Earlier I was just badly shaken up by this (always been a bit emo) but now I can't sleep because I am seething. Going to vent here, so this may be a little long-winded. Scroll to the end if you are mildly interested but cba reading a wall of text.
My wife was cycling home this evening at about 6pm, decked out like a Christmas tree as she likes to be, and the following occurred:
She was heading along a two lane road in Edinburgh, leading to a crossroads - cars parked randomly in the left hand lane. Bus overtakes and pulls into a stop, my wife indicates, moves over and overtakes the bus. White van pulls up behind her and sits 2 inches away from her rear wheel until she pulls over in front the bus, he guns it passed her, cutting her up, to pull up to the red traffic lights 10m further on.
She cycles up the the left of van, stops next to the passenger door and does the universal hands-palms-up-shrug of what was the point in that then. 25 year old driver starts going mental, swearily shouting and starts rolling down the window on his side of the van.
Thinking he might actually want to talk about what just happened, she walks her bike round the front of the van to his side to try and have a civilized conversation with him. She starts with something along the lines of 'Why so aggressive? I am just trying to get home safely the same as you.' His profanity-full tirade steps up a notch. At this point, she puts the bike down, takes out her phone and tries to take a picture of his license plate - thinking that she is going to report him for being a dangerous, over-aggressive mentalist.
He decides to prove her right by reversing and driving at her and her bike. His bumper drives the bike into the ground but he stops short of doing her any physical harm although his bumper leaves marks on her cycling shorts where it hits her. Now in the heat of the moment, she thinks, if I move out of the way he is just going to drive straight over my bike so she stands her ground as he reverses and drives at her another two times.
Meanwhile, a nice Polish guy who was waiting to cross the road has written down the van's license plate and is banging on his window asking wtf he is up to.
WVM reverses again, swerves round the bike and drives off.
Polish guy, woman driver behind the van, another woman who was crossing the road and a guy who was having a smoke outside a pub all say they saw what happened and are willing to be witnesses.
My wife heads to the police station round the corner where there are no police to actually take her statement. So she ends up explaining it to the receptionist? clerk? who gives her an incident number and says that the police will have a talk to him. Her only other input being a non-empathic, it-must-have-been-all-your-fault 'What were you doing in front of his van?'. 'Who gives a **** some guy just drove his van at me?' would have been my response but my wife was either in shock or is just more polite than me. Just what you want to hear when you have nearly been run over 3 times by a lunatic in a van, eh?
So, my wife seems to be handling it better than I - she is asleep at least, but we shall see what happens when she has to actually get back out on the roads again. Her lovely Boardman CX has black bumper marks/scratches all along the top tube, the left shifter/brake is scratched up pretty good and the front wheel looks like it may have buckled slightly - not sure if there is more significant damage that I haven't spotted - it seems like the tough-as-f Ortlieb pannier which was on the ground may have protected the bike to a certain extent.
Now I have no idea what to do or what will happen...will the police take it seriously? Not sure what crime the guy actually committed - assault? Hit and run? Do I let them get back in touch or do I phone them up to make sure that they are actually going to do something about it? What the hell is up with people that this is how they deal with it?
Anyway, if you read all of that, well done, and I would appreciate any thoughts or advice. Let me tell you, it is a particularly unpleasant experience to get a text from your wife saying she is at the police station and that some guy in a van just tried to run her over.
tl;dr Crazy white van man repeatedly reverses and drives at my wife, stopping short of physical harm but scaring the shit out of her and scratching up her bike.
