Near Miss of the Day 275: Close pass from "white van driver" (police officer)

Earlier this month, the BBC reported that Police Scotland had launched Operation Close Pass to make roads safer for cyclists. Ian, who submitted this video, suggests that officers may have misunderstood what Operation Close Pass entails.

The incident occurred in Govan at 6pm on May 16, 2019. While it may not be the closest pass we’ve covered in this feature, experience has taught us that video footage rarely gives a true sense of just how close a pass was.

Also, without wishing to labour the point – it is a police van. You’d hope they’d do a bit better.

This isn’t the first police vehicle to feature as Near Miss of the Day. Almost exactly a year ago, we published footage of an extremely close pass carried out by a Metropolitan Police officer.

> 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

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