on Fordbridge Road in Sunbury on Thames – appropriately, there are a lot of water-based references there – to road.cc reader Laurence.

Whether on your bike or on foot, chances are that you’ve been splashed by some idiot driver over the years, intentionally or otherwise.

But there’s a very serious side to this – you can see from the clip that the sudden soaking Laurence received caused him to wobble, and it fair play to him for keeping his bike – and himself – upright.

And to add insult to injury, he told us that he’d taken his rain jacket off about a mile beforehand.

Hopefully he’s dried out by now.

> 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

Oh, and by the way – we get so many submissions these days that it would help us (and you) if rather than putting "near miss" or "close pass" in the email header, you give it a more descriptive title.