Near Miss of the Day 431: High speed close pass by driver of Polish-registered lorry

A recurring theme of our Near Miss of the Day feature is that footage rarely gets across just how close and terrifying an overtake actually was. We’d argue this one is an exception.

The incident occurred on Thursday at around 7:15am.

Joel said: “I was on a regular pre-work cycle ride – my wife and I each go out every other day to make sure we get some exercise each day. This route took me a short distance along the A5 between otherwise mostly quiet country roads.

“While the majority of drivers passed very considerately, this was a particularly grievous exception. As can be seen, there is plenty of time on the approach to adjust speed – and to pass safely after the black car on the other side of the road was out of the way. But instead he or she opted to thunder past without slowing and leaving barely a few centimetres gap.”

Joel said he had a higher resolution camera on the seatpost, but opted to share this footage from a camera mounted on the right-hand side of his helmet as he felt it gave a better sense of just how close the lorry came.

“I have often felt that seatpost-mounted cameras actually give a misleading (and overly flattering to the driver) sense of the distance from a passing vehicle because there's a good amount of body and bicycle extending beyond what the seatpost camera view might imply. When I compared the footage from the two cameras, it definitely confirmed my suspicion.”

Joel has submitted the footage to Warwickshire Police. He said he received a swift response when he asked whether they would follow up a report on a Polish-registered vehicle and they confirmed that they would.

However, the force also said it would not provide any updates on the outcome of its investigation, due to the volume received.

“I can't think of any other offence where it would be seen as acceptable for the police to simply state that they won't even bother to tell the victim if they're going to do anything about it or not,” said Joel.

Yesterday we reported how several forces effectively treat close passes of cyclists as a “victimless crime” by regarding those on the receiving end as merely witnesses.

Joel has sent the footage to his local Police and Crime Commissioner and MP asking them whether they feel an incident such as this is a victimless offence.

> 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