Lateral clearance is the right metric. Depth isn't.
Every public dashcam clip you've seen showing a close pass is reporting the wrong number. Here's why we don't.
When a cyclist talks about a close pass, they mean the side-to-side gap between their handlebar and the side of the vehicle that just overtook them. The rule the law cares about is the same: three feet, measured laterally.
So why do almost all bike-cam analysis tools report the wrong metric?
The easy number versus the right one
Distance ahead of or behind the camera tells you where a vehicle is along the road. It does not tell you how much space that vehicle left beside your handlebar as it passed.
A car can be twelve feet of "depth" away from a rear-mounted camera and only eighteen inches laterally from the rider. A car eighteen inches laterally from the rider is, by any reasonable definition, the kind of pass the law is trying to prevent. A depth-based metric will report that pass as "12 ft away." Same vehicle. Two completely different reads. Only one of them describes what actually happened.
What your report measures
RydIQ reports an estimated side-to-side gap between you and the passing vehicle. That clearance appears alongside the incident footage, so you can review the pass and see how much room the driver left you.
It's not perfect. Wide-angle lens distortion at the frame edges, mount tilt, and partial occlusion can all shift the number. We surface a confidence band with every reading, and we publish a known-limitations list in the dashboard so you can weigh how much to trust a tight read on a particular clip. But the metric is at least the right one.
If you've been using another tool that reported close passes as "5 ft" or "8 ft", check whether it was measuring depth or lateral. If it doesn't tell you, assume depth.