I witnessed the tail end of a very unpleasant incident earlier this morning.
Whilst walking along the A13 from Westcliff towards Southend a cyclist came along the A13 towards me. He stood out because he was taking a nice strong position through a nasty pinch point
here. The cyclist was travelling in the same direction as the truck in Google street view.
A few seconds later a car (BMW I think but not certain) came flying through the same pinch point way too fast, luckily the cyclist had cleared the pinch point by this time. The car then skidded and I turned to see him turning right and following the cyclist through a garage/carwash in order to come back along the A13 in the opposite direction. There was some shouting as they both came through the car wash and it was pretty clear that the car was chasing the cyclist.
The cyclist came back onto the main road and took advantage of the toucan crossing to get back onto my side of the A13. The car driver followed the cyclist but he had to take a longer route around the end of the crossing. The driver was screaming obscenities and threats at the cyclist all the way round.
As the cyclist came off the crossing I asked if he was OK, but he appeared pretty shook up and headed towards the end of Avenue road where there is a contra flow for cyclists along a one way street. Both the cyclist and the driver paused and the driver continued to scream threats at the cyclist. At this point the driver realised that he was attracting a lot of attention from me and people at the bus stop along the road and also he would not be able to follow the cyclist into the one way street. He screamed something about letting the cyclist get away with it this time and screeched off down the road as the cyclist made his escape along the contra flow. I waited around for a few minutes to see if the cyclist came back around the block but he did not reappear.
I do not know what sparked the whole chase but the odds are that the driver did something wrong and took offence at having his mistake highlighted by the cyclist.
If you were the cyclist then I hope you are OK. It was pretty scary just witnessing the end of this chase so I can only imagine how the cyclist must have been feeling.
