A close pass in Richmond Park in south west London is, sadly, not a rare event - there are a lot of motorists and cyclists looking to share the roadspace, after all. But here's one made by a police officer, driving a Metropolitan Police Service vehicle.
The cyclist on the receiving end was road.cc reader, Cycling Embassy of Great Britain campaigner and Richmond Cycling Campaign member Tim Lennon.
Hello @MPSRichmond this happened in Richmond Park yesterday. They passed close enough I could have reached out to touch the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/DAR1A1KgRO
— Tim (@lucullus) July 15, 2017
He tweeted footage of the close pass to the Richmond Twitter account of the Met, and while it has acknowledged the post, it doesn't appear that any action has been taken yet.
The next step will be flagging the incident up on the force's RoadSafe website, he told us.
Whether that gets results is open to question - last year, he notified the Met of this close pass by the driver of a 4x4 on his eight-year-old daughter; no action was taken.
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 contact us via the road.cc Facebook page.