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Near Miss of the Day 186: Driver in close pass on club run

Our regular feature highlighting close passes caught on camera from around the country – today it’s Berkshire

The latest video in our Near Miss of the Day feature shows something we've seen many times before - a motorist making a very close pass on some riders out on a club run.

This one involved a white van driver and happened yesterday to road.cc reader Francis from Windsor, Berkshire.

He told us: "Just your standard Saturday morning muppet giving us grief on our club run.

"No excuse," he added., "the car in front gives us plenty of room."

> 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

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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9 comments

Avatar
Shades | 5 years ago
1 like

I rarely ride in a group bigger than 3 but was out with a larger group last weekend and had a taste of this sort of driving.  It's harder to overtake, the queue of cars gets bigger and then it all kicks off.  We actually split into 3 smaller groups on one busy road just to give us a break from it all.

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alansmurphy | 5 years ago
0 likes

I'm not sure which misalignment offended me the most though, the driver or whomever did the graphics on the video  3

 

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vonhelmet | 5 years ago
3 likes

Don’t be daft, he wouldn’t find them harder to pass in single file. He’d just pass with a tiny margin doing his best to keep out of the other lane, still while leaning on his horn. He’d be angry either way, just because someone in front of him wasn’t moving at $speed_limit + 10%.

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a1white | 5 years ago
0 likes

White van logic: Sees a group of cyclists riding 2 abreast and gets annoyed, deciding to teach them a lesson by close passing and using his horn to intimidate. Hasn't got the intelligence to think that if these cyclists were in a long single file, he would find passing them much trickier.

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Spangly Shiny replied to a1white | 5 years ago
1 like

a1white wrote:

White van logic: Sees a group of cyclists riding 2 abreast and gets annoyed, deciding to teach them a lesson by close passing and using his horn to intimidate. Hasn't got the intelligence to think that if these cyclists were in a long single file, he would find passing them much trickier.

Just like the fact that not all cyclists are red light jumpers, not all white van drivers are aggressive pillocks like that one.

Don't generalize if you please, it's lazy.

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vonhelmet | 5 years ago
0 likes

Don’t get your hopes up about the police doing anything.

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caw35ride | 5 years ago
4 likes

Please report this. He's leaning on his horn, it's clearly an aggressive act.

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burtthebike replied to caw35ride | 5 years ago
0 likes

caw35ride wrote:

Please report this. He's leaning on his horn, it's clearly an aggressive act.

And clearly deliberate, intentional, and I would consider it an assault.

Avatar
fenix | 5 years ago
2 likes

I hope this is reported.

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