UKH

At last a driver jailed for an attack on a cyclist 

Driver faces jail for road rage assault of teenage cyclist in Bury

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/04/driver-faces-jail-for-road-...

What a nasty bstd.

Don't count your chickens.... he wouldn't have been bailed if it was certain he was getting porridge

That wouldn't be unprecedented, considering the utterly risible sentences regularly handed out to those who kill cyclists.

A Jeep Cherokee. Isn't it amazing how so many people express their personality via their choice of vehicle?

Carried to the logical conclusion, according to your argument, the git would have also scalped the lad, having run him over and punched him in the face? 

... Don't drag the Native Americans into this, anyhow; the bloke is cleatly an utter c*nt, and deserves a hefty custodial sentence. Fingers crossed. 

I think we all do in one way or another!

I fear you may have missed my point by some distance. I also strongly suspect that UK drivers opting to own a Jeep Cherokee would fancy themselves as having rather more in common with Wild West cowboys than with any Native Americans from the same era.

I fear you may have missed me being daft, by some distance, Kemosabe...

... And I bet that you drive a 2CV? Admit it.

Oops.

This incident reminds me a little of something that happened to me:

In a retail park I merged with some slow moving vehicles (10 mph) and the guy behind me, in a 4x4, decided that I'd 'pushed in' and presumably was going hold him up (speed limit in car park 10 mph) he started revving engine aggressively and tying to overtake me, even though the road was too narrow (with traffic on the other side) and I was only a couple yards of the back of the car in front of me.  This continued for a short way and I turned right to get to the shop I wanted. He followed me and started hurling abuse at me. I thought he was going to get out for a confrontation but he must have thought better of it.

"used his 4x4 Jeep Cherokee to knock the 17-year old victim off his mountain bike"

Amazing how using a big, motorised weapon to assault someone is not considered as bad as assaulting someone with a bat.

I imagine it depends how hard you hit them. One could simply tap someone with a car while killing someone with a single blow from a bat.

Pretty sure you could just tap or menace someone with a bat. Very hard to control 'tapping' someone with a 4x4.

I think there's another angle here: namely being in a jeep turns an otherwise normal middle aged man into the impregnable alpha male, and also appears to move said alpha's cock from his crotch to his forehead. Nobody notices of course, so he gets angry, and lashes out with the biggest tool at his disposal.

Of course.

I'd have thought it would be quite easy to tap a cyclist in a queue.

All I'm saying is that the crime should not be judged by the weapon but by the injury or intent to injure.

Well, the eye witness said, 'she saw him “driving extremely close and beeping aggressively” behind the boy. “The cyclist was clearly trying to get away from the situation, but the vehicle accelerated after him and the impression I got was the car was chasing after the cyclist, drove at him and hit him,”'.  He did then get out of his car and punch him in the face so I would say there is some "intent to injure" in there........

You don't have to pull a trigger very hard to shoot someone either.

I agree with Robert.  With any weapon there are different levels of severity with which they can be used and there is merit in having the charge and the sentencing reflect that severity.  

Deliberately nudging someone off a bike is not the same as deliberately driving into someone at 70 mph.  The former clearly isn’t attempted murder and the later clearly is.

However, whilst nudging someone is a lesser offence against the person, I think it should still be sufficient grounds to loose the privilege of using a motor vehicle in public.  If I had a legally held firearm and one day I went round nocking cyclists off their bicycle with it and then further threatening and beating them, I would not be allowed to keep my firearm.   Heck, even if I didn’t have the weapon with me and used an umbrella to beat the cyclists I’d expect to loose weapon privileges.  It makes you wonder if “being a violent asshole” should be reason enough to loose vehicle privileges to...

Agree but not whereby the inability to easily control the effect of the weapon is seen as mitigation. I'd suggest the opposite.

Yes, but trying to shoot someone in the leg isn't the same as trying to shoot someone in the face. You could still easily accidentally knick an artery just as someone could easily accidentally fall under your wheels. I'd argue that "nudging", i.e. hitting, someone with your car is a lot more reckless than hitting someone in the leg with a bat, because the chance of severe, unintended consequences is so much higher.

It astounds me how much the right to drive is ingrained in our system. The guy who wiped out the cyclist in London whilst on the wrong side of the road and then sped off got a custodial sentence but only was only banned from driving for less than three years. What the f*ck do you have to do to lose that right permanently?

You overlook the fact that shitface then got out of his vehicle and gave the guy a doing. Obviously just a turd in a bad mood for some reason. If he hadn't tried to hurt a cyclist he'd probably have punched someone's lights out for standing in front of them at the bar or checkout queue.

Daft comment. The bullet may well still kill. I could nudge someone with the bumper of my car and they might barely notice. 

Whilst they were cycling in the road ahead of you? Wow, are you The Stig or something?

No, while they were stationary. I doubt I'd have the skill to risk it at speed.

Right, which is what happened in this incident. And so, back to Shani's original point "Amazing how using a big, motorised weapon to assault someone is not considered as bad as assaulting someone with a bat.", I think we can assume Shani meant for an equivalent level of force/endangerment. My argument is that using a car should be considered worse, if anything, due to the level of risk of unintended consequences over that of swinging a bat.

Yes but that's bollocks.

Most of the time a cyclist is injured by a motor vehicle it is the result of a mistake and people are dealt with accordingly but in the eyes of some they are not dealt with severely enough.

When a someone is assaulted with a weapon, whether it be a car or a baseball bat the matter is dealt with as a case of assault.

If you can show me two cases of assault with different weapons but with the same severity resulted in significantly different punishment I'd certainly be interested in reading up on the details.

People are nitwits in cars. I watched a car push a pedestrian out of the way with his bonnet in York this weekend. BMW if it matters.

Do you have kids? Let's set up a scenario where they ride a bike and you use a Jeep Renegade to 'simply tap' them. 

Better still, let's get some random person to do it  You can watch - we'll have you wired up to a heart rate monitor. Just a 'tap' with a car you say. Your kid on a bike. Sure, no problem to you.

Not sure how you prevent them getting hold of umbrellas though!

I have to agree. Given that the kid was trying to escape the situation and therefore could have been doing 20 mph. Any attempt to push someone off their bike could result in serious injury or even death. More importantly the culprit would have little or no control over the outcome.

bearly notice? really?
Don't you think trying to "nudge" someone with 2 tonnes of steel is a little bit daft?

I guess if you worked with heavy plant and machinery on a regular basis you wouldn't have such a cavalier attetude.

when you're at the controls a machine it doesn't give tactile feedback, you have no idea how much foce you are exerting on things - it's really not a clever idea to risk someone else's life like that.

Yes, it should be. It shows a clear mental and temperamental competence to use a vehicle safely.

How about this one for a start - 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/16/oxford-university-lavinia-w...

And any other stabbing incident.

Rainy days in a student town long ago convinced me that umbrella ownership should be subject to a strictly enforced test of situational awareness...

I can't work out if you think this is a legitimate argument or if you're just here to troll. I suspect (and hope) the latter.

Either way, nudging (or trying to nudge) someone on a bike whilst in a car can only be interpreted, at best, as dangerous driving, and at worst, assault with a (it must be said) very dangerous weapon with intent to severely harm or kill. There is a reason people have to be licensed to use a car and this demonstrates why.

As MonkeyPuzzle and DubyaJamesDubya have pointed out, it's not necessarily the nudging that causes the damage, it's the running someone over because they fell off their bike. It seems that the driver in this instance was very lucky that he didn't kill the cyclist - evidenced by the clipping of the shin. What if it was the cyclists head? Would "just a tap" with the jeep have been acceptable then? Maybe a removal of licence or quick stint in prison would bring this fact into focus for him.

I guess the real question to you is: how do you feel when someone is tailgating you? Then imagine you're not sat inside a large metal safety cage.

You'll have to explain the relevance of this story to my question. I was looking for two similar cases of assault but with different weapons where one case was dealt with more leniently because of the nature of the weapon. What your case shows that mitigating circumstances can affect sentencing. No one is suggesting that there are mitigating circumstances in this case so I fail to see the relevance.

You can do what you fancy, if you are rich, pretty, young, white and intelligent - within reason. 

Weapon is not really that important. 

That's true. Behold the old good rapist versus bad rapist defence:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/nyregion/judge-james-troiano-rape.html

Oh FFS. All I'm saying is that the punishment should fit the crime: actual injury caused, injury intended, possibility of injury which might have been caused inadvertently over and above that intended. And that car drivers should not be demonised any more than anyone else (contrary to what sometimes seems to be the case amongst UKC cyclists).

And yes, I do think the driver in the incident discussed in this thread deserves severe punishment.

Yes, I'm puzzled why some folk seem to have difficulty in grasping such a simple concept.

I think all driving instruction and driving law makes it clear that you really should try to avoid getting anywhere near other road users; the requirement to maintain a safe distance is made pretty clear, for good reasons.

So if someone thinks it's okay to be 'nudging' anyone, be they pedestrian, cyclist or other car, whilst driving, then the punishment really should fit the crime; removal of their licence to drive, as an absolute minimum. If, with re-training, they can demonstrate that they understand, and can be trusted to comply with the law, then maybe they should be allowed to have their licence back. But if they demonstrate that they are mentally or temperamentally incapable of restraining themselves from violating the safe distance, or from 'nudging' people, then they probably should not be allowed to hold a driving licence.

This quote in the Guardian piece from the defendant has some resonance for me: “I have no problem with cyclists – there should be more cyclists on the road. I used to be a cyclist." I was involved an incident with a similarly deranged and enraged driver who told me mid-rant that he also was a cyclist moments after almost killing me with a tractor after being on my wheel at 25mph stamping on and off the throttle.

PS Just as an aside, I have a Jeep Cherokee (although it is getting replaced with something slightly less damaging to the planet) and I really do try not to drive like an utter c*nt so it's best not to generalise regarding vehicle types. Boris Johnson apparently sometimes rides a bike, I'm not sure that makes him a saint either.

I think it is. We could nudge each other with a bat in a LOT more control than we could with a car. The action is clearly more reckless in one case than another. 

The reason we have speed limits is because vehicular traffic is more menacing and carries more risk (due to a capacity to cause greater damage), thus we've put constraints on its fundamental function. There's no such constraint on the fundamental function of a bat.

I see US police are using the 'tap' technique!

https://twitter.com/Garvey_Rich/status/1147293981694418944?s=09

Correction: you saw a driver use his car to push a pedestrian out of the way.  The car did not choose to commit the criminal offence you witnessed. (A cycling forum I read has a whole thread dedicated to reports of similar sentient behaviour by motor vehicles. Typically found in local newspapers but all too common elsewhere as well.)

Bet you the driver wouldn't have dared touch the other party with their bare hands. As you say, too many people are too prone to turning in to entitled selfish tw@ts when they get behind the wheel.

That’s just a shorthand we use to define quickly the hazard but it does show how the human brain dehumanises these things and it works both ways. 

A couple of weeks ago I drove into a col de sac where someone was getting their kids into their car “Hurry up, that car is trying to get through.”  was the shout and the guy looked straight at me and made eye contact. The more correct version should have been “Watch out, there is a man who is driving a car who wants to come through.” Although I was stopped and didn’t actually want or try to get past them. However, the second sentence doesn’t convey any urgency. It’s quite an interesting area of psychology to study, and extends to all sorts of situations where we have been conditioned over time.

So while you are right in the short term, the long term view is all vehicles are controlled by people but people dehumanise the situation in order to deal with hazards much more quickly.

You’ll not get round that element.