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Near Miss of the Day 834: Punishment pass on cyclist lands driver in court

The defence solicitor unsuccessfully argued, as an experienced rider, the cyclist shouldn't have been on the road during rush hour ...

Today's Near Miss of the Day submission comes from across the Irish Sea and landed the motorist a €300 fine and a day in court for careless driving.

Righttobikeit recalls the van driver had been using his horn to try to pressure the driver of the black car, which waited for an appropriate gap in oncoming traffic, to pass before pushing through "aggressively" even with oncoming traffic.

> Near Miss of the Day 833: Oncoming driver forces cyclist to swerve

Moments later when confronted the driver denied ever being on the road, a defence which did not stand up in court...

"Mitigating, his solicitor tried to suggest that I was an experienced cyclist and shouldn't be on that road during rush hour. Judge had none of it," Righttobikeit explained.

> 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

Dan joined road.cc in 2020, and spent most of his first year (hopefully) keeping you entertained on the live blog. At the start of 2022 he took on the role of news editor. Before joining road.cc, Dan wrote about various sports, including football and boxing for the Daily Express, and covered the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Part of the generation inspired by the 2012 Olympics, Dan has been 'enjoying' life on two wheels ever since and spends his weekends making bonk-induced trips to the petrol stations of the south of England.

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