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news
Cyclist smashes car windscreen dash-cam footage still.PNGVideo: Cyclist uses bike to smash car windscreen after claiming motorist veered into cycle lane
Dashcam footage has emerged of a cyclist lifting his bike and smashing the windscreen of a car, with the driver saying that the rider had claimed that she had driven in a cycle lane.
Video of the rider breaking the windscreen of Tracey Leng’s car was posted to Twitter by BBC North West Tonight, with the Manchester Evening News publishing a longer video of the incident.
An angry cyclist who claimed motorist strayed into cycle lane smashes woman's windscreen as she drives to Mcr hospital to see sick mother. pic.twitter.com/JqoYTRwLAr
— North West Tonight (@BBCNWT) March 27, 2017
It happened as Mrs Leng, aged 50, drove with her husband to visit her mother, 69, who is seriously ill in Manchester Royal Infirmary and is due to undergo potentially life-saving surgery this week.
As Mrs Leng waited at traffic lights on Hathersage Road in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, the cyclist rode past her then turned around and approached the vehicle.
He twice seems to be about to ride away before turning around, the second time ending with him raising his bike and smashing the windscreen of Mrs Leng’s Skoda Octavia.
He then rode off through the Manchester Royal Infirmary site despite Mrs Leng – who denied she had veered into a cycle lane – and her husband attempting to follow him.
Greater Manchester Police have obtained a DNA sample from the saliva of the suspect, who spat at the vehicle, and officers are appealing for information to help track him down.
Mrs Leng told the Manchester Evening News: “We’re still in a state of shock about it.
“We don’t know why he was so angry. There was no clear cycle lane and even if there was I definitely wasn’t in it.
“He started shouting and swearing but as soon as we told him it was all being caught on the dashcam he totally flipped.
“We were totally numb after he threw the bike.
“There was a big loud crack, we didn’t if the whole window was going to shatter. It was really frightening, we didn’t know what he might do next.”
Mrs Leng said the timing could not be worse due to her mother’s impending surgery.
“Things are bad enough at the moment,” she said.
“It completely ruined Mother’s Day as we had to cancel a meal and cut short visiting my mum to deal with the police
“But more importantly my car is off the road now at a time when we really need it to get to the hospital
“I was just so uncalled for, I cannot understand why anyone would do something like that.”
Anyone who has information is requested to contact Greater Manchester Police on 101 quoting incident number 1873 of March 26 or the charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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82 comments
you get plenty of nutters and villains who do a few miles here and there on sub 100 quid full suss rusted up beasts, of course, but the disturbing thing here is his id necklace, which implies a decent job
real moment of regretful madness
"There was no cycle lane and even if there was I wasn't in it" - ah, wonderful comment from the driver. I tend to agree with others that there was probably more going on than we know, if only because this method of assault seems way too extreme for "having a bad day". But to those claiming that he "makes all cyclists look bad" I say, "Grow up, and don't be so ridiculous!"
>People's inability to understand this reminds me of these videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yqJni5nl9w
my god, did anybody else spend many, many hours watching these videos? If you think the nutcase with the mountain bike is a bit zero tolerance, you really should check out that lot from Russia. It It seems they're an "anti-rudeness" group, who take a prettty no-nonsense approach to tackling pavement parking.
Basically, they gather on pavements that drivers illegally drive on, stand in their way, and politely ask them to go back onto the road and park legally, with hilarious results. Their main weapon seems to be a dry cynicism, but they also have these giant windscreen stickers that look really hard to scrape off, and occasionally pepper spray when it gets really tasty. Sometimes just the sight of the sticker sends the driver fleeing, but otherwise it's fairly thin arguments about traffic law, threatening mafia violence and giant, Asterix-style punch ups. It looks like a few of the activists have done their military service, some top-drawer self defence skills on display
I'm sure I'll get tired of them eventually, but it's certainly a different approach.
but that bloke in Manchester was a dick though. Needs to get himself some philsophical arguments and a sticker that is really, really hard to peel off ...
So elderly driver affronts cyclist and deserves to be assaulted? I don't think so, any more than cyclist affronts driver and deserves to be driven at..
oh, you mean the lanyard - implies he's probably paid minimum wage!
Yes. Yes I did spend longer than necessary watching them with a kind of righteous glee. They certainly seem to know how to protest effectively - they're calm, polite and non-violent until they have to defend themselves (which they do effectively and non-aggressively). I don't understand why the woman protesting about her sick child spent so long arguing with them - it was obvious they weren't going to back down (nor should they).
I'd like to classify the Manchester bloke as a dick, but I'd rather hear the dashcam footage first before judging him as I've been in similar situations myself (though I'm sure some car drivers would consider me to be a dick).
Oh so at first it was an apparently rabid cyclist smashing a 50 year old's windscreen. Now it's a rabid cyclist assaulting the elderly.
Post-truth age and all that.
Their (as riotgibbon points out) hours of videos show how freaking entitled, selfish and anti-social/criminal some car drivers are. I don't think it's hyperbole to describe their behaviour as a bit insane. In that particular video the woman is lying through her teeth about the sick child.
Watching the special pleading / excuses is interesting. Makes me wonder what it's like being a policeman with people always trying to bullshit their way out of obvious wrongdoing.
doing a bit more reading, I've seen suggestions that they're a part of Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth group, and that they have the personal blessing of Putin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StopHam_(organization)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/we-talked-to-the-guy-behind-stopxam-206
you never really know what's going on in Russia, who is behind what, which I think is the idea ...
Interesting. Hadn't read those. In some of the videos people keep on saying "your organization is banned" and they respond "not any more". So at some stage I guess they were considered a problem. The link to Nashi seems a bit slim.. just that the founders of StopXam were also members of Nashi. And as I didn't know anything about Nashi I found the wikipedia article about them interesting: anyone criticized by the nuts of the National Bolshevik organization must be doing something right
In any event, I like what they're doing. Imagine if we could get all the Young Tories out working as volunteer PCSOs to get cars out of bike lanes!
The driver was fifty - in what world is that "elderly"?? The passenger was elderly (I think eighty counts...).
I'm also pretty sure nobody has said the driver "deserved" it. Most people agree that the cyclist was a twunt, but that there may have been something happening before the clip - or spoken - which lit the blue touch paper, so to speak.
(An aside, and totally OT, but did you see last week about a genuinely elderly driver who killed a child because he didn't want to wear his glasses and literally didn't see the traffic lights or the child and her mum crossing...? Roll on annual re-tests beyond a certain age, I say).
According to MEN:
Driver 50
Mother of driver in hospital not in car 69
Passenger (husband) 44
Not sure why ages are relevant at all in most news reports but none of those involved in the incident are elderly.
Heh! I completely misread that article. I'd thought that Mum was in the car with Mrs "there wasn't a cycle lane but even if there was I wasn't in it", not the husband. Sorry about that (Shakes head, reaches for the coffee).
Elderly? What's that got to do with anything or are you implying that the driver was incompetent due to age?
Assaulted? It looked to me as though the cyclist very deliberately targeted the windshield and used just enough force for it to crack. It wasn't a wild swing that luckily only damaged the windshield. It was an assault on property (if that's even a thing).
When cyclists are driven at, the cyclist is generally in fear of their safety as you can't really target a bike without hurting the cyclist, especially when using a tonne of metal.
In an ideal world, nobody's property should be damaged, but out on the lawless streets, tempers can flare.
I once accidentally clipped a wing mirror (40 yards) with a d-lock after the motorist collided with me for a third time. Felt good that did!
I hope you got it back (or do d-locks return, like boomerangs?)
If they turn the sound back on and the lune had offered to smash the windscreen and the passenger shouted "come on then" or similar, then maybe the lune can claim he was invited to do so and therefore innocent of any crime.
Does anyone know if the Manchester Evening News is a reputable newspaper? Is there any chance this is a hoax?
First of all I do not condone the cyclists overreaction in any way shape or form, and he is the kind of person that gives all cyclists a bad name. The person requires to be prosecuted to the best ability of the law and they have a crystal clear image of his face and DNA to deal with the prosecution. That kind of action just feeds the "All cyclists should have Number Plates" band of anti-cyclists.
But just compare and contrast with this incident http://road.cc/content/news/219417-police-seek-cheltenham-races-reveller...
The police are simply seeking witnesses and that's it. Yet the cheltenham incident seems to be a far worse incident due to the fact that the cyclist has a broken pelvis, yet the police are only seeking witnesses.
Down to the "look at that cyclist thug" mentality for this one and the "it's only a cyclist" mentality in the second case?
As far as seeing the cycle lane... there is one and the driver has positioned their car firmly in it. As is fairly commonplace in the cycle lanes in the run up to the ASL at traffic lights there is a lane in the run up to this on the left hand side.
In the image I have attached (from the full version of the video on the MEN website) you can see the VW polo sitting beside the bike lane with the cyclist next to the VW polo. But the camera car is quite clearly sitting a good 2 or 3 feet further to the left than the VW polo, ergo blocking the lane approaching the traffic lights.
And out of question.... why the sob story about her mother being ill? If anything it does nothing to garner sympathy from me, but quite the opposite.... it makes me question her ability to drive in a safe and competent manner due to being preoccupied with her mothers condition.
bikelane.png
Does one drunk bloke starting a fight give all people who like a beer a bad name? No.
If one bus driver is found guilty of assaulting another road user it doesn't mean everyone with a driving license is tarred.
So why is the action of one aggressive person - who happens to be on a bike - give anyone but himself a bad name?
Also, that's not a cycle lane, just some faded white paint that everyone ignores.
I say that because if you read any non-cycling website based interpretation the vast majority of people in the comments will make a sweeping generalisation about cyclists.
And it is cycle lane which has force of law... under the RTA s.36
ah, the lowest common denominator argument - it's people like you that are responsible for saturday night television schedules
the (quite accurate) perception of some people being idiots is really not a good reason to base any sort of decision on
Eh? I think I can understand the words, but can't bend my head round this reasoning.
You're justifying the 'giving us all a bad name' nonsense because a bunch of Mail loonies would agree with you???
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts can.
my great aunt used to drive like that - never made a right turn in her life!
There's a good Mythbusters episode where they try to figure out if you can economize on fuel and/or time by only taking right turns: http://www.gpsreview.net/right-turn-efficiency/
Looks like the car was in the cycle lane but there's nothing in that video that comes anywhere near excusing that behaviour.
wow, the Mr Angry role didn't take long to fill
What stinks is all those jumping to the defence of the alleged perpetrator of a violent act simply because he happens to be riding a bicycle or at least using one as a weapon to inflict criminal damage to property.
Maybe his rage was justifiable (in his head) but seems to me he was neither cornered or acting in self defence.
If you seek to condone, explain or exonerate this action based on the evidence you have available from the scant detail in this news story and associated selectively edited video, then you are no better than the supporters of drivers who deliberately run cyclists off the road or otherwise seek to intimidate vulnerable road users based on the assumption that they must have done something to deserve such retaliation.
If you witnessed this incident or know the person involved then I would encourage you to report those details to to the Police.
Nope, damaging someone's windscreen is entirely different to trying to injure/kill someone with a 1500kg lethal implement!
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