Near Miss of the Day 301: Police accuse cyclist of "cycling into the path of the van"

Today’s near miss was reported to Lancashire Police who said they would offer "words of advice" to the driver after first blaming the cyclist for "cycling into the path of the van".

The incident occurred on Church Road in Rufford, Lancashire, at around 10am on March 31.

At around 55 seconds into the video, we see a van driver begin to overtake the cyclist as both turn into a side road.

The cyclist emerges in front and the van driver then delivers a close pass, which Andrew, the cyclist involved, said was, “around 10-20cms from my handlebars with oncoming vehicles on a blind bend.”

The incidents were reported to Lancashire Police, who said neither was suitable for prosecution, but that an officer would be seeking to offer words of advice to the driver.

Unhappy with this, Andrew asked for the decision not to prosecute to be reviewed.

“The same two officers who originally investigated are the officers who review and came to the same decision, but I was given more detail and it revealed a victim-blaming response from a roads policing sergeant.”

Andrew posted the response under his YouTube video:

"Having reviewed your incident and viewed the footage I am not satisfied it meets the threshold for sending the driver to court.

“My rationale being that when you raise your left arm to indicate to turn left, the van driver took the opportunity to overtake on your outside, avoiding your path, whilst you hug the inside kerb, you then proceed to cycle into the centre of the carriageway, pulling into the path of the van driver, causing the van driver to abandon his overtake as it was no longer safe to perform that manoeuvre, when it was then safe to do so the van driver resumed his overtake and continued on his journey.

“In regards to his second pass, the highway code states that the van driver should leave as much room as they would overtaking a car, whilst it may have been closer than recommended, it wasn’t in my opinion, dangerous or worthy of a court prosecution."

> 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.