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news
Dave Brennan (centre) at 2015 Pedal on Parliament (licensed by DarkerSide on Flickr under CC-BY-2.0)Helmetcam cyclist's neighbours are sent threatening letters
A helmet cam cycle campaigner has become the victim of a hate campaign, with an angry party threatening to poison neighbourhood pets in revenge for his videos of poor driving.
David Brennan, a keen cyclist and Pedal on Parliament founder, who was knocked down last week as he rode, regularly posts footage to the internet of dangerous driving and motorists on their phones.
He uses Twitter and YouTube to shame the poor behaviour.
But one individual or group has threated his neighbours in an anonymous letter, saying they will become the targets of "random acts of malicious encounters" unless they shun him.
David told the Daily Record: "I have been wearing a helmet camera since 2007 as I didn't feel safe on the roads.
"Over time I've had to report some dangerous drivers but far from 'chasing drivers' all I am doing is trying to get to work.
"Being threatened is not going to change what I do. Debate is good and people disagreeing with me is fine.
"People threatening me and my neighbours is taking it too far."
Police are investigating the offence after being alerted by a neighbour.
David added: "I'm trying to encourage the government to invest in better infrastructure and to design safe cycle ways for families and children so that cycling becomes an alternative option for people.
"Roads just aren't safe at the moment."
He added: "Drivers forget that we all have to share the roads. They see a cycle way going in and they think that the balance is being unfairly weighted but the reality is that it has been so easy to drive for so long they don't see how skewed the balance really is."
Back in 2015 we reported how Mr Brennan had drawing pins sprinkled on his driveway in what he believes was a deliberate act, and one he describes as “pretty sinister”.
Brennan, who posts videos to YouTube under the user name Magnatom, discovered the drawing pins after he punctured when leaving home to ride to work.
Police officers visited him at his home in Glasgow to discuss the incident but have said there is little they can do other than record the incident and increase patrols in the area.
Brennan told road.cc: “I set off for work as normal. I jump on my bike on my path, and cross the main path (legal thing to do from your own home I might add!) to start cycling on the road.
“I quickly notice a clicking noise. It sounded like something stuck in the front tyre. I stop and have a look, and there is nothing there. I have a look at the rear tyre and I see a drawing pin.
“Reluctantly I pull it out and I hear the hiss of air. I cycle gingerly back to the house. I go back as I can use the track pump to re-inflate. Back on the path I start looking at the tyre.
“It's then I notice a second pin in the tyre. A few seconds later I realise that at the end of my path (only comes from my house) is a pile of carefully placed drawing pins. Nowhere else, just at the end of my path.”
He continued: “Effectively I've been deliberately targeted. Yes, I can repair the tyre fairly quickly, and drawing pins on the ground are something that happens from time to time, but not right at the end of your path.
“In fact I seriously think this was in relation to what I do either through the helmet camming or campaigning.”
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18 comments
'I'm gonna make your lives miserable because you happen to live near someone who reports me, and I want to keep driving dangerously while using my phone'
Yeah, course.
I suppose if you want to make sure crimes like this and any others against cyclists are regarded as hate crimes when the census comes round in 2021 under relegion put cyclist. That's why "jedi knight" is now a relegion because so many people put that in last time (2011 or 1991)
London Police say 'any other actual or perceived difference' can cause 'Hate Crime'!
https://twitter.com/CityPolice/status/786163505644855297
There are even signs of action against sexism!
what's hate crime.jpg
Cowards and scumbags for threatening this. I would point out though that we wouldn't need costly and possibly impractical infrastructure if PEOPLE DROVE PROPERLY. It's not hard and it doesn't take any effort. If the police and judicial system treated car crime properly too...
Strange that today Nigel Farage was claiming he feared for his life from Liberals. But I have noticed that it is not the majority that actually gets attacked. When the rhetoric starts it is the minorities who are attacked. Jews and blacks and gay and women. Now we are all post modern and have cyclists as an out-group, but someone is putting out tacks and barbed wire, someone is now threatening to poison pets of innocent neighbours. Crimes are being commited against cyclists.
Do we hear cyclists saying they will slack a tire for every close pass? No. Even if you don't call this a hate-crime, it is malicious and a breach of the peace. Lets hope they find this twerp soon before he froths over.
Was it Bonhoeffer who said something like "They came for the gays but I wasn't gay so I said nothing; they came for the Jews but I wasn't Jewish so I said nothing; they came for the intellectuals but I wasn't an intellectual so I said nothing; and when they finally came for me there was nobody left to speak for me..."
But cycling IS my religon!
Just wondering how they identified him and where he lives?
Im a bit worried about the mindset of someone who tracks an individual down and starts scattering pins outside their house and threatening them and their neighbours. I get enough abuse from people that don't dare leave their car, but to get tracked down is insane.
I think I will leave the youtubing to others! Seems more trouble than it's worth.
Hate crime is up since the vote, so it's no surprise that the un-recorded-technically-not-quite hate crime is on the up as well.
Some people evidently cannot wait for the period of tyranny of the majority, that we seem to be heading into, to come to pass. So they're resorting to intimidation of their opponent's neighbours in an attempt to speed it up. And there may indeed be slightly more drivers who sincerely believe "sharing the road" means faster vehicles should never being impeded, than cyclists who believe it means respect for the safety of others. Probably neither group is as big as the number of people who express no strong opinion but, as we are finding out, gather enough nutjobs together and you can scream "Democracy!" at the other side as you take away their rights.
So is this a consequence of Mr Brennan's support of Bearsway and PoP or his use of helmet cameras? Either way, horrible and rather scary. Maybe not directly comparable to the civil rights protests, etc, but nevertheless a threat that I would expect/hope the police to come down on like a tonne of bricks.
If this had been a transexual campaigner, feminist activist or LGBT militant then I'm sure the police would be talking in terms of hate crime. But why can someone not be considered a victim of hate crime if targeted for the mode of transport he uses?
Because those things are inherent characteristics of the person being victimised, choosing a mode of transport is not the same.
I'm in no way downplaying the prejudice we face and I don't find it at all acceptable but I don't think there is equivalence with civil rights struggles.
Doesn't religion get covered under "hate crimes" though? That's not an inherant characteristic in the say way someones gender or sexuality is.
Wikipedia defines hate crime as such:
A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime, which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her membership (or perceived membership) in a certain social group.
Which I suspect would cover this, but I guess you'd need to directly prove David is being targetting due to him being a cyclist (pretty clear IMHO)
That's an interesting point but the legal defenition of a hate crime doesn't extend beyond race, disability, religion, gender, sexuality or age.
I agree that the prejudice displayed towards us does have some of the attributes of hate crimes but I don't believe it should be classified as such.
As if the classification actually matters. How do you suggest it should be be dealt with? As if it were a hate crime, perhaps?
How about with the applicable laws that cover harrassment and intimidation? This is pretty much my point.
That's a guidance document, but its not neccessarily definitive. And I wouldn't say its neccessarily the case that the categories it lists are exclusive. For example Leicestershire Police recently began to treat attacks on goths as a hate crime, but its a stretch to place being a goth under 'race, disability, religion, gender, sexuality or age':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-34919722
We might think there is a critical distinction between something you 'are' and something you 'choose to be', but I don't think such distinctions are useful; violent hatred towards a perceived other always follows the same underlying logic irrespective of the category of difference. Some categories are clearly subject to far more prevalent and extreme violence than others, but the insidious logic of hate crime is always harmful to the victim, and also ultimately to the society that accepts it.
Normalising violence or the threat of violence never ends well.