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

A man has been fined £200 for hitting a cyclist with a tub of hair gel, which was thrown from a moving vehicle after its passenger became frustrated that the cyclists were not “moving fast enough”.

Barry McCammond, from Largs, North Ayrshire, pleaded guilty to assault at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court last week, the Largs and Millport Weekly News reports.

The court heard that two men were cycling together on the coastal Greenock Road, towards Skelmorlie, at around 9.35am on 8 August last year when the driver of a red Volkswagen Golf, travelling behind the cyclists, began to beep the car’s horn.

According to the fiscal, after several blasts of the horn “the witness started cycling in front of the other in single file to allow the car to overtake. The car drove past them at the appropriate distance and at normal speed.”

> "Reckless" passenger hits cyclist by opening car door as driver overtakes

However, as the motorist – McCammond’s mother – passed the cyclists, the 22-year-old leaned out of the open passenger-side window and threw a small tub of hair gel at them.

The tub hit one of the cyclists in the calf, which the fiscal said “caused pain but no injury”.

As the motorist drove off into the distance, the cyclists were able to take a photo of the vehicle’s registration plate before reporting the incident at Largs Police Station.

McCammond was then cautioned and charged, and admitted to police that he had “lost his temper” after becoming frustrated that the cyclists had continued – albeit briefly – to ride two abreast, and that they were not, in his eyes, “moving fast enough”.

“This is the first time he has been in a court. He has never been in any trouble before,” the 22-year-old’s solicitor said.

“He fully accepts that what he did was unacceptable. It was unnecessary and it seems out of character from speaking to him.”

Sheriff George Jamieson ordered the hair gel-lobbing McCammond to pay £200 in compensation to the victim.

> Cyclist hurt after eggs thrown at her by car passenger

Unfortunately, McCammond’s “unacceptable” decision to lob a missile at a cyclist from a passing vehicle isn’t an isolated occurrence, as recent confrontations between car passengers and bike riders reported by road.cc show.

In October, 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, like the cyclist in Largs, 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”.

> Near Miss of the Day 842: Passenger jumps out of car to remonstrate with cyclist… after driver cuts corner and almost hits him

Finally, in a recent viral edition of our Near Miss of the Day series, another cyclist in Wales avoided any physical harm but instead found himself on the end of a verbal onslaught from a passenger who leapt of a car – after its driver had almost steered straight into the rider at a junction – to tell him to “get off the road”… while standing in the middle of a lane herself.