Near Miss of the Day 243: Driver towing caravan almost hits cyclist

Today’s video in our Near Miss of the Day series shows a combination of two factors which have regularly featured over the couple of years in which we’ve been running it.

One is when a motorist overtakes a cyclist at a traffic island, the other happens when the driver is towing something behind his or her vehicle and pulls in to early after passing a rider.

In both cases, the driver’s actions seriously compromise the safe passing distance they are required to give – and when both factors come together, as they do here, the result is that the cyclist can be just a hair’s breadth from being knocked off the bike.

The footage, recorded on the cyclist’s helmet camera, was released by Warwickshire Police, which together with West Mercia Police – the forces run a joint road safety partnership – encourages members of the public to submit video footage under their Operation Snap initiative.

The incident, which happened in Nuneaton last summer, resulted in the motorist being required to attend a driver improvement course at a cost of £85.

One person replying to the post on Twitter said, "That's not much of a deterrent for nearly killing someone," while another reflected, "Tuttle Hill ,Nuneaton is very bad for this, a very dangerous pinch point going downhill, I have changed my cycle route because of near misses."

Taking a risk? We can’t be everywhere, but cameras can; dashcam, helmet, mobile phone or even helicopter. Driver in this clip had to attend a Driver improvement course, costing £85 Don’t risk it#cyclinguk #closepass #OpSnap #ThinkSaferRoads #BadDriving
https://t.co/xvRohVuWpK pic.twitter.com/SGSp5ogOc9

— Warwickshire Police (@warkspolice) January 23, 2019

> 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