Crimewatch presenter and BBC Radio 2 DJ Jeremy Vine has posted footage to Twitter showing a driver who had just turned across his path as he rode his bike to “f*ck his mum.”
Vine often tweets incidents filmed on his commute, with a driver jailed earlier this month after his video evidence helped secure her conviction, triggering an existing suspended sentence.
> Jeremy Vine road rage driver jailed after losing appeal
The latest incident happened on Kensington High Street, with the driver of a Mercedes turning right into side street when Vine had right of way, causing the 51-year-old, who had just been waved through by a motorist in a parked Range Rover, to hit his brakes before carrying on round the front of the vehicle after it stopped.
You meet a better class of person in Kensington. pic.twitter.com/P4YjQAi1xQ
— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) April 26, 2017
When Vine remonstrated with the motorist, the driver shouted at him, “F*ck your mum.”
The broadcaster observed in his tweet: “You meet a better class of person in Kensington.”
Some commenters to the post on Twitter suggested the motorist had done nothing wrong in executing the right turn, given that Vine had been filtering up the inside of a bus which had stopped to let the Mercedes turn right, though others pointed out that the cyclist had every right to carry straight on.
@breezerg00d @theJeremyVine Guy in the car failed to give way to oncoming traffic. Guy in the car is wrong.
— CyclingMikey (@CyclingMikey) April 26, 2017
One cyclist familiar with the road said that they would have exercised more caution, but also criticised the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea for its parking policies.
@theJeremyVine Though knowing that road and its many junctions I’d probably not have undertaken there as nearly caught there in evening that direction
— Goth on a Brompton (@GothOnABrompton) April 26, 2017
Another reply said both parties were equally to blame.
@theJeremyVine It’s 50 50. The right turner started their manoeuvre before you were visible.
— Pete Wyatt (@petewyatt) April 26, 2017
Finally, one Twitter user pondered what may have been behind the motorist’s specific choice of words.
@theJeremyVine @joelcacooney Freud would have had a field day…
— Neg (@R6Neg) April 26, 2017
41 thoughts on “Video: Mercedes driver tells cycle-commuting broadcaster Jeremy Vine “f*ck your mum””
Tomorrow we will find out
Tomorrow we will find out that it was Jeremy Vine’s dad…
Very simple situation.
Very simple situation.
The driver of the Mercedes set off across the carriageway whilst his vision of it was almost totally obscured by a large double decker bus. That is clearly wrong, if you can’t see then you don’t move.
Jeremy Vine on the other hand had both right of way and the visibilty that his own lane was clear as he approached the junction.
The driver of the Mercedes demonstrated his grasp of the situation, and I beleive his underlying knowledge that he was in the wrong, by making a very uncouth comment entirely commensurate with his particular style of driving.
shay cycles wrote:
SPOT ON! eVEN IF THE mERC HAD BEEN WAVED THROUGH BY THE BUS, HE SHOULD STILL EXPECT OTHER ROAD USERS (CYCLES) TO BE USING THE ROAD AS WELL!
KINGHORN wrote:
I agree, but there’s no need to shout!
shay cycles wrote:
The bus driver let the Merc go but the onus is still on the Merc driver to check that the road was definitely clear. The bus driver’s largesse did not in any way grant the Merc priority. So if a cyclist is coming through, or a Deliveroo scooter, or any other vehicle smaller than a bus – regardless of whether the Merc had started moving – then the road was demonstrably not clear. End of discussion. Nothing more to see here.
The driver of the Merc
The driver of the Merc shouldn’t have gone across the lane without being absolutely certain there was nothing coming but Vine’s decision to continue to try to get round the bonnet just seems quite antagonistic to me. He already had the reg number to report the driver (if he wanted to) and going out looking for aggression seems, to me at least, a little unnecessary.
Part of the blame has to be attributed to the bus driver also for his (or her) decision to let the Merc go across the lane. He was the only individual of the three (Merc man, Vine and himself) that was able to see everything and should therefore not have allowed the Merc to go.
AST1986 wrote:
When you are driving you can give way to whom you like and if you drive a larger slower vehicle you are more inclined to give way to other vehicles so you can make progress easier – so no the bus driver is not at fault.
It is the duty of the person you give way to check for other road users. Unfortunately the only road users who are guaranteed to do so are those with a motorbike licence as it is drilled into them in their lessons that failure to do so can mean their death.
And in any case it is well known that one’s mother does not do, will not do and has never done sex.
The driver after having seen
The driver after having seen the cyclist continues on – nothing would have happened if he had stopped for the fraction of a second it would have taken to let the cyclist past – but no… people driving these buckets of too much money have some sense of entitlement resulting in them in effect threatening the cyclist by continuing to move
I was hit by a taxi doing exactly this move – he was upset with me that I dented his bonnet as I roled over it after he hit me – he even sent me a bill for £950 – he was a police person in fact so badly underpaid he had to moonlight as a taxi driver – he flashed his warrent card at me telling me I had no chance arguing with him.
A letter of appology from his commander rather contradicted that – and a £4000 cheque from his insurers rather underlined that sentiment.
This cyclist had the right of way full stop.
Driver legally in the wrong
Driver legally in the wrong for turning across an oncoming lane he couldn’t see properly. He did at least seem to move off fairly slowly, which might suggest caution. But he should have given way.
Vine seemed determined to get in front and Make A Point though. But I’m not sure what the point of his point was.
Just because you are in the
Just because you are in the right doesn’t mean you have to push the point.
Would it really have made the world a worse place had JV stopped and waited for the car and for the driver to have said “sorry, my bad”?
Or am I more deluded about the real world than a Jeremy Corbyn supporter?
Mungecrundle wrote:
Yes actually it probably would!
That would be because the more we, as a whole society, accept and fail to challenge such rubbish driving (and behaviour) then the more prevalent it is likely to become. The driver was unlikely to have said “sorry,my bad” or similar but more lileky would have grumbled about the cyclist “coming out of nowhere”.
Being disparaging about others’ political views on a cycling site hardly makes you appear more reasonable.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Yes you probably are
firstly the bus may signal;
firstly the bus may signal; he is waiting he cannot give priority over other road users, but really, if you are filtering down the inside (legally) and you emerge from beside a large vehicle to find someone already turning right in front of you, its not rocket science to just wait.
You can’t expect anyone to see you through the bus, and once he has started his attention should be on watching for pedestrians crossing.
JV’s speed was such that there was no danger here, just two people too important to wait for anyone else
I think you’ve all missed the
I think you’ve all missed the story here. Isn’t that Terry Pratchett appearing in shot at 16 seconds? “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving”.
(And, for the record, J. Vine was wrong not to have let the Merc cross in front of him – the maneouver had begun and if Vine had enough time to deliver so many ‘oh oh ohs’ then he had plenty of time to stop. But the driver is simply crude – not unlike much of the general public these days).
A second of coasting and he
A second of coasting and he would avoided all that. He pedalled himself into that one IMO. A case of being about 80% in the right but wanting to make sure the driver realised he was 100% in the wrong.
Car driver was in the wrong.
Car driver was in the wrong.
Apologists can mutter all they like, but my understanding of road laws and the highway code says that the cat should have yielded when the bike became visible.
I can see the argument that they were both as stubborn as each other, but one had the right of way on his side, the other the sense of superiority of being in a merc.
My experience of these videos
My experience of these videos is that you know what’s going to happen, so that clouds your judgement of it. When you’re riding, most drivers are rational and careful (they really are), and would have stopped to let you through in this situation. No drama, footage gets deleted and forgotten
It’s these situations that makes it easy to say ‘of course, the driver was in the wrong, but if only the cyclist could see into the future and be an expert like me, then they would have avoided the situation’
Well yes, of course, but that’s not life. You constantly make split second choices based on the information available to you and the assessment of risk. It’s reasonable to expect a driver to avoid running you over, that’s not ‘making a point’, just normal riding
I’m glad Vine puts these out, they get more traction then every other bike vid put together, just because it’s that funny man off Strictly demonstrating the problems of inadequate infrastructure and selfish attitudes. They tell a different story to the popular notion of ‘Camera Vigilante’, i think they help make a difference
riotgibbon wrote:
I completely agree, and if there is just one clueless fucker in a car who doesn’t turn across someome because of this, then it is all worth it.
I don’t think infrastructure has anything to do with it, it is inconsiderate selfish bastards who think they can drive around in their 2 tonne £50k tractors just as they want with no regards for any other road user.
I would have slowed up and
I would have slowed up and waved him across. When you left filter you have to watch for, and ultimately give way for right turns like that as you cannot be seen (behind both cars and busses etc). He has right of way yes yes fine, but, on planet real we have to give way to each other to help each other safely go in and out of minor roads. A quick slow up and wave over and all problems solved – maybe the driver acknowledges the inconvenience and says thank you.
The reason JV didn’t stop and
The reason JV didn’t stop and give up his priority (not his right of way) then went around the front for the confrontation is because this shit happens every day, and because it happens every day it starts to grate and grind, it turns you from a once relaxed, reasonable person into someone that thinks do you know what, fuck you. I let x slide, I let y slide, much of it just to avoid being hurt or worse and now it has to stop, I’m standing my ground to make a point that I can’t be bullied out the way or have to take drastic action just avoid being killed, i’m going to protest your actions.
You get to a point where the confrontation is part of the therapy because just like the guy near the hospital a while back who launced his bike at the car or even further back the chap who was done for one punch manslaughter because someone opened a door on him, it builds and builds and builds and then boom, things get ugly and out of hand.
And the root cause of this, selfish twats like the guy in the merc, like the dipshit plod giving the cyclist grief in the 20 zone, the motorcyling cop (in london again) coming over to give the people in the correct lane hassle over their positioning/lecture on lanes, MPs opening doors on others, all the other cretins in tin cans including the killers that get off scott free, the heinous criminal inaction/actions of the MET in the michael mason case & others pathetic inaction by police forces, the inaction of government and even the shitty std of cycling who simply don’t want to abide by the rules.
I totally understand why J.V. acted the way he did, talk of he should of done x is all well and good but you give a little and ‘they’ take, you give more and they take more and all of a sudden you’re fucked no matter what you do. it’s like the other thread with the guy on the roundabout, well i would have done x, well eyeballing means shit these days. in the end it will be get off your bike and walk, go around the outside, oh and the favourite, let’s build infrastructure, no screw that, the infra is already there, the ONLY solution is to address the main problem and that is those that are causing the harm!
Police and government could resolve this for many, many situations just like this and certainly for more serious outcomes in a short period of time, but they won’t, they like to target the victims and are gutless criminal @@@@s.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
this is the thinking of every antagonistic road user which gives rise to these situations in the first place
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
A standing ovation for this post. I’m a reasonable person but I’m sick to death of being treated like shit when I swing my leg over a bike. It’s actually quite depressing if you spend any time thinking about how little regard there is for human life out there. When you encounter selfish pricks at the rate you do on an average London commute, it’s very easy to choose defiance over absolute safety when some arsehole decides that, because you’re vulnerable, you’ll cede your priority and allow them to get the back of the next queue three seconds sooner than they would have done if they’d just followed the fucking rules.
And Jesus, if “fuck your mum” is the best thing the cretin in Vine’s video can come up with, I’d rescind his licence purely on the grounds that he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to safely operate a motor vehicle.
Agree with BTBS here. Yes you
Agree with BTBS here. Yes you can let these things go, give up your rights and let every other road user push you around etc and then wonder why there is such a bad culture among drivers. Or act like you belong there and follow the rules properly. Letting the Merc guy cut you off isn’t going to make him less of a dickhead in his next encounter with a cyclist. F*** him, he can wait his turn.
Cyclist is technically
Cyclist is technically correct. That why we have laws.
Should the cyclist yell at the dude? probably not, but that’s his call. It’s still in the right regardless. Again that is WHY we have laws. You don’t have to like them.
personally, I would’ve spoken
personally, I would’ve spoken to the bus driver about giving way without checking
You just don’t undertake a
You just don’t undertake a bus, full stop. Jeremy IMO you’re in the wrong on that one.
I hate to display weakness by
I hate to display weakness by admitting it, but I’d find cycling on that road a bit confusing. Owing to it being extremely wide for a single lane and yet only intermittently being divided into lanes (judging from streetview there’s a central line that appears and disappears at intervals).
So you can pass on the left and then you can’t and then you can again. Yet the road is so wide it would seem silly to join a single file lane of traffic.
Not to mention there are those randomly parked vehicles blocking half the road (are people supposed to be using that half of the road to travel on or not? You can use it but you have to merge right every time theres’ a parked vehicle, and you can’t undertake except when a dividing line appears?)
I’d probably have ended up in the same position as Vine, but I’m sure I’d have wobbled to a halt as soon as I realised the turning driver wasn’t planning to give way, owing to uncertainty as to whether I’d done something wrong. Vine’s presumably more ‘alpha’ than me and his first instinct was to lock horns, I guess.
The driver’s an entitled arse, judging from his emotionally-incontinent shouting, But the situation just demonstrates to me why cycling is more complicated than it needs to be.
I had a similar issue when a
I had a similar issue when a van overtook me as it could go slightly faster than me and it is motorised so it had to.
It did not manage to overtake me by it’s full length before it noticed the queue at the traffic lights 200 yards ahead so decided to signal for the BMW wanting to turn right to do so. Needless to say the BMW turned right and as the Van had slowed it’s attempted overtaking I emerged and missed the bonnet of the BMW by a couple of centimetres only by my quick reactions. The BMW appologised but claimed it was the van drivers fault for waving him through (which I don’t fully disagree with).
I think it comes down to realising that drivers just need to think bike! I play a game in the car with my daughter where we spot cyclists on our journey, I’m hoping that this will turn into her always looking for cyclists when she drives.
ClubSmed wrote:
I’ve also been in similar situations where pedestrians, including children have been waved to cross without the driver checking the nearside lane.
beezus fufoon wrote:
Good point. Very good point.
Last year I went over the
Last year I went over the bonnet of a taxi doing the same thing as this driver. His insurance paid me out.No quibbles.Fault all his.
He f*cked his own (pre)M(i)UM
Traffic droid alert!
Traffic droid alert!
Cyclists can give way to
Cyclists can give way to other vehicles and pedestrians you know Jeremy, stopping is just another chance to show off your calves, I suppose if you don’t have any then it isn’t though and excercise must be a form of punishment but I feel sorry for the sheep in metal boxes and often let them pootle ahead as I know I’m gonna catch them at the next lights etc. Courtesy is a two way street.
Legally the driver should’ve waited but hey ho better judged by 12 than carried by 6 eh Mr Kyle?
Pinchastinkerov wrote:
Jeremy Kyle? Wrong Jeremy (I wonder what Clarkson or Corbyn would have done?)
Besides, I don’t your point is relevant, given that both participants were actually going slowly and cautiously so noone was in danger of death. Vine could have stopped, he just chose not to – same with the driver.
It was more like a ritualised fight between male animal rivals for a mate like you get on nature documentaries – where it’s all carefully controlled so neither risks real injury.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
one with birds puffing up their plumage not the potentially dangerous ones with tusks or antlers.
Both to blame.
Both to blame.
Merc driver went across unable to see down the side of the bus.
JV went down the side of the bus unable to see if it was clear or not.
The bus driver was also a
The bus driver was also a contributing factor. He should not have given his right of way over the Merc. You should never do it. This is why. I refuse to move in the Mercs situation. Its the same when you are let out at the base of a T junction because a car coming from the left wants to cut the corner so flashes you out. Apart from the incorrect use of the flash you must never give away your right of way. That’s why they are carved in stone. 2 cretins there.
No one seems to have
No one seems to have mentioned that the driver, don’t blame the car, entered the side road on the wrong side, something that far too many driver seem to think is acceptable nowadays
Cyclists need to be very wary
Cyclists need to be very wary overtaking on the left of any large vehicle, whatever lines may have been painted on the road to encourage them to do it.
It’s much better to overtake on the right: the driver in front can see you more easily in their mirrors, and the cyclist can see what’s happening in the lanes of oncoming traffic—like a driver waiting to turn right into a side road among the oncoming traffic. This anticipation of all players’ likely actions at a distance enables a smooth riding style where momentarily easing off the pedals allows everyone to have a better day. M. Vine may have been within his rights to insist on his priority, but he could have avoided this confrontation with better road positioning that enabled better anticipation.
Also, given the bad situation he’d got himself into, he’d have been better to jink to his right, behind the path of the turning car, rather than left, directly into its path. A collision with the side of a car, which dissipates only the cyclist’s energy, would seem to me better than risking receiving the forward energy of the car.
Or he could just set off a bit earlier and chill. Especially on a route that includes Kensington High Street, where there are so many fascinating shoppers to marvel at.
Nuance seems to be a quality
Nuance seems to be a quality that’s missed, for sure.