Near Miss of the Day 303: Glancing blow but police won’t even speak to the driver

This near miss looks about as close as they come to us – indeed Phil, the cyclist involved, told us that the rear door handle actually clipped his hip. Sussex Police apparently didn’t think it was worth speaking to the driver though.

The incident happened a couple of weeks ago in Lindfield, West Sussex.

“The Mercedes rear door handle clipped my hip and I thought I was off,” said Phil. “This has certainly made me think twice about cycling on UK roads.

“I reported it to Sussex police's operation crackdown with the result of: ‘No action will be taken but the report will be kept and possibly reviewed if the driver is reported again.’

“So this driver does not even get educated on how his driving nearly killed a vulnerable road user? Hey ho, perhaps I should take up knitting.”

> What to do next if you’ve been involved in a road traffic collision

> 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.