A cyclist says he feels “lucky to be alive” after being forced to take evasive action when an oncoming motorist almost caused a head-on collision while overtaking a tractor.

road.cc reader Paddy was riding on Tuesday near Ballyjamesduff in Co. Cavan, Ireland – just south of where stage four of the iconic Rás Tailteann is passing through today – when the clearly impatient driver began barrelling straight towards him,
forcing him to quickly dive into the entrance of a house.

“Thankfully, I was alert and had somewhere to go,” Paddy, who has reported the incident to the police, told road.cc.

“I saw him coming with the indicator on and pulling out. He looked at me, hesitated, and then floored it.

“I was wearing a bright red jersey and had a white flashing light on the front. No question he saw me and went anyway.”

The shocking overtake is strikingly similar to one experienced earlier this year by cyclist Kate Ball, who was riding with her daughter on the Uttoxeter Road, a residential road with a 40mph speed limit in the Derby suburb of Littleover, when a taxi
driver – overtaking a very long line of slow-moving traffic, right indicator blinking the entire time – narrowly passed them head-on at speed, causing Kate to emit a startled ‘whoa!’

However, the taxi driver was only handed a warning letter for his potentially dangerous manoeuvre, as Derbyshire Constabulary believed that a conviction was “not realistic” and that prosecuting the motorist would not be “proportional”.

https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-865-301359

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