Near Miss of the Day 661: Horsebox driver makes close pass

One curious subset of submissions to our Near Miss of the Day series is the number that involve the driver of a horsebox making a close pass on a cyclist – and here’s another one to add to the collection, filmed near the Oxfordshire town of Henley-on-Thames.

Curious because, of course, if the person driving the horsebox were in the saddle rather than behind the wheel, he or she would rightly expect, as a vulnerable road user, that motorists would afford more courtesy than is shown here and give a wider berth.

BucksCycleCammer, the road.cc user who filmed the close pass, said that it happened “approaching a junction and a blind right-hand bend at 30mph.

“I have to hope that there were no horses in the back, as I’m sure they wouldn’t have been appreciating the erratic driving.

“On 22nd Oct I was initially informed that the driver would be offered a course. However, today (17th Nov) I was told that he'd jumped the gun assuming this was the case, and instead the decision maker had instead selected a formal warning.

“He also noted that the driver had watched the footage and ‘In her correspondence to the Police she raised concerns about the boasting nature of your YouTube site’.

“I did point out that in my opinion, and that of many others, if motorists are unhappy with the standard of their driving being publicised then it is entirely within their control not to put cyclists in danger to start with,” 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