The latest edition of our Near Miss of the Day series — highlighting the poor standard of driving and dangerous behaviour cyclists face on Britain’s roads — comes from Perthshire in Scotland where a father and daughter riding perfectly legally two-abreast had two drivers blare their horns while passing, the first, by a motorist towing a caravan, so close one of the cyclists “could have touched it had it not been going so fast”.
It happened recently, on the 14th September, as road.cc reader Jonathan and his daughter cycled in Aberargie. They were riding two-abreast, as the Highway Code points out “can be safer to do so”, when a caravan-towing motorist blared their horn and overtook closely.
“We were two-abreast on a good quality, wide road, just exiting the 40mph zone for the village, when a Ford van [driver] towing a large twin-axle caravan approached us from behind at speed beeping their horn and presumably wanting us to get out of the way,” Jonathan recalled. “They then passed us at speed, very close. I could have touched the caravan had it not been going so fast despite us squeezing over to the left to minimise the risk of being hit or sucked towards the large vehicle. I have no doubt the close pass was intentional.”
The driver of the Mercedes car following the caravan then “aggressively” blared their horn at the cyclists too, even if their overtake was less dangerous.
“It is frightening to experience this sort of driving – there was no reason or it,” he continued. “The road was clear and wide and they could easily have passed safely.”
“Reported to Police Scotland, but based on previous experience and the reports of others I have low expectations that they will take action. However, it is important we all continue to report this sort of driving as the incidence of ‘cyclist-hating’ seems to be getting greater all the time.”
> 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