Near Miss of the Day 416: HGV driver powers past cyclist despite oncoming van – police take very swift action

Today’s near miss has so many familiar features it almost feels like an archetype. An HGV driver – so a professional driver – sees fit to overtake a cyclist far too closely, at significant speed, despite the presence of an oncoming van.

The driver doesn’t allow much room to start off with and appears from the footage to be pulling in to avoid the John Lewis van before having passed the cyclist.

The incident occurred on the A403 near Aust, heading north, at around 5.10pm yesterday.

Nick, the cyclist who experienced the close pass, reported it to Avon and Somerset Police that day and this is where the story starts to differ from so many of the near misses we’ve covered in this feature.

Nick received a response from the force this morning, advising him that action had already been taken.

He was informed: “Thank you for taking the time to upload your footage which has now been processed (a warning letter or a fixed penalty or a prosecution has been issued). Thank you for helping to keep our roads safe.”

> 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.