Police are appealing for witnesses after a cyclist abused a driver, reached into his car and stole his keys. The apparent road rage incident took place at around midday on Sunday December 13 in Christchurch in Dorset.
The Western Daily Press reports that a man in his sixties was driving a green Fiat Punto along Bridge Street toward the town centre and had stopped in traffic when he was approached by the cyclist.
The cyclist was said to have been shouting and behaving aggressively toward the driver. He then leant through the car window and took the keys from the ignition before cycling off. The driver also sustained a minor injury to his face, including a small cut under his eye, where the cyclist reportedly hit him.
The suspect is described as a white man in his 30s and of slim build, wearing black fitted cycling gear with a wide blue horizontal band across his lower back and cycling glasses.
He was cycling alongside another male cyclist who was wearing black cycling gear with yellow markings on it who was not involved in the incident.
Police Constable Peter Simpson, of East Dorset police, said:
“I am able to release a photo of the suspect and ask anyone who recognises him from his clothing or bike to contact me.
“I am also keen to speak with the man cycling alongside him as his information may help us with our enquiries.
“I would urge anyone who witnessed the incident, or who saw the cyclists in the area, to please call me. All calls will be treated in strict confidence.”
Anyone with information should contact Dorset Police on 101 quoting incident number 13:179. Alternatively, you can speak to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
55 thoughts on “Angry cyclist steals driver’s keys and cycles off – police appeal for witnesses”
Mmm. And the drivers the
Mmm. And the drivers the innocent party in this?
Note to any copper reading this: Vigilantism is a symptom of nonexistent, insufficient, or inefficient law enforcement.
But that would never apply in the UK would it?
ron611087 wrote:
Tend to agree, whilst taking the keys isn’t right you have to ask what led upto this?
Seen whilst wandering home earlier, a car pulled out of a parking place straight in front of a bus, bus served onto pavement to avoid. Driver was completely oblivious of the world around him, moral, just because the driver doesn’t think they did anything wrong doesnt mean they did nothing wrong.
mrmo wrote:
I’d argue if the driver is intoxicated, drugged, or clearly unfit to drive due to age/medical condition/attitude, you have an *obligation* to yourself and other road users to remove their ability to operate a lethal item of machinery.
If you remove a knife from someone brandishing it about and shouting angrily you’ll be hailed a ‘have-a-go hero’. Remove the keys from a mum in charge of a 2.5-ton 4×4 who’s texting merrily away on the school run alongside footpaths full of kids? I wonder what the press would say about that…
I think in this age of utterly ineffectual road policing and equally ineffectual sentencing we will see a lot more of this sort of thing.
mrmo wrote:
Yup; as TFA mentions that “[h]e was cycling alongside another male cyclist”, I’m going with driver objecting to his riding two abreast & it escalating from there.
ron611087 wrote:
It does seem like there’s a big chunk of the story missing. Nobody just does that for no reason at all
ron611087 wrote:
Well, he might be. You can’t say on the basis of this article.
That said, it’s reasonable to assume there’s more to this than a cyclist riding up to a random driver out of the blue and taking his keys – whether the driver is aware of it or not, he’s clearly ticked the guy off somehow.
ron611087 wrote:
we don’t know, but because this is a site for cyclists, the majority of people have decided that this was a justifiable incident, despite not actually knowing anything further than has been reported.
By way of example, what if the driver, who is in his sixties, has a couple of hardnut sons, who will clearly think their dad was in the right (as per the positive bias towards the cyclist on here), and take offence to a bloke half his age assaulting him? If they can find out who the cyclist is, is it suddenly ok for them to go and drag him out his house and give him a shoeing?
namesarehard wrote:
Mmm. And the drivers the innocent party in this?
Note to any copper reading this: Vigilantism is a symptom of nonexistent, insufficient, or inefficient law enforcement.
But that would never apply in the UK would it?
— namesarehard we don’t know, but because this is a site for cyclists, the majority of people have decided that this was a justifiable incident, despite not actually knowing anything further than has been reported. By way of example, what if the driver, who is in his sixties, has a couple of hardnut sons, who will clearly think their dad was in the right (as per the positive bias towards the cyclist on here), and take offence to a bloke half his age assaulting him? If they can find out who the cyclist is, is it suddenly ok for them to go and drag him out his house and give him a shoeing?— ron611087
Good response, but it misses the jist of my comment. It’s not an endorsement of vigilantism but an observation of the circumstanses that cause it.
ron611087 wrote:
Extrordinarily silly post.
So, the police have an injured driver, who’s had his keys taken by a cyclist, of whom they have a picture, and they appeal for information to find out who he is, to investigate the matter.
And that becomes: “Vigilantism is a symptom of nonexistent, insufficient, or inefficient law enforcement.”
For a forum that beats on and on (sometimes justifiably) about the dibble doing nothing about road rage and poor behaviour, the hypocracy of this guff is simply astonishing.
WTF do you want them to do?
BarryBianchi wrote:
I think what he is saying is that if someone does not feel the legal system will support them / provide justice, then they are likely to take the law into their own hands.
Case in point… assume for a second that the driver had acted in a way that had endangered the life of the cyclist. Maybe it was only the quick wits or pure good fortune that stopped that cyclist becoming a KSI stat? What course of action is there for that cyclist to take?
We can discuss that, but the answer is none. The driver has got away with a life threateningly dangerous action, and they are free to do it again and again until the inevitable happens.
How long before that cyclist takes the law into his own hands? How long before he feels the need to vent his feelings to the driver in question? How long before the built up frustration of repeated threats to his life will leave that person unable to partake in reasoned discussion, and incidents like this happen?
Inaction is an action, and for every action there is a reaction. The first comment to me is band on point.
Its great this was looked at by teh police… it was assault. But rather than simply labeling the cyclist as a psycho (might have been, might not have been), the first post gave an opinion why these situations may happen.
Why these things happen are important to a lot of cyclists reading this, as I can imagine all of us are somewhere on the line between being good-serving memeber of society and frustrated vigilanty. We want to know context to know how far away any of us may be from this.
Jimmy Ray Will wrote:
I think you have the wong Police.
Police are looking for ‘a
Police are looking for ‘a white man in his 30s and of slim build’.
Well that narrows it down then.
FFS, is it any wonder
FFS, is it any wonder cyclists have a bad name.
Presumably if an American cyclist got out his arsenal and shot up an entire highway you fucktards would come on here and say that it was perfectly justifiable because someone passed him a bit too close.
We need to make it safer to cycle on our streets and roads, and that is never going to happen if idiots like this behave like this, and then we try to defend it
This behaviour from the cyclist is obviously, blindingly obviously, utterly unacceptable.
It doesn’t matter what the “full story” is. It doesn’t matter what “led up to it”. It is still utterly unacceptable.
We must say so, if we are to have any hope of winning the war and making streets safe for cyclists.
Fomenting the “them-and-us” attitude that so many do, is only going to provoke those driving the 2tonne weapons, and those riding the 8kg steeds are going to come off second if that happens.
rjfrussell wrote:
the fact is bad car drivers kill, cyclist don’t no matter how bad they cycle!
rjfrussell wrote:
Judge all you like, vigilantism is a social response to poor policing, and it will occur in every society where those conditions exist.
My only surprise is why it took so long.
rjfrussell wrote:
I must say I agree. Most cyclists are drivers as well. Can any cyclist/driver put his hand up and say he’s never made a mistake? I doubt it. I’ve come to expect this holier than thou attitude from the commenters here but sometimes it takes me by surprise. A bit of give and take is needed, we can’t all be perfect.
FrankH]
I totally agree.
There may well have been something that led up to this. Or there may not. We don’t know.
Behaviour like this is evidence that the cyclist in question will act in an unacceptable fashion. From the evidence it is reasonable to think he is just a dangerous individual who happens to ride a bike as well.
Unfortunately road.cc and the comments on it show that cyclists are as prone to over-inflated feelings of self-importance as car drivers.
Not that I am intolerant of intolerant people at all!!!!
mithrasm]
Again, totally agreed – I see a lot of bad drivers when I’m out and about, but also see a lot of bad cyclists – If a guy in a van saw a cyclist going the wrong way down a one way street, or cycling on the pavement and took it upon himself to confiscate the bike (in the interests of public safety, you understand), I suspect the response here would have been very different..
We don’t know the full story, so it’s difficult to pass a fully formed judgement, but generally, I’d argue that any form of vigilantism is a slippery slope…
FrankH wrote:
And last time i had a driver clip me, rather than escalate the driver simply said sorry and made sure no damage done, and yes i was ready to rip his head off for gross stupidity and not looking. Contrast with when i have been cut up and told to get off the f**king road, which escalated very quickly.
Cyclists, Drivers, we are human and we make mistakes, the point is what you do when it happens? Apologise and move on or get defensive and aggressive?
Throw into the mix far too many drivers who THINK they know the law and expect others to get out of the way, NOW.
FrankH wrote:
How fucking hard is it really to understand. A badly behaved tit on a bicycle is a danger mostly to himself. A badly behaved tit driving a car is a danger to many people. That is why we make anyone who wants the privilege of driving take a test, and is why we should worry a whole lot more about crap drivers. The problem with ‘give and take’ is that what most drivers mean by it is ‘get out of my way while I take the road’.
rjfrussell wrote:
What a self-contradictory post!
You complain about ‘them and us attitude’ while yourself invoking the tedious ‘giving us a bad name’ garbage. Cyclists have a bad name because many drivers have a deep sense of entitlement and a lot of political power. This isn’t going to make any difference to that.
And since when was taking car keys on a par with shooting people?
I don’t think what the guy did was right. But ‘utterly unacceptable’? Bit over-the-top. How can you use that phrase when seriously injuring people is reguarly accepted on our roads?
Edit – I mean, using a hand-held phone while driving is ‘utterly unacceptable’ and yet its widely accepted. What does the term even mean, really?
Anyway, I’ve no idea what happened here, or if the cyclist was a particularly belligerent one or not, but its hardly the most serious incident that will have occured on our roads this week.
rjfrussell wrote:
I cite bovine excretia regards your prose, Sir.
One finds your assumption that the denziens hereabouts are incapable of rational, subtle judgement of a proffered situation most unsavory.
One would also like to understand this curious concept of ‘we’. As far as one knows, one owes not the remotest allegiance or responsability to any other person, on wheels two or four – nomoreso than your good self does to a reprobate ‘afoot’ in the town, as no doubt your good self has occasion to be.
I respectfully direct you to the nearest section of coastline, where you are invited to proceed perpendicular to said in a direction away from land.
rjfrussell wrote:
The only thing giving cyclists a bad name is the wholesale perpetuation of the popular now adopted myth that anything any cyclist does ever gives cyclists a bad name.
I totally disagree with the
I totally disagree with the above.
Doffing our caps and being submissive little sheep will not make a jot of difference.
I don’t have to defend anyone’s actions other than my own… I am not responsible for other cyclists actions in the same way no one else is responsible for mine.
The first post had it… people will do what they think they can get away with… and people will respond in a way they think appropriate and again what they can get away with.
Cycling evangelists will jot change a bloody thing… only better policing can make a difference.
Further more, I have been in
Further more, I have been in a situation where the most appropriate action would have been to confiscate the keys from a driver… given a chance. It would have hampered their ability to repeatedly try and run me and a couple of others over.
Yes, I’ve done that twice-
Yes, I’ve done that twice–disarming a person of a dangerous weapon I call it. I leave the keys in the local police station. Coppers do nothing about it.
One of my biggest regrets is
One of my biggest regrets is NOT doing this when I’d just witnessed a motorcyclist knocked off and seriously injured at a junction. The car driver and passenger swapped seats then drove off. I got their reg number but it turned out the car was stolen. As far as I know they were never caught.
Probably better not to make
Probably better not to make half arsed speculation about an incident that presumably no-one posting so far witnessed or was involved in. Maybe the cyclist just prevented a major terrorist car bombing, maybe he’s a really unpleasant psychopath, maybe it’s a bit of fuss about nothing more than a bruised ego. Point is we don’t know and some of these postings are worthy of the Daily Mail comments, just switch the cyclist and driver roles.
However I would admit to once hiding someone’s keys so they couldn’t drive drunk and that incident could well have ended up in fisticuffs.
I absolutely agree as above
I absolutely agree as above and I find it incredulous that people are actually condoning this assault and are trying to rationalise this idiots behaviour. He clearly has anger management issues and I’m sure if It was one of your relatives he assaulted you might have a different view.
Taking keys is OK – hitting
Taking keys is OK – hitting the driver is not.
I’m guessing that all the police need to do is check Strava…
sargey2003 wrote:
I know there have been a lot of generalizations already, but I would assume that any lycra bound hero would have the intellegence not to hit save.
The person abovwho suggests
The person abovwho suggests that its not a good diea to make unsubstantiated assumptions is dreaming.
On this website. Sorry but you are dreaming . Haven’t you realised that its the home of the most vindicive bunch I have met for a long time?
The same bunch who know Froome is doping because they know better and can read peoples minds
I’ve heard of guys doing this
I’ve heard of guys doing this before, usually to disarm an irrational, psychotic driver from mowing them down further up the road.
There seems to be a fair old chunk of this story missing. Why would you pick a fight with someone armed to the teeth with a speeding one ton weapon?
Sounds like road rage by both
Sounds like road rage by both parties and the driver came off worse hence the need for the media report, vice versa and nowt would have been done or said.
There’s got to be far more to
There’s got to be far more to this than simply “cyclist rides up to innocent law-abiding motorist and steals keys”.
They must have had some sort of previous encounter further back along the road to rile the rider up like that. Two wrongs don’t make a right obviously but there has to be more than the original news report is making out.
And anyone commenting with the “giving cyclists a bad name” rubbish… Please stop with collective responsibility bollocks. Thanks.
I think that the problem here
I think that the problem here is that too many people (on two wheels as well as on four) don’t notice when they’ve done something stupid and/or dangerous. I don’t believe that the motorist did *nothing*, and I do believe that the cyclists actions were probably an overreaction, BUT I also believe that it’s likely that the motorist genuinely didn’t realise that they’d done anything and therefore genuinely think that they’re the aggrieved party here.
Love it
Love it
As other posters have
As other posters have suggested, there looks to be alot more behind this story that has been reported in the press. For a start, the narrow traffic-light controlled bridge leading from Bridge Street into the town centre, where I’ve witnessed car drivers trying to overtake
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/14110842.Plan_to_make_Christchurch_safer_for_cyclists_delayed_due_to_A338_works/
Unless there was a personal vendetta, what happened to upset the cyclist so much? You also have to bear in mind the poor standard of driving in the area and attitudes towards cyclists.
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/14157589.UPDATE__Cyclist_seriously_injured_in_hit_and_run_in_Corfe_Mullen/
PS I am not condoning this individual’s action.
As other posters have
As other posters have suggested, there looks to be a lot more behind this story that has been reported in the press. For a start, the narrow traffic-light controlled bridge leading from Bridge Street into Castle Street and the town centre, where I’ve witnessed car drivers trying to overtake:
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/14110842.Plan_to_make_Christchurch_safer_for_cyclists_delayed_due_to_A338_works/
Unless there was a personal vendetta, what happened to upset the cyclist so much? You also have to bear in mind the (poor) standard of driving and attitudes towards cyclists in the area.
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/14157589.UPDATE__Cyclist_seriously_injured_in_hit_and_run_in_Corfe_Mullen/
That cyclist is a massive
That cyclist is a massive fucking tool.
Would love to meet him and hear his explanation.
2old2mould wrote:
Why? You’ve already passed your judgement.
ron611087 wrote:
Why? You’ve already passed your judgement.— 2old2mould
Because the article describes an assault, and presumably a theft. He has no right in law to confiscate the drivers keys nor to injure them in the process. The fact that plod are investigating indicates that his actions were excessive.
Don’t fucking argue the point for this bullshit behaviour, in the same way that a driver of any vehicle cannot take the law into their own hands, we as cyclists are subject to the same laws.
I will make an assumption; I’ll assume the guy was the type of chest beating self righteous arsehole that I often see in certain parts of London.
2old2mould wrote:
That doesn’t answer my question, it just passes more judgement. You wrote you wanted to hear his explanation. If you have already formed an opinion, as your comments indicate you have, why do you want you hear his explanation?
2old2mould wrote:
Colour me curious: What part/s of London would that be then?
jacknorell wrote:
Colour me curious: What part/s of London would that be then?— 2old2mould
Mainly in the Centre, around East London, SW and SE London and West and North/NW/NE London. Also, the Home Counties, the South East, East Anglia, the West Midlands, East Midlands, the South West, Wales, Yorkshire, The North West and North East.
I’ve never been to Scotland.
2old2mould wrote:
Let me understand this correctly.
Some cyclists get outraged because their safety is put at risk, and you’re outraged at them for that?
ron611087 wrote:
Let me understand this correctly.
Some cyclists get outraged because their safety is put at risk, and you’re outraged at them for that?— 2old2mould
So, extracting ‘rage’ from your sentence. Is rage a recommened emotion for road-users?
Please quote where I said I was ‘outraged’. I absolutely understand a riders anger when their safety is put at risk but I certainly do not condone as you put it vigilantism nor theft or assault.
Do you?
Is that what we want? And where do we draw the vigilante line? If it’s OK to act like this then maybe we can just nudge the line a little to the left, so that bloke we all know who doesn’t declare all his earnings in his Self Assessment tax return, shall we go round to his house later and brand ‘Tax Cheat’ across his forehead with a red hot poker?
Because if we do, then the next time any of us makes an error in judgement we can expect to see the soft glow of the poker hoving into view.
Let’s not justify criminal behaviour by masking it as self-defence whatever the reasoning.
2old2mould wrote:
You’ll find your answer one post before your first post.
Christchurch high street is
Christchurch high street is too narrow for modern cars flowing both ways it needs to be pedestrianised or made one way or implement a congestion charge like Durham, at the very least it should be a 20 zone with average speed cameras.
I think we need to recognise
I think we need to recognise the often heated situations that lead to happenings like this, as such use of the term reasonable is quite often unhelpful.
Hitting is unreasonable, except when someone has just tried to hit your daughter for example. Context is critical, there are occasions when violence even at an extreme level is very regretfully quite appropriate, the scenario of the police sniper having authorisation and opportunity to kill a hostage taker in a classroom is extreme but current.
Looking at this we have a vulnerable road user alongside a well recognised killing machine, we dont know the facts but history well documents motorists hurting and killing cyclists so perhaps this is yet another episode of smidsy with the cyclist simply fed up with having his life threatened.
Perhaps the bigger question is why someone taking keys constitutes assault whilst taking life constitutes an accident?
hmm
hmm everyone…
what a twonk.
what a twonk.
Chaps – this looks like a
Chaps – this looks like a zombie thread to me. Any idea what has resurrected it?
Morgoth985 wrote:
You can’t resurrect Zombies, that’s the thing about them….
Morgoth985 wrote:
Well as a commited environmentalist, I applaud this example of recycling!
I do wonder whatever happened with this matter though, given it was well over 18 months ago.