Three years in jail for London driver who used car “as a weapon” against cyclist +video

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

That was a bit too much 'them and us', Legs11. I'm a cyclist and also very much a motorist and not that long ago also a motorcyclist and even a pedestrian from time to time.  I don't get in my car and suddenly hate cyclists because I'm not on one at that point in time. I can still recognise if a cyclist is being a knobhead as well though, they're not all saints with a working knowledge of the highway code and great road sense.

 

Yes, same for me, apart from the motorcyclist bit, but the thing is - you and I think that way because we are cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, and more or less reasonable people.  The trouble is that there are some motorists out there who are not cyclists, not motorcyclists, may or may not be frequent pedestrians, and at times may not be reasonable when cyclists are involved.  And yes, cyclists may at times be knobheads, but refraining from being a knobhead is not enough to ensure protection against unreasonable motorists.

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

That was a bit too much 'them and us', Legs11. I'm a cyclist and also very much a motorist and not that long ago also a motorcyclist and even a pedestrian from time to time.  I don't get in my car and suddenly hate cyclists because I'm not on one at that point in time. I can still recognise if a cyclist is being a knobhead as well though, they're not all saints with a working knowledge of the highway code and great road sense.

 

Sat here commenting, I know you're (mostly) right, but it doesn't feel that way when someone happily shoves you out of the way "because they're in a hurry", or when someone pretends to have looked carefully but failed to see a 6' 3" bloke dressed as an extra from a banana advert.

What I really fail to understand are the comments which attempt to explain this nutter's behaviour "because he kicked her wing mirror ". Sure, I wouldn't have, because I'm an old coward. But surely someone who gets worked up enough to attempt murder over a few quid of damage other car is sufficiently insane she should never drive again.

unconstituted wrote:

My kinda guy. Few more like Legs_Eleven and we'll start a revolution 

ditto

some very salient points IMHO

Legs_Eleven_Worcester wrote:

In its defence, BBC Sussex is doing nothing more and nothing less than to reflect the prevailing mood in the UK.  Hatred has gone mainstream.  It is forbidden to hate - or rather, to express hatred - towards people based on their colour, their religion or their sex.  But cyclists?  That's OK.  Everyone hates cyclists.

 

 

 [bla bla bla]

Sooner or later, cyclists will be faced with a decision.  To continue to
bend the knee and lower one's gaze when the car-driving overlord passes.
Or to strike back.  The bigots (and their enablers in the right-wing media
like the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Evening Standard)
really need to learn that actions have consequences.  A failure to
prosecute a killer should result in the killer turning up dead in a ditch.

[bla bla bla]

In short, I've fucking had enough.  They want a war?  Fine.  Let's give them one.

A Cyclist.

next to the 'like' button there should be a 'knobhead' button.

Legs_Eleven_Worcester wrote:

In its defence, BBC Sussex is doing nothing more and nothing less than to reflect the prevailing mood in the UK.  Hatred has gone mainstream.  It is forbidden to hate - or rather, to express hatred - towards people based on their colour, their religion or their sex.  But cyclists?  That's OK.  Everyone hates cyclists.

Mick Mason's killer wasn't even troubled with prosecution until cycling groups stepped in.  Shanique Syrena Pearson could not fathom why she was in court.  And Justine Henshaw-Bryan will in all probability appeal and have her sentence reduced - if not quashed entirely.  

It's all part of the 'war' that the media loves talking about.

But it's not much of a 'war' is it?  Let us leave aside for the moment the one-sided nature of any such 'war' between a 100 kg vehicle travelling at 10 mph and another weighing up to 3000 kg and travelling at 60 mph.  Such disparity in mass and kinetic energy makes this 'war' decidedly one-sided.  The car driver has the advantage in terms of brute force, and there is little that the cyclist can do, as long as the former does not step out of his protective steel cage.  

The 'war' then, is real but for the moment is more of a sustained campaign of assault and murder.  Emboldened by a right-wing media witch hunt against the cyclist - portrayed as the embodiment of evil on the roads - and by the police, CPS and courts who systematically minimize driver responsibility in collisions - when they are not absolving them completely - the car driver has understood the message that it's open season on the cyclist.  That it's OK to hate cyclists, and that if you kill one or seriously injure one, then well, that's OK because ‘shit happens’.  The cyclist is dirt, and he should not be on the roads for which motorists pay through the nose via 'road tax'.  

The fact that 'road tax' was abolished in 1937 and that its replacement 'Vehicle Excise Duty' is calculated on the basis of emissions and that many smaller cars (petrol and electric) are thus exempt, does not enter into the road tax warrior's thinking.  The roads are his, and cyclists should not be on them.  

Nor is the vitriol reserved for cyclists who dare to use the road: cycle on the road and you will hear ‘Get on the facking pavement!’.  Cycle on the pavement and you will hear ‘Get on the facking road!’.  And therein lies the hypocrisy.  Cyclists in 21st century Britain are persona non grata everywhere.  Pedestrians don’t really want cyclists to be on the road, and drivers don’t really want cyclists to be on the pavement.  They just want us gone, and whether that means transported to a distant galaxy or simply dead, is neither here nor there.  

The cyclist is seen as member of an outgroup in a world where car driving is normalized.  The cyclist is a recalcitrant child who uses a child's toy to make his way around in an adult world filled with motor cars.  The cyclist places himself and others in danger due to his insistence on using this children's toy, and as such, the adults in motor cars have a right and a duty to intervene to punish the child for his transgressions.

A one-sided 'war', then, and one in which the victims of intentional vehicular violence are almost exclusively cyclists.  

The rancid bile and hysterical loathing directed at cyclists is out of all proportion to the danger posed by this otherwise entirely innocuous form of transport.  Whereas over fifteen hundred people were killed in road traffic accidents in 2013, almost a quarter of a million injured and tens of thousands more killed through respiratory diseases linked to motor vehicle exhaust pollution or through sheer blunt force trauma, the figures for those killed or injured by cyclists is tiny: of the order of one per year.  It is undeniable that some cyclists flout the law and that these people are a nuisance, but compared to the slaughter and maiming of vast swathes of the English population every year at the hands of motorists, outlaw cyclists are - in the main - a danger to themselves.  Yet whilst the random-yet-systematic slaughter of people by the various classes of motor car go largely unreported by the mass media, a cyclist who inflicts so much as a skint knee is hounded in the media and regarded as a pariah.  

The hatred directed at cyclists as members of a minority outgroup has nothing whatsoever to do with the way they behave on the road.  Even if no cyclist ever ran a red light or rode on the pavement, this would not diminish in any way the sociopathic vitriol aimed at them from the media, politicians, the public on social media and the white van man on the Clapham Omnibus.   Anti-cyclist rhetoric flows from the same poisonous source as racism, as anti-Semitism and as homophobia.  It is not based in reason, and it is therefore - by definition - immune to reason, just as it is immune to logic, education or persuasion.  

That hating cyclists is now so socially acceptable and so widely expressed, means that it is surprising that no prosecutions for murder or manslaughter of cyclists have occurred, because it is almost certain that some of the recent cases of cyclists being hit 'by accident' have in fact been deliberate close passes ('punishment passes' in the jargon of the cyclist - a pass deliberately designed to frighten and punish the cyclist for daring to take up carriageway real estate bought for motorists and paid for by 'road tax') gone wrong.  

For how much longer does the civil power believe that cyclists will suffer this?  How much longer do cyclists have to endure being the public whipping boy, scapegoat and punchbag, blamed for all of society's ills and considered as fair game for whenever frustration at traffic congestion boils over?    What do they think will happen when the penny finally – finally! - drops and people realize that no one gives a flying shit about them?

Sooner or later, cyclists will be faced with a decision.  To continue to
bend the knee and lower one's gaze when the car-driving overlord passes.
Or to strike back.  The bigots (and their enablers in the right-wing media
like the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Evening Standard)
really need to learn that actions have consequences.  A failure to
prosecute a killer should result in the killer turning up dead in a ditch.
Cycle hatred articles in the press should see the 'journalist' found in his
bed, bludgeoned to death.  The 'price' of not carrying out this 'citizen
justice' will be for every attempt to hit a cyclist to be treated as
'attempted murder'.  For every close pass to result in a ban and
confiscation of the vehicle.  For every accident involving a car and a
bicyle to be treated as deliberate, unless the driver produces cast-iron
evidence to the contrary.  For every instance of using a mobile telephone
at the wheel to result in a lifetime ban unless the driver can prove that
his or someone else's life was in mortal danger and that the only way to
save life was to use the telephone.  For the repeal of sections 2 and 3 of
the Road Traffic Act 1988 and their replacement with law better suited to
rein in the vicious, unrepetant, irredeemable, self-entitled fucking animals who slaughter fifteen hundred people every year and maim hundreds of thousands more just so they can get to where they're going fifteen seconds earlier.  

Terrorism?  What do you call the savagery to which we're subjected every time we dare to cycle on the roads?

When this happens, the state will also have to make a choice as to which side it supports.  Considering the impunity which has been granted to the motor vehicle user over the past twenty years, it is not difficult to guess which way that decision will go.  And then when car, van and lorry drivers start getting broken noses, black eyes and smashed cheekbones, and when we are treated to the unedifying sight of the establishment going ballistic, hysterically beating their chest, tearing their clothes, pulling their hair and screaming about 'the rule of law', perhaps someone should calmly remind them: ‘you were warned’.  i

In short, I've fucking had enough.  They want a war?  Fine.  Let's give them one.

A Cyclist.

 

Whoa. I generally agree with what you're saying but still: whoa...

The _Kaner wrote:

The comments on her FB page are hilarious!

I'm guessing she won't be using it for a while, though...

https://www.facebook.com/jhenshawbryan

yeah the world will be a better place without her about for 3 years 

The _Kaner wrote:

The comments on her FB page are hilarious!

I'm guessing she won't be using it for a while, though...

https://www.facebook.com/jhenshawbryan

 

Kelly Kapow has put a bit of effort into it !! 

kil0ran wrote:

A not uncommon tactic. I'm amazed the judge has jailed her, expect an appeal as the sentence is pretty exceptional.

That really would be taking the piss. So some weasel will doubtless try it. Is jailing someone for 18 months for what was, in reality  if not in lawyer-land, attempted murder really exceptionally long?

HarrogateSpa wrote:

The Guardian report does say that she is pregnant.

In the second paragraph it now says,

Damien Doughty suffered serious injuries after the incident in north London in February last year. Justine Henshaw-Bryan, who is now pregnant and due to give birth in November, claimed her boyfriend had grabbed the wheel.

I went over it twice early this morning and didn't see that. Maybe the sub added it. Either way Duncann cleared it up earlier and it looks like a callous attempt to use a baby as a shield. 

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

I don't believe the boyfriend grabbed the wheel. 

If he had, so what, she could have braked, she didn't brake. 

I don't buy it, neither did the jury.

I absolutely believe she became pregnant as a way to minimise her jail time.

I am confident this lady is not an upstanding member of the community.

I actually think the sentencing was fairly on the money in this situation... not taking into account that the baby will help her see early release.

Just thinking about this a bit more, I'm with you on this...

Did the boyfriend force her to follow the cyclist so closely (notice the van backed-up and followed, so she'd obviously been worrying him like a sheepdog before the turn),  did he also force her to turn into the side street, again, right up the cyclist's saddle.

Grabbing the wheel doesn't effect the pedals!

Whether he grabbed the wheel or not probably can't be proven but it's irrelevant and very hard to believe that he did given her other actions/inactions.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Burn the Witch!

A touch extreme, though the viewing figures would probably be good. It would, though, short of burning her, be nice to see the punshment reflect better the fact that she tried to kill someone in revenge for trivial damage to her box.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Burn the Witch!

I understand the anger, but a slow agonising punishment I think does far greater damage and revenge.. Pity this legal system is the biggest criminal of all, otherwise she would be in a cell for a long, long time...