A few weeks ago I was cycling from Dover to London with 6 other riders. We were coming through a Southeast London suburb when a car tried to overtake whist we were going past a traffic island which significantly narrowed the road. We remonstrated with the driver, shouting etc.
The car stopped and the driver and passenger got out and started using very threatening language and their body language was highly aggressive.
I was slightly ahead of the “gentlemen” concerned, standing astride my bike, looking over my right shoulder at what was making all the noise. I said nothing. They saw me reading the number plate and said “we see you have our number, now we’re effing gonna run you over you ****ing etc…”.
So they got back in the car and drove off with wheels spinning and clipped my right hand with a wing mirror. Being on a spring, it made a loud noise, and they stopped again, but this time the driver came over and punched me to the ground. I thought they would start kicking me, as I lay tangled in bike on the pavement, but the bystanders (people waiting outside a restaurant) told them to “go away”.
I was shaken but not hurt. The event was witnessed by my fellow riders, a bus driver and the bystanders. It was also captured on video from a helmet cam. The police were called and eventually came.
You’d think that it would be easy to locate and prosecute. It turns out that the registered keeper of the car was not using the car that day (he/she was not on the video) and apparently whilst the keeper went to a funeral the car was left unlocked with the keys in the ignition.
Upshot is that someone else, obviously being protected, was the driver and assaulter that day. Unless the police can get the keeper to talk, the assaulter goes scott free!
What a world!!! be interesting to know what “shouting etc” entailed but still a violent assault by driver.