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Video: BBC Wales road rage programme highlights plight of vulnerable cyclists

Riders suffer threats and deliberate crashes

A BBC Wales programme shown on Tuesday night highlighted the problem of aggressive behaviour of the roads and focussed on the experiences of  bike riders who had been victims of ‘road rage’.

Gary Marshall and his wife Debbie were riding their bikes home near Swansea when a bottle as thrown at them. After he remonstrated with the passenger, the driver of the car ran over him and his bike.

In this clip from the programme, Matt Turner - who runs a YouTube channel documenting his experiences with poor and dangerous driving - was threatened by a driver after a discussion over the motorist cutting a corner at a junction.

A poll conducted for the programme, a Week In, Week Out presentation entitled ‘You Give Me Road Rage’, found that 51 percent of drivers had been victims of aggression on the roads.

The segment in which Matt is threatened was the most viewed video on the BBC yesterday.

"He overtook me and pulled sharply in front of me and slammed on his brakes," Matt said.

"When he got out of the car and approached me, I did think he was going to hit me."

The driver then repeatedly swore at him and threatened to “wrap that fucking bike straight up your nose.”

Matt reported the incident to the police and the driver was issued with a caution, but refused to apologise.

"I still feel that he doesn't regret what he did, he just regrets being caught," Matt said.

Some might argue that the road behaviour of some helmet-cam wearers serves to aggravate the problem. In another section of the programme, Matt admits that he wasn’t sure why he initially commented on the driver cutting the corner.

“I didn’t intend him to hear, I didn’t mean anything by it. There was no real reason for me to say it,” he says. Nevertheless, getting out of your car to threaten someone doesn’t seem like a proportionate response.

New laws allow police to issue £100 fixed penalty notices for behaviour such as tailgating and lane hogging, which can be part of road rage incidents.

Police and road safety charities question whether the resources are available to implement the new rules, though.

The number of traffic officers has fallen 31% over four years in Wales. The British average is 12%, according to the road safety charity Brake; Wales has had the greatest reduction in the UK.

None of the four Welsh police forces had issued any of the new fixed penalty notices for careless driving.

The programme is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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37 comments

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DrJDog | 10 years ago
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I've seen helmet cam video of Matt cutting corners.

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eurotrash replied to FluffyKittenofTindalos | 10 years ago
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FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

(Apparently Jeremy Paxman reproaches people he sees dropping litter in the street - would it be OK for someone to threaten him with violence in return, incidentally?)

No one's condoning what the driver did here. I'm saying you have to accept that people may react like that - not saying it's right they do so, it's just simply how it is. That being the case, don't go around acting like a self righteous prick just because you have a camera on your head.

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richdirector | 10 years ago
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I got thumped in the face for telling a driver not to move into the ASL box as it was for cyclists. After the incident reported it and a photo of the car reg. Police took statement and went to interview him and he said 'no comment' and because there were no witnesses that was it .....

Avatar
Critchio | 10 years ago
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Drivers cutting corners like in the video is perfectly legitimate if you can see that its safe, even my driving instructor taught me that 28 years ago. I do it all the time. The move on the video was safe, the driver wasn't even travelling at excess speed.

To be picked up on that by the likes of our helmet cam vigilante is not doing cycling enthusiasts one jot of good.

The drivers actions are outrageous and he should never of reacted that way but it would not have happened had Mr Turner not challenged what did not need challenging.

I'm going to stereotype Mr Turner by lumping him together into a group of road vigilantes that transform into completely irrational morons the second they get a helmet cam perched on their head. I would even go as far as saying that they even change their riding habits, which may involve increased risk to their own safety so that they can encourage and bait drivers into committing minor and not so minor breaches of road traffic law just to catch it on video.

These guys do not really do us any favours at all and when I see the likes of Mr Turner being interviewed I cringe. But please don't think I am anti-cyclist, far from it. If anything I come down harder on motorists because they are cocooned in 1.5 tons of metal shell and surounded by airbags. I'm on me 10 kilo bike with a styrofoam helmet. We need better protection from bad motorists but Mr Turner's approach is the wrong way to go about it and this article paints him in a bad light. To me anyway. Helmet cams are fun and offer clear evidence in accidents/incidents when used correctly and sensibly. But not like this...

Avatar
kie7077 replied to Critchio | 10 years ago
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Critchio wrote:

Drivers cutting corners like in the video is perfectly legitimate if you can see that its safe, even my driving instructor taught me that 28 years ago. I do it all the time. The move on the video was safe, the driver wasn't even travelling at excess speed.

To be picked up on that by the likes of our helmet cam vigilante is not doing cycling enthusiasts one jot of good.

The drivers actions are outrageous and he should never of reacted that way but it would not have happened had Mr Turner not challenged what did not need challenging.

I'm going to stereotype Mr Turner by lumping him together into a group of road vigilantes that transform into completely irrational morons the second they get a helmet cam perched on their head. I would even go as far as saying that they even change their riding habits, which may involve increased risk to their own safety so that they can encourage and bait drivers into committing minor and not so minor breaches of road traffic law just to catch it on video.

These guys do not really do us any favours at all and when I see the likes of Mr Turner being interviewed I cringe. But please don't think I am anti-cyclist, far from it. If anything I come down harder on motorists because they are cocooned in 1.5 tons of metal shell and surounded by airbags. I'm on me 10 kilo bike with a styrofoam helmet. We need better protection from bad motorists but Mr Turner's approach is the wrong way to go about it and this article paints him in a bad light. To me anyway. Helmet cams are fun and offer clear evidence in accidents/incidents when used correctly and sensibly. But not like this...

So he's a vigilante now, I must of missed that bit.

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eurotrash | 10 years ago
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Amusing thread on this video/incident... looks like lots of other cyclists have a similarly poor opinion of this cyclist: http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40013&t=12946977

Avatar
Ush replied to eurotrash | 10 years ago
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eurotrash wrote:

Of course it *could* happen to me. That's not the point. I don't go out looking for confrontations. This cyclist did, and *shockingly* that's what he found. So I have little sympathy for him.

That's not the point either. Again you're focusing on the cyclist, who may have acted in a way that neither you nor I would, instead of on the out-of-control screwball that threatened violence. The constipated looking looney driving the silver Citroen reg "GK03 ZTM" is obviously not in control of either his car, or his head if he goes after such a non-threat as the video taker.

It seems more than likely to me that he will display similar aggressive and incompetent behaviour in other aspects of his driving.

My suggestion that "it could happen to you" doesn't suggest that you're suddenly going to be come the video-taker in build and mannerism -- it means that you, like me, will be sharing the road with this irrational cock.

Why you get excited about the cyclist in this instead of the driver can only be explained by you thinking that because you don't behave like the cyclist above that you will somehow be magically safe from the fool, and the many like him.

Good luck with that. Keep hating on the cyclist.

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