2013-05-19 - Rider Down, Norwich

I'm aware that this is already in the other threads but this is a more sensible location.
Please do not use this thread to troll, Popcorn and Fail are you friends for those purposes.

Link to the article

“I knocked a cyclist off his bike. I have right of way, he doesn’t even pay road tax”

You have to be a special kind of dumb to post that kind of comment to Twitter, but, sadly, the UK driving test doesn’t examine intelligence and @EmmaWay20 is motoring around Norfolk with these sort of sick, mistaken thoughts rattling around her head. (She has since deleted her account).

Presumably she thought only her 100 or so Twitter followers would read her comment. She must have therefore been mightily surprised when she received the following message from Norwich Police:

@emmaway20 we have had tweets ref an RTC with a bike. We suggest you report it at a police station ASAP if not done already & then dm us

— Norwich Police (@NorwichPoliceUK) May 19, 2013

Naturally, the police had been alerted to Emma Way’s comments by twitter users who monitor hatred against cyclists. Ms Way was quickly identified from her Facebook page and the police were shown other examples of her poor driving, such as taking photographs of herself tailgating other motorists and highlighting her speedometer showing a speed of 95mph (there are no motorways in Norfolk, perhaps she was showing off on the Acle Straights?)

Ms Way may have been joking when she boasted she had knocked a cyclist from his bike [SEE UPDATE BELOW] but the fact she felt able, among her friends, to make such a joke and that she based her funny on the seemingly lesser road rights of her target, is worrying. The tweets collected by @cyclehatred have shown that a surprising number of anti-cyclist comments are not coming from traditional ‘white van man’ but from young women, many of them clearly new to driving. What is it that’s making these otherwise unremarkable young women say such hateful things about cyclists? Young female motorists feel safe in their cars and often rely on them to get everywhere. For such women, perhaps the thought of being a cyclist – unprotected from ‘stranger danger’ and open to the elements – makes them shudder, and the way to reject and despoil this “other” is to vilify and mock it?

Perhaps the driving test could help out here? Maybe motorists should have to read and absorb a compulsory section on the highway access rights of all road users, not just the motorised ones? Cyclists, pedestrians, horse-riders, and others, should not be portrayed as obstacles – things to avoid, as though they’re stray and alien – but as fellow road users to be accorded the same civility as expected to be given to motorised road users. And it would also be good if new drivers were taught that roads are not paid for by motorists but by general and local taxation. (The fact that the majority of cyclists own cars, too, doesn’t seem to filter through to some people, it’s as if we’re still in the 1930s when cycling was “poor mans’ transport”).

The belief that “motorists pay for roads, cyclists don’t” is ludicrously mistaken but fervently held by a shocking number of people; people with the power of hundreds of horses at their beck and call. How many “punishment passes”, the deliberate close-calls on cyclists delivered by some motorists, are the result of thinking roads are just for cars? Roads believed to be paid for by “road tax”? Ms Way’s tweet shows that some motorists really do believe their little tax discs give them superior rights on the road. Frightening.

UPDATE:
It’s becoming increasingly probable that Ms Day did hit a cyclist. An Iceni Velo cycling club member said he was knocked from his bike:

It appears #EmmaWay‘s tweet was NOT a joke. She hit an actual cyclist, from my local club! To be continued… (cc @velocentric)

— James Lucas (@RabAusten) May 20, 2013

Club member @RabAusten said: “Police are on the case. They had already located her and were just waiting for the victim to come forward. He has contacted them…”

If Ms Way left a collision scene without reporting it to the police, she’s in deep do-dah. And boasting about it on Twitter and claiming she had “right of way” because she believes she pays for the use of the road doesn’t exactly help her case. Ms Way is believed to be a trainee accountant. Twitter users have already alerted her employer about her tweets.