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Trollolololol. By the same reckoning if some brainless thug decides to hit me over the head for no good reason on my way home this evening he's the 'victim' because he's a brainless thug and I'm a 'well-established, successful, confident professional'. What a load of balls. 'Victims of motor dependence' my arse.
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Note that I said:
Don't imagine that I endorse her actions in any way. Of course she's in the wrong there
What I said is over and above this.
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I'm not trolling. What you claim is 'by the same reckoning' is not.
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Well in that case you must be utterly deranged. There was one person in that case who was committing the criminal offence of assault, if not battery, and it was the driver. She was the one perpetrating the crime, Vine was the victim of a crime. Making up specious bollocks about 'motor dependence' and making irrelevant references to the victim's professional status doesn't alter that fact. It doesn't matter what her reasons were for flying off the handle. It doesn't matter who or what he is. What matters is that she assaulted him.
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Hang on. Vine was aggressive when he stopped dead like that. She was provoked. He could have upped his cadence a tiny bit, wave a kind of 'cheers' before the hoot, and I doubt any of it would have happened.
Yes she's obviously deranged/stupid/upset/a dickhead. Ergo a bit sadz.
Get off your high horses. Oliver is making a very good point about motor dependence.
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I didn't claim any of what you imply I claimed. In fact, I explicitly said that she was in the wrong there. Of course it matters what her reasons were for flying off the handle. If you never investigate that, you end up forever treating the symptoms and not the causes.
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I don't think Vine was 'aggressive' when he stopped. Passive aggressive at best/worst. If anything, by stopping in that situation he would have protected himself from the possibility of a 'punishment pass', so it may have been a good move, or that may not have been his thinking at all.
I really just thought about that when I saw the forward view from his camera, which showed that from just about that point onwards, she could have overtaken him because of the lack of parked cars on the right side, and he probably wouldn't have been able to prevent her from doing this in the same way as in the bit with parked cars on both sides.
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Of course it matters what her reasons were for flying off the handle.
Not to the issue of who's the 'real victim'. You said 'it's actually the driver who's the real victim'. I cannot see how you can possibly reach that conclusion. She assaulted Jeremy Vine. Looking at her reasons for doing so may be informative and interesting on a policy front, but it doesn't make her, personally, any less responsible for her own actions or any more of a victim.
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Whilst it's a massive over-reaction by the car driver, to me it looks like Vine goes looking for it knowing he's got cameras on the bike to record it.
"Concerned that this driver is dangerous...I slow to explain."
If you think the driver is dangerous why the fuck are you trying to force them to stop? Does not make sense.
He creates a bigger situation by stopping just before there are breaks in the cars on both sides.
If it were me, with a car behind like that, I'd stay central, see the gaps up ahead, speed up a bit to show I'm making an effort and then move over to the left when there's a break in the parked cars so that it can get past. I certainly wouldn't slow down to a stop unless I was looking for confrontation. I certainly wouldn't escalate it by then preventing the car from overtaking where there is suitable space.
I want drivers like that in front of me and away, not behind me getting angrier.
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Her victimhood in the sense of being a victim of motor dependence doesn't result from Jeremy Vine's actions. It's an underlying condition that I claim influences what happens here. It's not an excuse for her behaviour, either, by the way, just part of the explanation.
I wasn't talking about who's a victim or not in relation to the criminal offence that the evidence appears to show. I have no doubt that she would (rightly) be found guilty of such an offence. However, it's precisely because this narrow sense is very obvious that I'm interested in talking about something broader, and something that, certainly in comparison to this minor incident, I consider much more important.
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Please report dangerous drivers to the police - Roadsafe. Report to plod, not just whinge here.
Posted by
@dancing james
It is perhaps worth another reminder that in this situation it's actually the driver who's the real victim, not Jeremy Vine. Don't imagine that I endorse her actions in any way. Of course she's in the wrong there, but for someone to have such an extreme reaction to something so trivial, there must be other things very much amiss somewhere. The way in which she expresses her perception of her own sense of superiority as a driver is not an expression of a strength but of a weakness.
This is a classic case of someone losing their rag in a fairly harmless traffic situation. The way she does that points to some degree of motor dependence. This is a psychological condition caused by people having swallowed the nonsense about driving in completely inappropriate circumstances, such as in an inner city, making their lives better, to the extent that they use cars as a mental crutch, are strongly insistent on their 'rights' as drivers, and see driving as a crucial mechanism of social participation, whereas in their perception people who cycle are socially excluded/exclude themselves and are either poor or eccentric/mad. Victims of motor dependence will often express it either in such situations or in conversations, and it may be combined with other stresses they are under.
In London you currently have the phenomenon that a lot of successful people ride bikes and the old clichés increasingly no longer apply. Many people find this very hard to fit into their world view. Combined with the fact that a lot of new bike riders have very little skill at riding, this has increasingly caused the perception that 'cyclists' are entitled, selfish mugs who put themselves and others at risk. (Obviously, the 'old' attitudes are still found; they haven't disappeared entirely. Of course, you also still get many cases in which the driver is probably richer and more conventionally successful than the rider with whom they enter into conflict.)
Oddly, despite appearances, it's not always the person who gets shouted at who's the victim. Yes, she drives in a pushy way etc. and I'm sure he could have done without this encounter, but at the end of the day he's a well-established, successful, confident professional who has made an enlightened transport choice, remains calm and deals with her flailing aggression well, whereas she's clearly distraught and unable to deal with the situation, drives a small car, is probably of conventionally lower 'social standing' than Vine, and in the main causes a problem to herself, not to him.
What about the threats and the kicking? Well, Vine probably knows perfectly well that people carry out such threats only in exceedingly rare circumstances and that he was not really at risk. None of that is to say that he was an aggressor, he was just superior in dealing with the situation, although his decision to stop just where the line of parked cars ended on one side, which could have given the driver the chance to overtake there, seems possibly calculated, perhaps even provocative.
It could be that her outburst occurred in part because she was at that moment preparing to overtake, and his stopping threw her off completely. She then tries to use the classic mechanism of trying to shift blame, with her claim that he doesn't seem to value his life, stopping in front of a car and all that. Needless to say, she's completely unsuccessful and Vine brushes it off, and now she probably has the nation's media after her.