Cycling UK Forum

Ivor Tingting wrote:Sorry to read of the assault on you and the obvious shock as you would not have been expecting it. I wouldn't bother reporting it to the police they will do bugger all. As soon as you walk out the door of the police station they will bin it. If you're even more unlucky they will even treat you as a criminal or that you are wasting their time. So it would be a total waste of time. Unfortunately you'll just have to put it down to experience I feel. I would advise looking behind you more frequently when you hear a car approaching so you can eyeball approaching cars and their occupants. If you are quick enough next time whack the offender's arm with the knuckles of your clenched fist. It will break the perpetrators arm
Carry a camera if you are able and always a phone.

If you don't report it the police will never do anything about it.

It's definitely worth reporting it to the police. It costs you nothing to report it and you can potentially get some benefit - or at worst, no difference. So it's worth reporting what information you've got.

It may be that this attack formed part of a series of similar incidents that have been reported to the police. If they are already investigating, then your report can be useful to them. If nothing else, it gets included in the police's own stats which helps them determine where to focus their future campaigns and the like.

I reported the most recent incident of someone leaning from a car window and screaming at me, because I'm sick of it happening. There's been a rash of such incidents recently. Luckily I did have the reg no of the car. The police officer got the driver's address from that, and went round to speak to him to make it clear that such behaviour was not acceptable. It turned out the driver was a young man borrowing his mum's car. She was furious with him and he was quite chastened, so I understand. I was very happy with the police's response.

Admittedly I live in North Yorkshire where there is a low crime rate. So it may be that my local police have more time for dealing with this small scale stuff.

But we all pay a lot to have a police service, so make use of it.

i was riding home on wednesday after a great days ride round Dentdale in the sun. Four miles from home some ********* decided to use me for target practice and threw something from their car which hit my lower back. I've just recovered from several months of back problems and this hit the spot and set it off again. I rang the local police , gave them the number and waited. eventually they came round and told me that they'd spoken to the driver and the car reg had been logged in case of further incidents, and that was it, haven't been able to get on the bike since as it's too painful. so nothing much gets done really.
Four days before that, at the end of our sections 100 mile ride some moron came past us trying to hit us by opening the car door on us as they passed, this has been reported by the organiser, but it's anyones guess if anything will happen.
Are people really so thick that they think this sort of behaviour is acceptable?

piedwagtail91

The bullying and harrassment of cyclists by drivers is one of my hobby horses and I've sounded off about it so much on here before I decided to bite my tongue on this thread until I saw your post. This sort of thing is often difficult to deal with because of lack of info about car reg etc. I don't know how much info you passed to the police when you reported this or what else you said but from where I am sitting the service you have received is appalling, not least because it seems to have been finalised before you were properly interviewed.

You wrote: Are people really so thick that they think this sort of behaviour is acceptable?

To me, it's not acceptable behaviour by the police.

Incidentally, if you have suffered personal injury, and it sounds as though you have, you are just as entitled to seek compensation as if you had been knocked off your bike through careless driving. I suggest you should be hot-foot to a personal injury solicitor who advertises a 'no-win, no-fee' service. Even if your assailant persuaded the police that you were accidentally injured by something being carelessly jetisoned from the car, rather than being deliberately assaulted, that is no defence to a civil claim.

Some 8 or so years ago when out on our tandem,my wife was slapped on the back (sufficiently hard to leave a hand print).We did report this to the police within about an hour.
I pleased to say they did treat in seriously ,helped by the fact I noted the car number plate.
The traced the car to a travellers camp of course nobody knew who was driving the car ,hence they could not take it further ,they did promise to give that car a hard time when seen again.
We know all of the later information as the police officer that followed up our initial report called to our house a couple of days later to update us.
So do report such incidents as ,complaints are not always ignored

This sort of thing is not easy to deal with, even if the reg details are known. The police have a power to require the registered keeper of a vehicle to say who was driving it in certain circumstances but unless there has been a recent change in the law, that only extends to certain driving offences. Even if the driver is known with certainty, they cannot easily be compelled to provide details of their passengers. If the driver is a suspect, the interview must begin with the warning that they need not say anything. The target of this conduct is unlikely to get a good enough view of their assailant to be able to identify them properly. In spite of all that, there are two possible approaches when something like this is being investigated.

1 = trying to detect the offence
2 = doing virtually nothing, other than a bit of light fobbing-off. (Anticipating the problems and pitfalls can lead to this approach.)

Also, none of this applies to civil cases, and a solicitor can get a copy of the police info for a fee, as a basis for a claim.

.

in my case i got the reg. but it was my word against theirs. in the other case we got the reg. and we had 6 witnesses/riders. the organiser has written to the chief constable so it could be a bit slow at getting going.

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piedwagtail

Independent witnesses are a big help with a prosecution and without them a case may fail. On the other hand, unless I've missed something, when the suspect was interviewed nobody knew what your word was because you had not been interviewed. I take it from what you have said that the missile has caused some sort of injury on the site of an earlier serious injury.

As I understand it, your evidence is that you were riding along minding your own business when somebody in a passing car threw something at you. You used the expression 'target practice' so I presume there was something about it that made it appear deliberate. Any extra detail not included in your post could well be important.

Against that the suspect has a right to say nothing, which might make them impossible to identify, but 'your word against theirs' implies to me that they denied your account. So, did they say they were somewhere else entirely? Agree they were in the area but do not accept that the incident happened? Accept that soemthing was thrown but claim it was accidental? Perhaps they allege you only got what you deserved for some reason. If you were not told an outline of what was said, it may just be that any investigation was superficial or even fictional. Depending on the circumstances, it's always open to the police to say that a minor incident does not merit further enquiry and I think that has to be accepted, but that's not what you've been told.

In the end, it's always going to be difficult proving a case like this to the criminal standard - beyond reasonable doubt - but it will be quite impossible if no proper investigation takes place. One thing is for sure, it is not the court's job to count witnesses but to decide the case on the evidence.

Going back to the possibility of a civil action if you have sustained personal injury, the civil standard of proof is on the balance of probability - the court must decide one way or the other and the other party's right to silence there only extends as far as not defending the action and so giving you an open goal.

i used "target practice" because there was only me and the car on the fairly wiide road at the time, we were passing under a dual carriageway bridge so nothing could have fallen from above. They passed at only a slightly higher speed than me,which would be low twenties, in what i think is a forty zone. i think the chances of it not being deliberate are quite low.
but by the time you've taken into account that it was an injury i'd only recently recovered from, that i'm on incapacity benefit, so i'd have to get past the "thieving parasite" tag and also the"loony" tag coz i've got depression, then the chances of any success make taking it any further seem pretty pointless.
probably the best thing we can do is report as many incidents as possible with a hope that the cars will be confiscated and crushed.i beleive this has already happened in the garstang area.

This is what cameras are for.

There really is a market for a bike camera specifically for recording incidents. It would constantly record and when an incident occurs you push a button and it stores the last 10-20 seconds of footage and date stamps the footage.

Alternately a pocket of ball bearings to lob, box of 50 11mm ball bearings for about £3 on ebay.

piedwagtail

The legal system can be pretty intimidating and people have all sorts of good reasons for not wanting to get involved. I suppose bullies and the baddies generally rely on that.

On the other hand, the police get a lot of criticism on here for being unwilling to act over complaints, unhelpful and generally bone idle. Without evidence things go nowhere. I can't see cars being crushed on the basis of unsubstantiated reports.

Well if the "assault" was just a slap and there's no lasting damage then it would be hard to see why the Police would want to get involved?

If they slap you and you fall off and injure yourself then that's different.

Mrs Tortoise wrote:Yesterday, while cycling up the South Dorset Ridgeway (A354) from Weymouth to Dorchester, I felt a bump on my right butock a car very near beeped twice and shot off up the hill before I could register the make or number. It took me a moment to realise I'd been happy slapped, though I was anything but happy about it. Thankfully, I wasn't hurt nor did I fall off, but continued my riding.

I had given no provocation for the assault, which this is, and can't in my wildest imaginings conceive why it happened, in other words I don't understand what they get from it.

So be warned this disease appears to have spread to south Dorset.

if this had happened at work or in the street it would have been an indecent asault, why should a bike/car situation make any difference?
in the cases i've logged on here, my own when i was alone probably wouldn't get anywhere for the reasons i've given above, but the other,when there were 6 of us and the owner of a cafe/craft centre we were passing at the time looks like it could get taken a lot further, i know the event organiser will push it as far as he can. he harrassed the police for over 12 months regarding a car passing us a litle to closely, so i expect he'll make sure the police do something in this case.