Near Miss of the Day 467: Driver refuses to wait for sensible place to pass club run

Today’s near miss looks bad enough on first viewing. Now watch it again and imagine five more riders lined up behind the one with the camera.

The incident occurred at the junction of the A369 and A39 in Marksbury.

“We were on our standard Saturday morning club run, when the driver decided to squeeze through a pinch point,” said Jayme. “There were six of us in the group, fairly close together, as club runs tend to be.”

Jayme reported the incident to Avon and Somerset Police and received their standard response that a warning letter, fixed penalty notice, or notification of intended prosecution would be issued but that no further details would be provided.

The force is one of several to effectively treat close passes of cyclists as a “victimless crime” by regarding those on the receiving end as merely witnesses.

Most police forces accept reports by cyclists of careless or dangerous driving as a complaint by a victim, which means they are then obliged to provide information about the investigation in compliance with the Victims Code of Conduct.

Cycling UK believes that in treating a cyclist submitting evidence as only a witness, forces are implying that their report isn’t been taken seriously.

> 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