Near Miss of the Day 294: How safe do you feel in a painted cycle lane?

“It really shook me up, this one,” said Jon, the cyclist who suffered this close pass by an HGV in Chorley.

Jon was travelling southbound on the A6 in Whittle-le-Woods when the incident took place.

“I would say they were inches from me,” he said. “I even cut the ride shorter as I did not fancy doing a bit more riding.”

He added: “The guy I was riding with, who was behind me, decided to brake as he thought the wagon would brake and then squeeze between us.”

The incident seems only to emphasise the sheer pointlessness of the painted cycle lane along that stretch of road.

At no point does the HGV driver encroach into the cycle lane, but with an enormous truck mere inches from him as it passes a central island, Jon clearly feels anything but safe.

The pass has been reported to the company, “and probably the police later”.

> 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