Car occupant grabs, threatens cyclist, caught on camera + Video

Just as it did in the recent case of the road-rage afflicted motorist who punched cyclist Simon Page and was prosecuted after the video footage went viral, the You Tube hit-count is rising fast for the clip of an as-yet-unnamed thug captured on a rider’s helmet camera.

If anything, despite the lack of a full physical assault, this case is even more shocking as it provides a victim’s point-of-view of an assailant with an apparently hair-trigger propensity towards violence.

Following a minor verbal altercation, the would-be attacker exits a vehicle, approaches and grabs hold of the rider, draws back a clenched fist and threatens him while screaming abuse in the semi-hysterical tones you might expect to hear from a substance-abusing psychopath.

There is plenty of context to the incident, which happened just before 8pm on July 27 in Waterloo Road, Romford, as the rider gives a clear written explanation – borne out by the footage – of his progress through a roundabout.

He negotiates the junction in apparently textbook fashion, although somehow not textbook enough for the occupants of a silver-coloured Ford Fiesta who make known their displeasure in abusive terms.

The rider, going by the moniker Kmcyc, explains in the text accompanying the You Tube video: “I make a comment about there being enough room on the road for both of us and this appears to enrage the passenger, who climbs half out of the car to hurl more abuse at me.”

He continues: “The second set of lights are red and so the car stops. The passenger jumps out and still hurling abuse, approaches me with what seemed a clear intention to punch me in the face. Still unsure of what I could have done to upset him, I apologise to my assailant, who backs down and walks off to find where his lift has gone off to, still hurling abusive comments as I ride away.”

After he gets out of the car, the snaggle-toothed assailant is seen strutting up the road like Dick van Dyke about to break into the Mary Poppins penguin dance before, in an equally improbable Cockney accent, he threatens to “drop” the rider “like a f***ing bitch.”

The full identity of the helmet camera-equipped cyclist is also not known at this point but according to his You Tube profile he is an experienced London cyclist aged 40.

As for the Fiesta passenger: about 30, medium height and build, lower front teeth like a row of vandalised tombstones, questionable taste in headgear, probable misogynist given “bitch-dropping” propensities, sometimes a passenger in a Fiesta with partial registration EK57, might be a chimney sweep.

Over to you tweeters, bloggers, off-duty coppers and orthodontists.