'Near Miss' of the Day 130: Overtaking driver clips cyclist with wing mirror

Today's video in our Near Miss of the Day series doesn't merit that description - the motorist overtaking the cyclist passed him so closely that they struck him with the passenger side mirror.

It was submitted by road.cc reader Dave - a past contributor to this series - who told us: "Yet another Northamptonshire "close pass", the driver was so keen to pass me at the traffic lights the mirror hit me and folded back."

Fortunately, Dave was able to  stay upright and in control of his bicycle, but given this isn't the first time we've seen a rider struck by a vehicle as the motorist overtakes, it does reinforce the case for a minimum safe passing distance.

While the Highway Code tells motorists to give cyclists "at least as much room" as they would when overtaking a car, the wording (if not the picture that accompanies Rule 163) is vague.

The distance of 1.5 metres that West Midlands Police and other forces have adopted as the measure they use to judge whether an overtaking manouevre is safe or not leaves no room for ambiguity - and means that if all motorists did try and adhere to it, even if they did at times stray inside, incidents of the type shown here would be far less common.

> 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