• Just completing a 30 mile leg stretch yesterday afternoon, and only about a mile from home I have to climb a short sharp hill onto a stretch of road about 75 yards long between a stone wall on one side of the road and a very solid old building on the other, this is all in a residential area. The road is just about wide enough to get two cars along, but only carefully and at a crawl, there are only inches of clearance when this happens.

    I was about a third of the way along the narrow road when I heard a vehicle approaching, all revs and speed behind, I was nearing the centre line of the road as I was about to signal and turn right at the far end, and with that a white van came past me at speed. Looking at the video from my camera it was no more than a foot from my shoulder, probably a lot less and the footage shows I actually jinked left. The van then went straight on and down a hill where I was going to turn right at the brow, he had to brake hard as the road down the hill is even more narrow and I assume something was coming up I don't know for sure as I turned right and headed home.

    A&S Police have an excellent web page where incidents like this can be reported and video can be uploaded, I have used it before and had feedback about any action taken. Needless to say I spent a half hour with iMovie yesterday evening and the whole thing has been reported.

    By overtaking me, the van driver saved himself absolutely no time, if they had remained behind me they would have been there for a maximum of a couple of seconds as I was ten yards from the junction. The camera got a nice clear shot of the reg, plus the small painter and decorator signage that was also on the back door of the van. From past experience A&S will at the very least send the registered keeper a letter, but in this case as space as so tight and the manoeuvre so aggressive, I hope they take this further.

    Such is a daily life of a leisure cyclist in Somerset.

  • By overtaking me, the van driver saved himself absolutely no time

    I find so many car drivers just don’t look/think ahead when they see a cyclist. All they see is a cyclist and think “must get in front”.

    What camera do you use?

  • Yes, it is always the same with drivers feeling they must barge past. I am not shy about taking primary, as a lifelong motorcyclist, cars and vans don't intimidate me, even so, drivers will do the most stupid things and I have lost count of the number of times I have then caught and overtaken the culprit. I have an SJCAM, I think the model is the SJ4000 (or something 4000 anyway), I've had it for a few years and recently put it into a new case that allows me to run and external battery pack. The combination of the two batteries gives me around 3 hours continuous videoing.

    Riding in the countryside I get LOADS of close and stupid passes, or people not feeling the need to stop so driving straight at me down a single track / country lane, most I just shrug off, but yesterday was just dangerously pointless (aren't they all pointless?), so, Popo involved.

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