After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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28 comments
The bloke in the photo isn't your typical cyclist; note the old dual suspension mountain bike.. not what most cyclists would ride to commute; going by his appearance and predilection for violence, I wouldn't be surprised if the bike was stolen and the miscreant known to old bill.
He's not wearing a kilt, so he can't be a True Scotsman
Hmmm, or has the person has a camelbak and what looks to be a £6700 eMTB and the assault happened close to some very expensive houses, maybe it is a top businessman who lives down there about to leave for a 5 hour meandre along the coast with his wife, and is very quick to anger at people he believes are beneath him so punched out.
I suspect I'm alot closer then you on the guessing.
It might not be the beneath him thing that drew his aggression, maybe it was the risk to his life that the delivery driver caused them, perhaps without the delivery driver even being aware of their actions. Though of course that lack of awareness actually makes it worse doesn't it?
Whilst violence may not be the answer to someone cavalierly putting your life at risk, I have been in situations where I would have committed it if I could have caught the driver. Adrenaline and shock do things to you and make you act out of character. If someone threatens your life to save a couple of seconds, maybe they need a salutory lesson, an eye for an eye.
It has long been said that vehicles give drivers a feeling of isolation from real life, so they are less concerned with the consequences of their driving, especially around cyclists, because they know that they can't be hurt, so there is no equivalence. Thirty years ago in the USA there was a spate of drivers shooting other drivers for minor infractions, and suddenly everyone became very courteous. If enough drivers get beaten up by cyclists, we might expect the same; or they could get worse.
Anyway, I bet the driver is now a lot more careful around cyclists.
Wait - are we saying "be courteous and show respect - or else"? Now where have I heard that before...?
Mind you I'm not too worried for the put-upon drivers just yet - I think they're still handily winning the "war on the motorist"!
If the cyclist did commit an assault, then they should face the consequences.
What struck me about this article, however, was the...
“I appreciate this incident was some time ago, but I have now obtained images of a man we would like to speak to as part of our enquiries.
I would urge anyone with information as to his identity to please get in touch.”
...comment, which differs greatly from the usual...
"It's too late to do anything about it, now"
...comments - as per the NMOTD 701 article.
I'm sure after fourteen days they'll have to drop it, after all who would remember whether or not they punched one particular driver after that long?
Except that the incident took place in November...
Tell the police that the delivery driver swore after they punched him. They can then threaten the "victim" with a public order offence and drop the case.
That's the shit they pull with us on too many occasions here...
another post that reminds us that its not the transport you use but your psycology that is the issue.....we should categorise or characterise people by what they do not what they use.
Humans are humans indeed however they're travelling. I'd like to think cycling made you less of an arsehole but I don't believe it. (I've just been lucky not to meet many).
However there are built-in differences: you're more vulnerable on a bike than a car and motor vehicles do the most damage to others. These matter - road conditions mean currently the subset of the population riding bikes on the road may be more homogenous (more likely to be young / fit / brave / male) than drivers of motor vehicles. Arguably cyclists may be more often in "fight or flight" mode than motorists due to all the points mentioned.
Can we compare how stressed people would be if you had traffic jam conditions but where normal people were all riding bikes instead of driving? https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-busiest-cycleway-in-the-netherlands/
But but but how will the vulnerable pedestrians cross the cycleways? https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/how-hard-is-it-to-cross-the-cycle-path/
Except when they turn into a side road
Except when they're a little hoarse. (sorry that should be on the
NewsCovid thread).I seriously don't want to look at the comments on the Facebook post on this article.... It will be the same old "Aggressive Lycra Clad MAMIL's" and "they need number plates so they can be identified" pile of BS
Because we all know one bad cyclist is representative of every cyclist.....
Pearce Avenue is the most expensive road in BCP and Dorset, average price nearly £4m. It's a short cul-de-sac. Just a bit of pointless extra info for you, nothing to do with punchy cyclist. I've so often wanted to do what this cyclist did, but it isnt self defence regardless of whatever the twat driver may have done before. I think it would be valid to do if the driver was still in the act of using their vehicle as a weapon or threatened to get out and cut your throat..as in the other video.
These thuggish young cyclists on their MTBs...
I wonder, are the police going to give him a medal for teaching the driver a lesson for driving like a twunt?
That'd be nice, I might bake a cake, we can all get together and make a thing of it.. maybe some music, bring your bikes! Whey hey!
What lesson would that be? That violence is the answer to everything, so next time make sure to run them over properly?
No. They already know both parts of that lesson.
Since it's a day of pedant-centric activities: "violence is not the answer, but what are you going to do about it?!"
Come and moan about it on a cycling website comments section, obvs.
We are all faulty humans, we all have a limited cognitive capacity.
You can wish all you want for the driver to have been more carefull, one day you too will catch someone in your blind spot and hopefully the person won't try to teach you a lesson.
We're bound to make mistakes, infrastructure must mitigate them.
Otherwise we'll keep teaching each other a lesson until the end of times.
We can hide a file in it
A single file?
Looks like rasp bury flavour.
That would be a file hidden in a black pudding.
...and so to breakfast.