Near Miss of the Day 659, Tour de France winner edition: Egan Bernal gets an ultra-close pass

Spend too long reading below the line of a mainstream press article on a cyclist being put in danger by a motorist, and you will inevitably find comments along the lines of everyone on a bike thinking they are competing in the Tour de France. But here’s the rub – even being the first person from your country to win cycling’s biggest race does not make you immune to close passes, as this video from 2019 yellow jersey winner Egan Bernal shows.

The Ineos Grenadiers rider was out training on his bike with a couple of other riders, one of them a team mate, in his home country of Colombia, where he is a national sporting hero. A driver then decided to overtake them by squeezing into a non-existent gap as a truck came through in the opposite direction.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Egan Bernal (@eganbernal)

Bernal is not the first Tour de France winner from the British WorldTour outfit to have experienced dangerous driving while on a training ride.

In 2013, a motorist was sent on a driver awareness course after she knocked Bradley Wiggins from his bike at a petrol station in Lancashire.

> Driver awareness course for motorist who knocked Bradley Wiggins off his bike

And in May 2017, four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome was rammed from behind by a driver in the South of France in what he described as a “scary experience.”

> Chris Froome back on the bike day after being rammed by driver

> 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.