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Near Miss of the Day 810: Reckless overtake towards oncoming cyclist and bus… and some afters from the impatient driver

Our regular series featuring close passes from around the country – today it's Staffordshire...

A bit of a rarity for Near Miss of the Day, this one – today’s close call was captured, not on the customary helmet or bike camera, but on a car dashcam.

Motorist Lisa sent us the above footage – which features a driver narrowly avoiding hitting an oncoming cyclist and bus, as well as the cyclist they were impatiently attempting to overtake – after being recommended to road.cc by a bike riding friend (how kind).

“I managed to catch an incident on camera of a dangerous manoeuvre from a very inpatient Mercedes driver, who then proceeded to cut up the cyclist after he had nearly caused a head on crash and possibly knocking the cyclist off,” Lisa told us.

Hopefully the driver’s on-the-move crash course on the Highway Code and road safety from the rightly disgruntled cyclist takes hold…

> 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

After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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10 comments

Avatar
peted76 | 2 years ago
2 likes

That's an absolute stinker!

That's clearly threatening and dangerous behavior using a one ton steel box as a weapon.

That scum should not own a licence.

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hutchdaddy | 2 years ago
2 likes

Wow! That is dreadful in just so many ways. The driver should not be allowed out their front door let alone in a car.

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Jimmy Ray Will | 2 years ago
4 likes

The most infuriating thing about this sort of driver is the gutlessness of their aggression. 'I'm going to slow my car, and wave it around in front of you to make you feel scared at what I might do... before running away like a child playing knock knock ginger'

Pathetic. If you think you've got a cause and something to say, be a man and get out of your protective box to say it. Coward

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lukei1 | 2 years ago
3 likes

Infuriating when the article doesn't mention whether the driver reported this clown

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Surreyrider replied to lukei1 | 2 years ago
0 likes

Exactly. I wouldn't be sending it to Road CC (sorry). I would be submitting it to the police (although I have little confidence that they'd take action). Sadly, this sort of driving is common in Surrey too. 

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Rendel Harris replied to Surreyrider | 2 years ago
0 likes

I think (willing to stand corrected) that at least with the Met they only investigate complaints from someone directly involved/affected by the misdemeanour, not a witness. 

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Cocovelo | 2 years ago
5 likes

A curious case of the MGIF driver who actually isn't in that much of a rush that they can't slow down to school you on their version of the highway code

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IanMSpencer replied to Cocovelo | 2 years ago
5 likes

Is there any other sort?

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Patrick9-32 replied to Cocovelo | 2 years ago
5 likes

"I am in such a hurry that being held up for literally 10 seconds is enough to have me leaning on the horn and putting people's lives in danger."

"I have plenty of time to stop and yell at someone who doesn't like having a horn blared at them or having their life put in danger and so swore at me."

-The same person.

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Benthic replied to Cocovelo | 2 years ago
0 likes

Pretty standard. 

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