Instagram urged to remove videos showing moped riders pushing London cyclists off bikes

Videos posted to Instagram show moped riders in London deliberately pushing cyclists from their bikes, with Cycling UK describing is as “despicable behaviour.”

In one video, a moped rider shouts, “Get over!” as he pushes a cyclist into a brick wall, with another rider shouting, “He’s off, he’s off!,” reports The Times.

A separate video shows a cyclist falling off his bike, his head hitting the ground, after a moped rider struck his bike’s handlebars with a tool.

Paul Farrelly, the Tory MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme and who site on the House of Commons select committee for digital, culture, media and sport, said it was “utterly wrong that social media is being used to glamorise crime” and called for the videos to be removed from social media.

His views were echoed by Sam Jones, senior campaigns officer at Cycling UK, who said: “This sort of behaviour is a sick joke which is putting people’s lives and well-being at risk.

”It is despicable behaviour which seeks to glamorise petty thuggery.

“Social media outlets have a responsibility to make sure content like this doesn’t make it before the public – but perhaps more importantly this should be a wake-up call that the country needs more roads policing.”

A spokesman for Facebook, which owns Instagram, has said that it is investigating the accounts concerned to ascertain “whether they violate our guidelines.”

He added: “Illegal activity, including the support or praise of it, is not allowed on Instagram.”

Earlier this year, police in Lancashire appealed after moped muggers left a cyclist with serious head injuries after pushing him off his bike in Preston.

In August last year, we reported how a cyclist had urged fellow bike riders to be vigilant after muggers on mopeds tried to rob her in North London, while last December, an off-duty Metropolitan Police officer who was commuting by bike arrested a pair of moped muggers after he saw them riding suspiciously on a footpath.