Near Miss of the Day 848: An overtake worthy of the 'must get in front' title

Think of how much time today's Near Miss of the Day driver saved getting in front of this cyclist...

It comes from regular Near Miss contributor Richard from Gloucestershire who notes the similarities between today's and a previous of his submissions (NMotD 674) which attracted the interesting response from the county's police who concluded "the driver is going to have to inconvenience someone".

> Near Miss of the Day 847: Careless caravan close call causes cyclists concern

Anyway, today's was taken more seriously by the authorities...

"After I sent in the footage the PC contacted me by phone and told me that a request for the name of the driver had been sent and that they could either send out an official warning letter or a notice of prosecution once the driver had been identified," Richard told us. 

"I was assured that if I opted for warning letter that a record would be kept and that this option would not be available if the driver had a previous report of poor driving. After discussing the options I opted for the warning letter. There was some delay due to the Christmas break and I was recently informed that the driver had been identified and a letter had been sent.

"I know some readers will disagree with my choice but I had to balance the fact that courts are very busy at the moment, the possible inconvenience to me and the possibility, in view of the previous no futher action for a similar incident, of the driver getting off scot-free if they went to court.

"I hope that the warning letter will make this driver more careful around cyclists in the future. Finally, this was my last submission using Gloucestershire Constabulary's old reporting system. They now use Operation Snap so it will be interesting to see what difference that will make."

> 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