A pedestrian filmed swearing at Jeremy Vine today insisted that the cycling BBC star had endangered him – and stood by his words that Vine is a ‘pr*ck’.
Tony, 50, who didn’t want to give his surname, spoke out after being abused by dozens of Vine’s 800,000 social media followers after the presenter shared film of him haranguing the BBC Radio 2 host.
Jeremy Vile sums up the worst in cycling. Arrogant, self-righteous and judgemental. Sure, the van pulled out on him here. It happens. God, it happens to me regularly and I’m on a motorcycle. I just anticipate and take the necessary avoiding action and get on with my day. I don’t film it and upload it to the Internet to shame them. It’s likely an innocent mistake. We all make them.
However, having done so, Vile should have been anticipating something happening the the van’s left.
‘He’d cycled around a white van which had pulled out of the junction and was trying to eye-ball the driver as he came past and so wasn’t concentrating on where he was going.
Yup, Vile was so busy enjoying his righteous anger over the van driver, he forgot to look at the road ahead.
So, yeah, calling him a prick is the very least he deserves. If he spent more time on his roadcraft and less time filming people to shame them, he might actually be a better road user and slightly more pleasant to be around.
Tony, who has been suspended from his warehouse job while his employers investigate the incident…
Excuse me, what the flying fuck has it got to do with them? Nothing, but this is the modern world, where pompous arses like Jeremy Vile plaster people all over the Internet and employers run scared of it, so take disciplinary action over something that is none of their damned business.
If, out of 800000 followers, only ‘dozens’ piled on, it rather suggests the others aren’t following Vine because they agree with him, doesn’t it?
That 800,000 people follow that pompous prick is pretty depressing.
My take on the video is this has nothing to do with road etiquette. The van had stopped across vine’s path way before he got there and had plenty of time to either stop or just go around as he did.
The pedestrian equally was nowhere near and took no avoiding action, not even a flinch. He did however address Vine by name, indicating to me this was a personal attack irellevant of the road situation. Handbags at dawn, move along.
The employer suspending the guy though is a tricky one – he did swear at a member of the public whilst at work, carrying Amazon branded boxes so arguably this was bringing the employer into disrepute.
He wasn’t an Amazon delivery worker. He was on his own time having collected his personal post, so nothing to do with the employer. Vile was simply assuming that he was an Amazon delivery worker. Vile, as usual, was wrong.
As for whether the pedestrian moved quickly to avoid the collision, the video cuts at the appropriate moment unfortunately.
My point about Vile’s roadcraft stands. The man is a pillock who actively seeks confrontation for hits.
I did notice the video cut, though it’s really more of a pause as the pedestrian carries on from pretty much the same place without breaking stride so I still don’t see any ‘danger’ reaction there, or in his subsequent behaviour.
If he’s not an Amazon delivery employee then absolutely this has sod all to do with his employer and I hope he’s a member of the FSU.
As for Vine, I wholeheartedly agree he’s a victimhood seeking arrogant shit. I still think this has nothing to do with the road situation though – had the pedestrian not identified Vine and given him a mouthful, he would not have posted the video, which Vine in my view did solely to stoke an internet backlash.
Indeed, this is why the FSU is such an important organisation.
As for the video cutting where it does, I find it difficult to determine exactly how quickly the guy was moving. He says that he sped up because Vile was riding towards him without looking because he was still occupied with the van driver. The editing makes it difficult to confirm this. However, on a balance of probabilities, I believe the pedestrian. Vile has form when it comes to riding into a confrontation. Ashely Neal and the Black Belt Barrister discussed one of these a couple of months back much to Vile’s annoyance. Again, the video was edited and Ashley asked for the full footage for the purposes of discussion, but was refused. Regardless of how much of a close call or not this was, he is a nasty piece of work putting this stuff on the Internet for his own gratification.
I experience incidents on a daily basis when I’m out with students. I manage the situation and move on, because I’m an adult. Vile is anything but.
Good riders and drivers rarely have this kind of confrontation because they can see situations developing ahead of time. Also, one book on roadcraft that I read mentioned that, if you do get into an accident or a near miss, after everything has been resolved you need to have an honest appraisal of the incident and think about how a similar situation could be avoided in the future. You have to be totally honest and not rationalise any errors away to try to make out that it wasn’t your fault. Usually their are mistakes on both sides. If you don’t do this, there is no way for you to learn and improve. That I think was the gist of it. I wonder if Mr. Vine has gone over his errors and thought about how he could have dealt with the situation better?