Witness appeal for road rage cyclist who punched female passenger through moving car window

TO be honest, what the guy has done is wrong, end of.

But I myself have been on the end of reckless driving that has nearly killed me and other road users at the same time and only last week had a woman in a Freelander scream abuse at me and a mate as she tried to overtake...... I did my usual smile and wave, and she slammed her brakes on, in the middle of the road ffs, and then got out and started screaming, and I mean screaming, at us again. She almost caused a very nasty accident.

I shook my head, smiled, wagged my finger at her and rode on........ were the police interested when I gave them her number? No. "6 of one, half a dozen of the other"

And therein, for me, lies the problem. If the authorities followed up complaints from cyclists and took them more seriously, maybe, just maybe, this sort of incident could be avoided.

Just my take folks.

The bloke sounds a thug but we are only getting half the story

And who were the witnesses? Probably just the lady herself, I expect she recieved the "minor facial injuries" doing her make up while driving.....

You can't decide that the cyclist was wrong because you don't have enough information. For all we know the woman could have been hanging out of the window swinging a knife at him but as we only have her side of the story there's no point jumping to conclusions.

And I object to the headline "totally unjustified punch." How do we know that? If it was self defense then it could have been totally justified.

Self defence from what jazzdude? She was the passenger so if he was trying to defend himself from the way the car was being driven he was going a funny way about it. Unless she had a gun he wasn't in much danger from her was he, and if she did… well, riding up and punching her in the face could be considered reckless in the extreme… her 9mm must have jammed.

I'm sure we haven't heard the whole story but even if we ever do (and that's the reason for the police witness appeal) it still won't excuse what the cyclist did.

Maybe, just maybe it's worth considering that cyclists can be in the wrong sometimes? You might be a much more virtuous rider than me, but I know that over the years I've been involved in more than one incident with motorists where afterwards I regretted the way I'd behaved, but even I haven't punched one yet… or their passenger.

My whole point is that we don't know because we have very limited information. The self defense remark is to illustrate that maybe the punch was justified. If someone (man or woman) ran at you with a weapon and your reflex action was to punch them in the face then that would be justified. But as I said before, as we don't know then there is no point trying to speculate.

And similarly how can the journalist qualify the statement that the punch was totally unjustified without hearing the cyclists version of events?

She didn't run at him tho did she, she was in the passenger seat of a car.

Speaking from experience if someone runs at you with violent intent when you're on your bike the simplest and most effective response is to ride off sharpish it makes them look very silly when the red mist starts to fade and they are floundering along some way behind.

@oldridgeback And the key phrase here is you "think it unlikely" without knowing for sure. You are all making assumptions about what probably happened and jumping to the conclusion that the cyclist was in the wrong when there is no way for you to know. That is my point. The main thing here is that the cyclist has the right to a fair hearing and until that happens no-one has the right to assume he was in the wrong.

I think its fair to say he was in the wrong.

Surely its just a matter of finding out just how wrong.