This happened in May. Looking back it wasn't a spontaneous shout, but he was oiky and he was very shouty. Today I found out that this guy was fined £625, ordered to do hundreds of hours of community work and to pay me £50. The account below has some of his choicer bon mots in spoilers.
The first time I was aware of him I had been waiting at the tail of a line of four cars at lights for about thirty seconds. He joined the queue by braking hard to a short distance behind my rear wheel. I thought he might just be a poor driver and ignored him. I got about fifty metres on him as I pulled away from the lights and rolled with the traffic for the next 400m, 25mph in a 20 zone through 4 sets of traffic calming features. As we rolled up to the last, a raised pedestrian crossing, he again braked hard to within a short distance of my back wheel. This is when I realised he meant what he was doing. As we rolled away he beeped his horn, accelerated hard and then braked hard, again a short distance off my rear wheel. I turned and said firmly and directly to him "Back off!" At this point traffic was backed up over a roundabout and moving slowly - there was no room to overtake or for me even to filter on the approach as the road was narrowed by parked cars and there was oncoming traffic. Coming on to the roundabout, more beeping and he attempted to undertake saying "I just want to know what you said." I said "I asked you to back off." He very swiftly responded by shouting
and swung his car in to me. I stopped to let him get ahead but he stayed next to me. At this point he started to threaten to run me over, said I shouldn't be on the road, spouted off about road tax and then settled back on the threats intermingled with homophobic abuse such as
"Look at you, you queer cunt!"
. I got off the bike, got my phone out of my pocket and made my way behind his car to the pavement. He shouted "Call who you like I'm going to wait here." He pulled over and then got out of his car. While I was calling the police he was still abusive, stood toe to toe with me regardless of where I moved to and was jabbing his hand at my face with the occasional feint thrown in. Nothing was going to happen at this stage but he was intent on escalating the situation. I can't remember much of the phone call or what he said to me at the time as I was generally concentrating on him physically. I know I read out the registration number and got the location through to the operator and that I felt immediately threatened but couldn't make out much that they said. I told the driver that the police were on their way. "Good, and I'm going to wait here." I said "Perhaps you should wait by your car." "No. I'm going to wait right here." At which point he moved to being directly in my face again. I walked away and crossed a side road, he followed saying (amongst other things)
"What's the matter? Haven't you had any cock up your arse lately?"
He was becoming more offensive and more aggressive and by this point I was having to deflect some of his more aggressive gestures. He was also walking into me and I'm afraid I was close to bringing the heel of my hand up under his chin as I moved his hand out of my face at one point. Fortunately, this is the point where people started to intervene. A woman in an SUV suddenly shouted "Don't!" at him pointing her finger very effectively. An older couple walking nearby made a reasoned plea and it became obvious to him that the whole street had stopped and was watching. He made his way back to the car with a parting shot of "If I didn't have my car here, I'd kill you." and he drove off. I asked one of the people that had stopped if they wouldn't mind waiting for the police, he agreed and shortly afterwards a patrol car arrived and our version of events were taken separately.
Not long after I got home the police called to say that they had arrested a man and would like to take a full statement. Apparently he drove up to his house in the car exactly as the police arrived and matched my description so perfectly it was almost comical.
The police were excellent throughout. The court proceedings were random, mainly due to the competency of the prosecution and defence lawyers, the magistrates were very much on the ball though and it seems to me to be a more than reasonable result.
