Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Cyclists allegedly punched by passing white van passenger in hit-and-run assault, police say

A man reportedly reached out of the van window on a rural road, hitting a man and woman riding their bikes, before the driver fled

Police in Scotland are investigating after the passenger of a passing white van allegedly reached out and punched two cyclists on a rural road before fleeing the scene yesterday afternoon.

Emergency services were called following the incident, which took place on Lunan Bay Road, between Montrose and Arbroath, Angus, at around 2pm on Saturday.

Police Scotland say a man reached out of the window of a small white van as it passed a man and woman riding their bikes on the road, before punching the pair.

The driver of the van then continued towards Lunan Bay following the alleged assault. The condition of the cyclists is currently unknown.

A Police Scotland spokesperson said that officers are “appealing for anyone who may have witnessed this or may have CCTV or dash cam footage around the time of this incident”.

Witnesses are asked to contact police using the reference number CR/0259515/23.

> Car passenger fined for lobbing tub of hair gel at cyclist from moving vehicle

This weekend’s alleged assault is not, unfortunately, the first time that the passenger of a moving vehicle has attempted to confront or harm cyclists on Scotland’s roads.

Earlier this year, a man was fined £200 for hitting a cyclist with a tub of hair gel, which was thrown from a moving vehicle by its passenger.

Following the incident, which took place on the coastal Greenock Road, towards Skelmorlie, in August 2022, 22-year-old Barry McCammond admitted to police that he had “lost his temper” after becoming annoyed that two men who were cycling on the road ahead had continued – albeit briefly – to ride two abreast, and that they were not, in his eyes, “moving fast enough”.

He then leaned out of the open passenger-side window of his mother’s car and threw a small tub of hair gel at them, hitting one of the cyclists in the calf and causing “pain but no injury” to the rider.

> Motorist avoids charges despite swinging golf club at cyclist during shocking road rage attack

Meanwhile in Wales, in October 2022, we reported that an A&E nurse was hurt when she fell off her bike after being pelted with eggs by a car passenger as the vehicle’s driver close passed her at speed.

“It was disgusting behaviour,” Megan Brown said after the attack, which occurred on the Horseshoe Pass in North Wales.

“I was minding my own business when the car came past at speed – it must have been going 60-70mph. I looked down and saw eggs smashing. I lost my balance, swerved, and came off my bike, most likely due to the shock,” she said.

Two weeks earlier, a Yorkshire cyclist said that he could have been killed when a passenger in an overtaking car opened one of the vehicle’s rear doors, hitting him on the hand.

Fortunately, Trev Walker escaped relatively physically unscathed, suffering swelling and bruising to his right hand, but said it “could easily have ended with serious injury or fatality”.

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.

Add new comment

13 comments

Avatar
Oldfatgit | 1 year ago
8 likes

Hitting someone in the calf with a tub of hair gel ... £200 fine.
Hitting someone in the face with a 500ml bottle, thrown from a moving car with no MOT and being captured on HiDef video = "can't remember the incident" and no further action.

Police Scotland... there's a joke.

Avatar
Gus T | 1 year ago
4 likes

Prehaps the posters who blame cyclists that challenge bad drivers for subsequent assaults can explain what this couple did to cause the attack!

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to Gus T | 1 year ago
5 likes

Gus T wrote:

Prehaps the posters who blame cyclists that challenge bad drivers for subsequent assaults can explain what this couple did to cause the attack!

It'll be the direct and predictable result of Cycling Mikey's crusade against hard working, previously law abiding drivers.

Avatar
Muddy Ford replied to hawkinspeter | 1 year ago
4 likes

hawkinspeter wrote:

Gus T wrote:

Prehaps the posters who blame cyclists that challenge bad drivers for subsequent assaults can explain what this couple did to cause the attack!

It'll be the direct and predictable result of Cycling Mikey's crusade against hard working, previously law abiding drivers.

Why is it only drivers are hard workers? If so, why aren't people cycling more, in order to make their jobs easier? 

Avatar
brooksby replied to Muddy Ford | 1 year ago
5 likes

Muddy Ford wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Gus T wrote:

Prehaps the posters who blame cyclists that challenge bad drivers for subsequent assaults can explain what this couple did to cause the attack!

It'll be the direct and predictable result of Cycling Mikey's crusade against hard working, previously law abiding drivers.

Why is it only drivers are hard workers? If so, why aren't people cycling more, in order to make their jobs easier? 

And they're always "previously law-abiding", aren't they?  3

Avatar
Pub bike | 1 year ago
8 likes

Just like with anything else so long as there are motor vehicles, there will be thugs and idiots who drive them.  Sadly the cities that ban cyclists from their centres don't or won't see that if they were to apply the same logic to their roads to protect the more vulnerable road users they would be banning cars from entire cities.

Avatar
Fursty Ferret replied to Pub bike | 1 year ago
5 likes

Small white vans tend to have disproportionately angry drivers in them though. 

Avatar
BalladOfStruth replied to Fursty Ferret | 1 year ago
8 likes

Fursty Ferret wrote:

Small white vans tend to have disproportionately angry drivers in them though. 

You’re… not wrong. The most egregious examples of aggression and road rage (not simply bad driving, but bad driving followed by jumping out, fists swinging if anyone dares complain) that I’ve seen in person and online almost always seem to involve van drivers.

I don’t usually like buying into stereotypes, but it does seem that many light-goods vehicle manufacturers are now insisting that potential customers fail an IQ test and be diagnosed with severe anger management issues before they even let them in the showroom.

Avatar
Muddy Ford | 1 year ago
13 likes

Put these on X and tag Harper and Sunak, asking how their defence of the poor oppressed motorist is going. 

These are hate crimes, just like any other where the person is attacked simply because they have a stereotype. 

Avatar
chrisonabike replied to Muddy Ford | 1 year ago
4 likes
Muddy Ford wrote:

These are hate crimes, just like any other where the person is attacked simply because they have a stereotype. 

Unfortunately don't see that changing (even if you could define cyclists like goths). But more importantly we're nowhere further on from our mainly legalistic "each road 'accident' is a unique event" perspective. Supporting that I note the Road Safety Investigation Board is still a notion, a year on.

Avatar
eburtthebike replied to chrisonabike | 1 year ago
7 likes

chrisonatrike][quote=Muddy Ford wrote:

Supporting that I note the Road Safety Investigation Board is still a notion, a year on.

Don't you come on here with your anti-driver nonsense.

Avatar
brooksby replied to eburtthebike | 1 year ago
1 like

eburtthebike wrote:

chrisonatrike wrote:

Supporting that I note the Road Safety Investigation Board is still a notion, a year on.

Don't you come on here with your anti-driver nonsense.

Worse than that - I read over the weekend that propagating "anti British values" might be classified as "extremism", so being "anti driver" might lead to a visit from an anti terror squad...

Avatar
ChrisB200SX replied to brooksby | 1 year ago
3 likes

brooksby wrote:

Worse than that - I read over the weekend that propagating "anti British values" might be classified as "extremism", so being "anti driver" might lead to a visit from an anti terror squad...

Priti Patel would have you strung up on Anti-Terrorism offences.

Latest Comments