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Daisy Abela tweetDaisy Abela: “I was not drunk, and nor was it a hit and run”
Driver Daisy Abela, who has been at the centre of a Twitter storm over after she claimed to have “purposely run over” a cyclist, says she has spoken to the police about the incident, that she was not drunk and it was not a hit and run.
Asked to explain what had happened, Ms Abela told road.cc: “Just to clarify I have been in touch with the Metropolitan Police. This incident happened at 9am. I was not drunk and nor was it a hit and run.”
Yesterday, Ms Abela wrote on Twitter: “Just had a full on barney with a cyclist he started banging on my roof so I purposely run him over LOL see yaaaaa #c**ts”
"Trolls"
Contacted today by road.cc, Ms Abela said: “There are too many internet trolls involving themselves in this situation when it is being dealt with by the police.”
Ms Abela declined to give an account of what had actually happened, “at the moment ... I will be speaking to the police and will contact you further based on their advice.”
She and several of her friends claimed that Abela had been harassed by other Twitter users after her initial postings.
“I will be speaking to the police today in order to discuss the harassment I have been receiving and how best to resolve this situation,” she said.
Ms Abela said that her tweets about the incident, “have been placed together by internet trolls and blown way out of proportion.
“The only thing I am guilty of is writing a silly tweet, which I regret and apologise for.”
While denying that the incident was as serious as her initial tweets made it sound, Ms Abela said she did understand how bad they looked.
She said: “The tweets look ridiculous reading them back but I thought the conversation was between me and a friend who understood I was joking. I did not realise this conversation would end up public and lead to thousands of people harassing me.
“I will be making a public apology for any offence that I caused other cyclists.”
"It never happened"
Several friends of Ms Abela’s took to Twitter to defend her today, variously claiming that she had already spoken to the police, the incident was not a hit and run, the cyclist involved had not been injured and had not even been knocked off his bike.
However, initially none of those claiming to know Ms Abela were prepared to say whether they had been in the car at the time of the incident, or which police force Ms Abela had spoken to.
Then Robyne Frew took to Twitter to claim that she was in the car at the time of the incident. “She was taking me to work,” said Ms Frew. “[The cyclist] hit the wing mirror but didn't fall off and carried on riding.”
Asked if she’d seen Ms Abela deliberately hit the cyclist, Ms Frew replied, “He hit the wing mirror himself! He had his head in the passenger window.”
Several Twitter users expressed mystification at Ms Abela’s claim to have ‘purposely’ hit a cyclist.
“I'm not trying to justify what the tweet said,” replied Ms Frew. “I've read it. And it never happened.”
She explained Ms Abela’s claim to have been “definitely still drunk” as “banter between her and 1 other person.”
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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40 comments
There's always one! Think you get my sentiment though - the driving test needs to be more expansive and a fair bit harder.
https://www.gov.uk/alcohol-young-people-law
I was taught that is was cider or perry. But that was a long time ago. Yours, in pedantry
At 17 they can't have a pint but are allowed to take charge of a car on the road after passing a test that only covers the bare minimum of skills required to do so. Doesn't really make sense does it?
The driver's attitude is common enough: a combination of being aggresive behind the safety of a car window while resenting anything that may even slightly hold up her progress. A negative attitude can even be seen sometimes in the approach of Courts and among police in such matters.
The law does not provide sufficient protection for cyclists - the Highway Code is too "soft". Unprotected cyclists are also too soft when colliding with metal. Proper legislation is needed, creating strict liability or equivalent when motorists hit cyclists. It does not happen because the motoring lobby is far more powerful and ultimately carries more clout.
Emma Way, who Abela seems to have mimicked, left the scene of an accident in May, having negligently hit another cyclist. That is pretty serious even if the chap was lucky enouigh not to be seriously injured. The Court should send a strong message of disapproval in dealing with this matter and the cyclist should sue her.
Unwittingly she has put a spotlight on this whole issue of posturing motorists who dislike the idea of anyone apart from them using the road. Time for change...
We almost got run down by a white van hurling abuse at us on a clubrun yesterday, apart from the abuse all we really noticed was the smell of weed coming out of the vehicle.
Shame this country is full of such twats isn't it.
Had that so many times, and never been totally sure about how to tackle it...
If you had reported it immediately, the driver would have been arrested for DUI.
If you did nothing, you allowed him to get away with doing it to others.
Very true pmr - a high profile damages claim or well publicised prosecution of either Ms Way or Abela sends the only message this sort of driver - a small but dangerous minority - will understand. A motor vehicle is a big powerful tool and does a lot of damage in the wrong person's hands unfortunately...
Sometimes you don't have that option.
I got ran off the road last week by some tosser in a van towing a caravan, whilst I was considering setting off after him I noticed it was an Irish reg and he was being followed by similar transits and caravans.
Do you really think the police would have been any use? And I sure as hell wasn't got to take on a full gang of knackers on my own on a quiet road.
Driving Miss Daisy needs to grow the fuck up and stop blaming others for her own trolling, ignorant and self-entitled behaviour.
Words fail me
And for me that's saying something. I think putting want-to-be drivrrs on a bike ant them to ride through town appeals to me, but just how practical it would be ....... ?
cycling should become part of the driving test (tricycles allowed for those that can't ride on two wheels), that way all drivers will have a sense of the vulnerability of being on a bike in traffic.
I used to say a bunch of stupid stuff when I was younger, thankfully no twitter or facebook around. Hopefully this is just a bad case of immaturity, we'll see what happens with the police investigation and if someone comes forward like last time.
Lie, deny, cry
2 out of 3 so far?
It's sad that these lasses are becoming vain zombies living their life through 'social media', with their faces clued to a phone screen most the time. I think the whole thing de-sensitizes them to the real world. Ironic really.
Driving isn't some game Daisy, it's being responsible for a 1 tonne+ metal box that can easily quash people. Those people, there just the other side of the windscreen.
Yeah. So a cyclist veers in front of them, a row ensues and he swipes off the wing mirror. And so rather than tweet about what arseholes cyclists are and what the prat did, you tweet you hit someone while drink driving. A very natural reaction. Not.
I don't believe a word either of these 2 girls says.
Simple solution really, stick her on a bike, make her cycle around London, at rush hour..
Then we'll see if her next tweet is so damning of "cyclists".
Another stupid and unknowingly dangerous little girl with absolutely zero care for others or having sense of responsibility. She should be forced to commute for 100 hours on a bike. And teens wonder why their car insurance is so high.
Not nice, whatever way you look at the statement made on Twitter.
"I did not realise this conversation would end up public" - Daisy, meet the Internet. Internet, this is Daisy.
according to her statement they over took a GROUP of cyclists, suggests lots of witnesses?
Has the cyclist been identified? One of the incriminating things in the Emma Way case was the cyclist's (and his team-mates') account of the incident.
She got caught out and is now desperately backtracking. It'd be interesting to see if her friends would be willing to repeat these stories in a court of law.
Either way, her 'clarification' shows how remarkably dense she is. "I thought the conversation was between me and a friend". It's the social media, stupid.
Interesting, is Robyne Frew a credible witness, considering she was hammered out of her mind the night before and the next day at 1.53 pm she tweets that she is still hammered.
"lol I'm still drunk it hasn't wore off yet"
https://twitter.com/RobyneBFrew_x/status/363628691227967488
to NorthEastJimmy
best comment on this forum in a while
well said
angry angry people....everywhere
If she didn't actually "purposely run him over" then isn't she the troll? And she has the nerve to call those angered by her claim to have run over a cyclist "trolls". What a stupid twat.
+1 no one has trolled her, she just appears to be caught out by possibly doing some stupid things.
I actually hate this country! I'm embarrassed to be part of the cycling community and ashamed that I drive a car. We're all in a vicious circle of hatred that's never going to get resolved. When I can move abroad I will.
+1 wish everyone would just chill
Agreed.
A line should be drawn somewhere between a) monitoring Twitter for stupid people incriminating themselves and reporting them to the police, and b) packs of internet vigilantes tracking down stupid people for throwaway remarks and harassing/threatening them.
Yes, people say stupid things on Twitter. Me included (though if I ever did something illegal I wouldn't be saying it in public!). But the case of the pub landlord recently, and maybe this girl, suggests that 'amateurs' should not be taking the law into their own hands...
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