A cyclist in Scotland who returned a soft drink cup to a man who had thrown it out of his car window got more than he bargained for when the driver got out and challenged him to a fight. But police told him they wouldn’t be charging the motorist with assault – because they considered the cyclist himself to be the instigator.
The incident, which has been reported on mainstream media outlets including Mail Online, was posted to YouTube by the cyclist under the user name LPDman.
The footage shows him picking up a discarded KFC Pepsi cup that he believed to have been thrown out of the window of a black Vauxhall Corsa car on Alclutha Avenue in Dumbarton, although he admits he didn’t actually see the driver drop it.
The bike rider turns round and chases after the driver, catching up with him on Crossler Road just after the four minute point in the video and asks him to wind down the window – admitting, in the caption, that his request was a “big mistake.”
Once the motorist winds the window down, the bike rider throws the cup into the car, with the words, “Here’s your stupid litter back.”
The driver gets out of his car and runs after the cyclist, saying to him, “Do you think your smart or something?” and asking him to get off his bike.
As the cyclist, who seems shaken, heads back in the direction he came from along the pavement, the driver reappears having turned his car around and asks him if he’d like to go to a nearby park “for a square go,” a request the bike rider declines with the words, “I’d rather not, mate.”
The motorist throws the cup back out of the car before turning around and speeding off, with the cyclist riding away saying to himself, “That was close!”
In the YouTube description to the video, he says: “Yes, go ahead and say I took a big risk on my physical life because I accept my life could have been taken but I personally feel this twit needs to learn a lesson in respecting the environment.
He later added: “Two police officers visited my house and said to me that although the man should not have came out of his car & attempted to assault me (resulting in a charge of Breach of the Peace), I was found to have been the instigator. In fact, throwing litter back to litter louts in revenge counts as COMMON ASSAULT.”
If that sounds harsh, it’s worth considering that under Scots case law, common assault “may be constituted by threatening gestures sufficient to produce alarm.”
While the driver getting out of the car and confronting the cyclist could clearly be construed in that way, lawyers might argue that chasing after a car for four minutes, then asking the motorist to wind the windscreen down before throwing an object at them could be, too.
What do you think? Was the cyclist right to go after the motorist and return the cup to him – or should he just have left well alone and perhaps just picked it up and deposited it in the nearest litter bin? Let us know in the comments below.
37 thoughts on “Video: Cyclist who chased after driver to return litter to him gets challenged to a fight”
And the most surprising thing
And the most surprising thing about this is that the Daily Fail readers for once seem to be cheering on a “camera vigilante cyclist”. They must really hate litter.
Throwing the cup at the
Throwing the cup at the driver and then trying to run away was pretty pathetic. If the driver had turned out to be some frail old woman, I doubt our have-a-go-hero would have been quite so quick to post his video on YouTube.
People who litter make me
People who litter make me sick.
But having said that, throwing the cup through the window at him wasn’t the most intelligent way to deal with it.
I avoid confrontation where
I avoid confrontation where possible, and the cyclist here should have, too, especially since he wasn’t sure of his ground and nearly left himself without a fool proof exit strategy. And he could be the victim of a revenge attack if the driver sees and recognises him again.
congokid wrote:I avoid
Too true, but the reaction of the police also is hard to understand. The bloke in the car committed not one, but two offences.
OldRidgeback wrote:congokid
Except that the cyclist didn’t actually see the littering offence happen. So from a legal perspective an innocent motorist gets a cup thrown through his window by a cyclist and is duly annoyed.
No wonder the driver has the
No wonder the driver has the rage – look at the size of his lady chests! Perky or what! He might want to consider a wee bit of weight loss – perhaps he should take up cycling?
iamelectron wrote:No wonder
Clearly wasn’t a Diet Coke………..
Ideally what you do here is
Ideally what you do here is bring the cup to the Police and ask them to take action, show them the footage and leave it at that. Throwing stuff at people through car windows isn’t really any better than littering in the first place.
Fair play though- I hate seeing litter being thrown from cars.
therealsmallboy wrote:Ideally
I doubt the police would be bothered, but the local council might be. Councils have the power to issue fines for littering and some councils are very active on this.
http://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/council/newsroom/news-and-press-releases/2014/october/residents-caught-littering-and-fly-tipping-face-heavier-fines/
This entire incident was
This entire incident was instigated by an assumption that the driver had littered, dodgy ground I feel.
If you rerun the events but from a non-littering drivers perspective (another assumption, I know), I would be pretty pissed off if a cup was thrown at me.
All of that said, the driver was clearly in the wrong and his actions indefensible.
Quote:The footage shows him
<sarcasm>Yeah well he looks the type so it was probably him eh?</sarcasm>
Honestly, what kind of idiot does that without being SURE that was where it came from.
Really taught that driver a
Really taught that driver a lesson didn’t he….. (|:
If he is really concerned about the litter, why did he not pick it up from the middle of the road after it had been thrown back out of the vehicle?
It would be interesting to
It would be interesting to hear the police response had the cyclist been a pedestrian (obviously, the car driver would have had to remain close to the original incident in order for the pedestrian to performed a similar task).
Also, what if the cyclist had been female?
Pretty pathetic really – he
Pretty pathetic really – he chased after him for three minutes and chucks the cup through the window.
The guy’s clearly a dickhead and no-one likes littering but if you’re going to confront someone at least do it in a reasoned manner.
Not sure what was achieved here apart from a waste of police time.
Again, this isn’t really about cycling…
This guy clearly didn’t think
This guy clearly didn’t think about what he was doing or how he was doing it – and he went some way to return the litter to the driver.
Why not just say something instead of aggressing the driver?
If you were on foot would you walk up to a car, knock on the window and throw litter back in through it?
It’s actions like this that
It’s actions like this that put cyclists in a bad light for me. Yes the man shouldn’t litter (if it was even him!) but what was that bloke doing?? And then he didn’t have the balls to stand up to the driver!
Cyclist is a
Cyclist is a dumbass.
However, if my gf was to shout at me and act in a threatening manner and I retaliate, what would the police reaction be then?
Pretty sure they’d come down like a ton of sharp feathers.
Unless your pretty sure of
Unless your pretty sure of yourself and abilities to deal with confrontation it’s probably best to just let it go as you don’t know who you are coming up against in a situation like this! He’s lucky that the driver realised he was being filmed!
I think we need to come up
I think we need to come up with a new word for cyclist. Some guy on a bike throws a cup into the window of a guy in a car.
So what that he happened to be on a bike. Being a ‘cyclist’ doesn’t some how confer upon the initiated Jedi powers, as we can clearly see in the video.
All labels do is make it easier to divide and conquer. The bike here is not the story!
Kudos to him. Most of us just
Kudos to him. Most of us just complain about littering but do nothing about it.
The correct thing to do here
The correct thing to do here is to very politely and genuinely ask the person “I think you lost something”, while proffering the litter. They will have a natural instinct to take it (you’re co-opting normally helpful behaviour) and you both have easy, polite outs.
So he concedes he didn’t
So he concedes he didn’t actually see it being dropped, so can’t be sure it was the driver?
Idiot.
Pillock. “Thought” the driver
Pillock. “Thought” the driver dropped it. If i was driving along innocently and some eejit tossed a cup in the car and started lecturing me, I think I’d be a little upset too.
It may be the case that this nice chap did actually drop the cup, but without seeing (and recording!), nothing can be proven. That leaves you on a sticky wicket as an incompetent vigilante.
Like so many of these videos, they actually show that most camera cyclists are their own worst enemy. So many times you think “This is not going to end well”, and it doesn’t… A camera doesn’t make you invulnerable.
has Knight Warrior bought a
has Knight Warrior bought a bicycle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV3JBhQxjrc
Also, he’d have caught up with the car a lot quicker if he wasn’t doing some weird commentary the whole time.
Hate littering. there are far
Hate littering. there are far too Many disgarded cans, chocolate wrappers, energy gel pouches, disregarded black dog poos bags(what is the point of leaving those once you bothered picking it up?) littering streets and countryside. And if I catch any litterers I make them pick it up. I do not film anyone though nor do I assume someone littered unless I caught them. Up to now everyone apologised and picked it up when challenged. Maybe I pick my battles wisely. Cannot wait to catch one of those inbreds who picks up dog poo only to leave the bags dangling about.
Sub5orange wrote:Hate
Perhaps you could come and catch one of them near my house. On occasion, we get such a little present, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag having been chucked over the gate into our front garden. Nice.
This guy , the rider, clearly
This guy , the rider, clearly isn’t all the ticket is he.
The driver was probably smoking weed as well by the looks of it, and is the sort of chav we see every day in Essex. lol.
Personally I wouldnt go throwing back litter at them unless I really wanted a ruck.
Road cc should have come up
Road cc should have come up with a better headline ………
How about ………Vigilantly cyclist confrontation with drver backfires
Not watched the vid. I wish
Not watched the vid. I wish Road.CC would stop showing vids of bell ends. I see enough out on my bike as it is without the need to film the creatures or watch others videos of them.
Chasing a driver to complain
Chasing a driver to complain about his litter?
For goodness sake. Stop with that kind of nonsense. Enjoy your life and be a good person. Chasing down car drivers on a bike to remonstrate about litter is ridiculous.
Well-intentioned action, but
Well-intentioned action, but sometimes you have to do the right thing and bin it for them. (Surprising the constabulary didn’t take more of an interest in the cyclist riding on the pavement?)
Typical fat-fuck of a scumbag
Typical fat-fuck of a scumbag motorist
I’m with the police on this
I’m with the police on this one even though I hate litter lout motorists (and litter louts generally) the key issue here is that the cyclist admits he didn’t see the cup being littered by that motorist and then he gave chase and created a confrontation. When you do that the law is always going to have you in the wrong.
Now if you are going to go about confronting people about their behaviour just remember that the nicer people are the ones that you aren’t complaining about and the ones you are confronting ae likely to be the nastier sort. I am not saying don’t confront people but I m saying that you need to expect some of them to cut up rough about it. So, think it through first and decide how far you are prepared to take it.
Bearing in mind that he was
Bearing in mind that he was presumably recording before the footage we’ve seen, and no footage of the cup being thrown out of the car is forthcoming, we have to assume that said person in all likelihood probably didn’t throw the cup in the first place.
Thus, the person with the video camera has just chucked a skanky old cup at someone who didn’t throw it and is ‘surprised’ when they get a rage on.
I put it to you then, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the real cock here, is the cyclist.
I rest my case.
Oh and the video has now been
Oh and the video has now been “removed by the user”!
I rest my case (a second time).
If you look for trouble with
If you look for trouble with motorists, you’ll generally find it, especially ones that throw litter out of their window! You could get all ‘Jack Reacher’ but then you’ll probably be the one thrown in the ‘cooler’.