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Daisy Abela tweetDaisy Abela apologises
Daisy Abela, the driver at the centre of a twitter storm over the weekend after she claimed to have ‘purposely knocked off a cyclist’ apologised on Twitter this morning.
Ms Abela has changed the username of her primary account, which remains protected, and apologised via an account that shares the username from which she posted about driving into a cyclist and still being drunk.
Here are Ms Abela’s tweets. We’ve edited only misspellings and minor punctuation.
“I would like to start off firstly by apologising for any offence I may have caused other cyclists with my tweets on Saturday.
“I did not intend to upset anybody. Truth is I was joking with a friend, I thought it was a conversation between two people...
“Not one that would be broadcast to the rest of the world and cause such uproar.
“I understand and accept that my tweets sound incriminating and when reading them back sound frankly disgraceful
“But in fact they have been largely exaggerated and blown out of proportion. This incident was NOT a drunken hit and run.
“This was investigated by the Metropolitan Police and has been resolved. But for peace of mind I'd like to explain myself...
“On Saturday morning at around 9am I was driving behind a group of cyclists riding 3 abreast when I attempted to overtake at a clear point.
“As I did so, a fourth cyclist also tried to get ahead of the others leading to a near collision.
“I then shouted out of my open window "you're going to cause a crash riding like that" to which I received angry shrieks of abuse.
“I continued driving at around 10mph (approaching traffic) when the said cyclist caught up with me. He began hammering on my roof...
“And spitting at me as he shouted through my window "what's your fucking problem with cyclists?"
“I do not have a problem with cyclists, my issue was with the dangerous way he was cycling. We exchanged words whilst near enough stationary.
“Then there was a brief collision in which nobody was hurt. Not a "hit and run". This could equally have been caused by him cycling into me.
“Nobody was injured during the incident, there was no impact on the cyclist as he continued to scream abuse as he rode off!
“I did not lose a wing mirror it was merely pushed in. I appreciate how my tweet may have been misinterpreted.
“I strongly deny the allegations of drink driving seeing as the incident happened at 9am in the morning I was certainly not drunk.
“My tweet was referring to my silly behaviour the night before - a joke with my friend. I was NOT drunk at the time of the incident.
“My comments were terribly exaggerated and made in anger after being physically and verbally attacked by the cyclist.
“I should not have generalised all cyclists in such a way and once again I apologise for doing so and for my ludicrous comments. Thank you.”
At the time of writing, we’re waiting for a response from the Metropolitan Police to our questions about this incident. Ms Abela says she spoke to officers from Bromley police, but that is not yet corroborated.
If anyone knows the riders involved in this incident, please get in touch with the other side of the story.
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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47 comments
Her mother does work in a law firm, so the careful wording is no surprise
It's a clear overtake point but so clear that it requires 10 mph because of traffic?
read the comment better, i personnally have overtaken a cyclist at 60 only to be caught shortly afterwards at traffic lights. you can overtake on a clear road and still be caught a few minutes later.
As an aside, i was overtaken a month or two back by a white beemer, driver beeped at me, i saw red caught him at traffic lights and went off on one. His point was that there was plenty of room to get past and i should have been closer to the gutter, my point was the road surface was crap and he should read the highway code as there wasn't plenty of room.
Plenty of drivers don't realise their actions are dangerous. They think they are giving enough room, think about this, how many drivers are actually taught how to drive around cyclists? I know what the highway code says, but people are people,you learn by seeing what others do, you see other people overtake closely and assume it is an acceptable thing to do.
Was she guilty or not? i would wait on the cyclist to come forward. My feeling is that she gave what she THOUGHT was enough room and misjudged the fourth cyclists position.
Hopefully she has learnt a few lessons and won't be so stupid in future.
Yes. But that means reading the comment differently or, if you want better, with the benefit of the doubt.
Your example is pretty much one of the most common occurences on the road. Drivers fail to look through cyclists to see what is ahead. The overtake may be safe, but is it pointless?
It's interesting how many times motorists claim that a particular cyclist has held them up "several times."
Who is to say the overtake is pointless, we don't know enough detail to say one way or other why was there a queue of traffic, how far ahead etc. I should also point out if you don't make the overtake in a driving test you may well fail as your not making progress.
also the detail of aggression from other drivers if you drive in a way they deem to be holding them up.
There are far too many ****s on the road, in cars, on bikes, on foot.
And yes i am giving the benefit of the doubt, she screwed up, she knows that, she isn't going to loose her licence unless the cyclist comes forward. I would rather she understands what the problem is, what she did wrong, and doesn't repeat it rather than seeing all cyclists as a bunch of self righteous *******s.
Not another rehearsed apology. They just make the driver look like even more of an idiot. She has described the cyclist as public enemy number one while she is a well versed super-aware-driver who did everything by the books.
Bull. Sh*t.
Does she think everybody was born yesterday..
Both parties were probably being stupid.
Without the cyclists coming forward this is all just nonsense spouted by a fool.
Once again, another idiot behind the wheel of "two tons of steel". If she wanted to apologise she should've stopped at “I would like to start off firstly by apologising for any offence I may have caused other cyclists with my tweets on Saturday.
“I did not intend to upset anybody."
The statements that follow only negate the apology.
"two tons of steel" Crikey, what sort of car was she driving?
Audi A4, perhaps?.... http://carleasingmadesimple.com/business-car-leasing/audi/a4/gross-vehic...
Modern cars are stupidly heavy. It's an arms race. There's a VW Golf now that weighs over 1.6 tonnes, more than double the weight of the mark 1 Golf.
Current average European cars weigh between 1.1 and 1.5 tonnes (according to internet guesstimates) I was going by US avg.
I suppose there's always two sides to every story. The rider/riders need to come forward with their side of the story. It does make you wonder why they haven't as yet.
I do know that with the rise in popularity of cycling, the number of idiots riding bikes has also increased. Riding two/three abreast on narrow roads whilst ignoring traffic conditions is not on. A small minority are giving us all a bad name.
Show the same amount of respect to other road users as you would like to be shown yourself.
Seriously, fuck off with that collective responsibility bullshit. Its ignorant and does nothing to assert individual responsibility.
Her actions do not tarnish every other car driver so don't give it that crap that riding a bike somehow makes us automatically part of a collective.
I am only obligated to take responsibility my actions, no-one elses. Just as you are not responsible for mine.
It depends on your point of view. From your perspective you may not feel part of a bicycling collective but others may not share your point of view. I can assure you that there are quite a number of people who do see you as part of the collective. Depending on who you talk to you may well be a red light jumping, tax dodging, pavement riding lycra lout; despite them not knowing the slightest thing about you other than you regularly ride a bicycle.
A pretty aggressive and unnecessary tone.
As cycling is growing and becoming more visible, non-cyclists can and do see cyclists as a homogenous group, much like horse-riders or motorcyclists - it's only really motorists or pedestrians who aren't grouped together as they are such large majorities.
This is incorrect and I am no more responsible for other cyclists as I am motorists when driving. However, this perception remains for non-cyclists and those who break the rules of the road or ride aggressively do tarnish us all - it might not be right but it is the case.
Accordingly there is an element of collective responsibility, although I would agree that individual responsibility is far more important. I love cycling in it's many guises and as such I would be disappointed if my actions were to be seen to damage cycling.
Seriously, fuck off with that collective responsibility bullshit. Its ignorant and does nothing to assert individual responsibility.
WOW! My second post on the forum and i get told to Fuck Off!
Of course we can only be responsible for our on actions and not those of others,
however you can't escape the fact that unfortunately we all get tarred by the same
brush.
I think one of her tweets went something like "I hate bloody cyclists", she's not alone in having this kind of attitude
"Cyclists" that's you and me Zanf, already hated because of an incident involving
another cyclist. Like it or not for a lot of motorists we are seen as a collective.
firstly 9am doesn't mean she wasn't drunk - it is very possible (and happens alot) that people are still drunk from the night before - as implied with her 'definately still drunk' tweet. I have to question how she can expect credibitlity now the old 'i was lying before but I'm not now honest' approach just doesn't hold water. The tweets havent been exaggerated - they have been read as she wrote them. Sounds to me like someone has pointed out that another f**kwit made some similar comments on twitter and is in the process of legal action, damage limitation perchance?
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