This Sickening Story Has Me Baying For Blood
I got home a little early this evening, so took Huge Dalmatian for a longer walk than usual. As we were heading down the slope to Long Sands, I noticed a guy limping along behind us, and recognised him as a retired army PT instructor that I’ve sometimes chatted to when out running. I guess he’s in his sixties, and was running 50+ miles a week at a pace that used to make me cry.
I assumed that he’d picked up a running injury, so waited for him to catch up to ask what he’d done to himself. Turns out that these were cycling injuries he was recovering from, but not from any sort of accident.
He’d been riding along a couple of months ago, and then the next thing he remembers is waking up in hospital with a policeman waiting to take a statement from him. A witness said that they saw a car (red Renault Clio - didn’t get number plate details) pull alongside him, and the passenger push him off his bike.
A few seconds Googling threw up a long list of similar incidents, and really, DON’T read the comments on this one. According to the police my retired PT instructor spoke to, this is an increasingly common form of assault, and the trick they pull is to turn the engine off & coast alongside, so you don’t even hear them coming. Finding out that there are people like that living near here makes my blood run cold.
I mean seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?
This is the Clarkson culture in action, if only one of these stupid morons would pick on one of Clarkson’s kids he might finally realise what a malignant influence he is on this country.
There was a similar case in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, when there culprit was asked why he had dome it (be a judge during the trial), he said it was only a joke and that he didn’t think it would hurt the cyclist (who broke a hip). There is a very real problem that bad driving is seen as aceptable, when we really should have a zero tolerance of such behaviour.
It’s happening around here as well. I remember this incident from a few years back.
http://www.horshamcycling.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=541.0
Having been on the receiving end of flying bottles and bricks when cycling in Britain, and seeing a friend punched by a passenger leaning out of a car window which slowed down just as described here, I can’t say I’m really surprised. However, the reactions at the “Don’t read the comments” link take this to another level.
Of course if you were able to grab the offending hand for even a second the resulting forces from the speed difference could almost tear it off. Gotta go mad max sometimes.
Thankfully the worst I’ve experienced is someone yelling as the pass - still enough to give you a scare and make you swerve.
And whilst I understand that its not nice to enjoy other people’s misfortune, this still puts a smile on my face. Karma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81oPQ4TZLEQ
hope that’s not going to become the norm - is this in London?
No - it’s Tyneside.
@citybikes - it was a “thing” down south for a while too - the last cluster I heard of was in Kent, I think.
One can only hope that the readers of ‘newsshopper.co.uk’ are not representative of society as a whole
[...] are sometimes just plain careless; and yes, a very small minority are just impatient, aggressive morons who have no problem picking on other road users from the safety of a couple of tons of [...]