Mondeo road rage in Kent

[w00hoo_kent]

Got a text from a friend postponing meeting up tonight as she'd come off her bike on Sunday. Asking for details it turns out she was riding with another female friend south towards Headcorn in Kent, they were two abreast (my friend was slightly back, half wheeling the other woman) on the road when a car behind just leans on its horn at them. They are happy that they aren't blocking what is a very wide road and there is little they can do so they ignore it. That driver accelerates past, the car behind is a Mondeo being driven by a guy in his 20's. He comes up alongside and starts shouting abuse at them to learn their highway code and get out of the road. My friend responded with her rights and he started to drift towards her, pushing her towards the grass verge. She grabbed the wing mirror of the car to stabilise herself at which point the driver accelerated, dragging her towards her riding buddy. She let go again to catch the bars, was unable to avoid colliding with the bicycle in front of her and was off. Grazes and bruising to right knee, hip, elbow and shoulder, cracked helmet. Scuffs to the bike. I'm not sure if she took her friend down at the same time. The older gentlemen in the car behind pulled out round the crash, shook his head at them and continued on.

She hasn't reported the incident to the police, I'd like to convince her she should (if only to have it counted as a statistic) but her argument is that she didn't get the car registration and it was a couple of days ago now.

When we chat face to face I guess I'll point out that grabbing on to the car was never a good thing to do, but despite having done a lot of riding, she can be a bit nervous on a bike. This is unlikely to make that better.

 

[Arjimlad]

Shocking behaviour. I hope she does report it. Others may have reported this loon acting in a similar fashion. You never know.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

Shocking behaviour. I hope she does report it. Others may have reported this loon acting in a similar fashion. You never know.

Yeah, my point would be that they might already be on a list, and if they aren't then starting that list wouldn't be a bad thing because they are likely to do it again. Maybe I should just search twitter to try and find them...

 

[Ganymede]

I'm sorry to hear about that - I live close to Headcorn and often cycle there. Mostly people are fine (don't we always say this) but there are a few nutters. Kent is so overcrowded and I notice that people's driving is getting worse too - everyone always seems to be in the middle of the road on the lanes, even round bends.

I think that what your friend experienced was appalling and genuinely a very bad road offence, so I would report it even without details. The more the pressure of reporting grows the better I think - police know that you wouldn't go to the trouble of reporting something that hadn't happened, and perhaps the sheer weight of anecdotage will have an effect.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

There was a witness at least, although as she was also on a bike hardly independent but I don't believe that matters. I've no idea if there's a point where it was just too long ago for them to take seriously though, I'm unlikely to have a face to face discussion with her until next week.

It was all pretty appalling when it was being relayed to me. I guess her best option would have been to just stop dead, although he might just have transferred his rage to her riding partner who was slightly in front so may not have realised quite what was going on. Equally it sounds like it all happened very quickly (once things started to escalate) so while there are clever things she could have done, it's hardly like she had time to run through her options.