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London's most controversial cyclist
- dgacmu 8mo ago> His reports have led to at least 2,721 penalty points, £168,568 in fines and, as he proudly displays in his X (Twitter) bio, “36 drivers DISQUALIFIED”. I would like to borrow this guy for the road in front of my children's school.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 8mo agoSociety only moves forward through the actions of a few whose behaviour is so out of the norm that we would consider it crazy. However, one must commend whatever organizational structure allows for this man’s reports to actually yield consequences. In the Bay Area, these will go nowhere.
- NoboruWataya 8mo agoLike the George Bernard Shaw quote: > The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- nntwozz 8mo agoOne of my favorites, also this: I look crazy but I'm not. And the funny thing is that other people don't look crazy but they are. — eden ahbez
- Normal_gaussian 8mo agoOperation SNAP is a huge success; but it has issues - one being that it is implemented per police force which means the quality of input and response is hugely varied. I've reported a few which have gone nowhere, because my local force is useless.
- matthewmcg 8mo agoI’ve fantasized about carrying a bullhorn on my bike and just calling people out: “hey you in the Tesla, put your phone down!” Sadly the enforcement of the hands free law where I live is nonexistent. What’s surprising to me about this article is that the police will actually act on this guy’s tips and evidence.
- elzbardico 8mo agoAnd this is something that would definitely net a good amount of money to municipal coffers in fines while educating drivers.
- ndsipa_pomu 8mo agoTraffic fines go to the central government, not local areas or police forces. On the one hand it takes away incentives to game the system (e.g designing suddenly speed limit reductions on otherwise fast roads), but it also means that enforcement is lacking as it becomes a cost for local governments and police forces
- em-bee 8mo agomy repeated fantasies are a blind person with a reinforced version of their stick, using that stick to great effect to damage cars that are parked on the sidewalk. like, when they bump into a car they take the stick an beat the car for all that its worth creating as much damage as possible. the other fantasy is carrying a bazooka and shooting anyone speeding. optionally the weapon is futuristic and able to just vaporize the car while leaving passengers unharmed. they just suddenly find themselves sitting on the street looking dumbfounded.
- 1-more 8mo agoI used to (idly) consider play-doh with thermite in it on the hood of the car double parked in the bike lane. But then I moved to NYC where nothing would be possible without a little double parking happening.
- Traster 8mo agoSince this site has a very international audience, it's quite important to make clear: there's not some road safety inspired reason for this. Mickey is an adrenaline junky who loves to start fights in public and he's found a way to do that in a mostly legal way. Sometimes, a little less legal, like when he lept onto the bonnet of a car in order to feign he'd been run over, or when he threw his bicycle into the path of an oncoming car endangering pretty much everyone in the situation (interestingly, a situation in which the author of this article seems to imply the car was to blame, not Mikey for deliberately throwing his bike into the path of the car, calculatingly not actually throwing himself into the path). The guy has got sucked into a sort of spiral where he's going out to create these confrontations (partly to monetize on youtube), and he will, eventually cause some serious harm to himself or someone else. This article kind of misses that this isn't a story about road safety, it's more a story about how people can self-radicalise and how social media has created a profit incentive for them to do so. It's difficult to watch a motorist threaten to take his own life if this guy reports him and then remember that actually, that's happening for ad revenue.
- Freak_NL 8mo agoSo, don't fuck around with your phone while driving. Stick to the traffic rules. Avoiding him seems really, really easy. Anyone who chooses to grab their phone while driving a car deserves all the negativity they get. Unlearn that habit. Seek help if you're addicted to that device. Or just take the Tube.
- adammarples 8mo agoI think a lot of these are while idling at traffic lights and tbh, I have a little sympathy
- MBCook 8mo agoDoes the law say that’s OK? If not, the driver is still in the wrong.
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- AuthAuth 8mo agoI love how the UK has a top villans list.
- tgv 8mo agoIt's absurd how improving traffic safety can be seen as villainous. Are humans really that selfish? Apparently.
- renewiltord 8mo agoFast personal transportation is so high utility that people will dismiss many externalities. If you offered teleportation anywhere in the world except it would pick a random African and kill him at a 1E-6 to 1E-4 chance (depending on your skill at Tetris while being teleported), I suspect many in the West would do it without a question.
- mc32 8mo agoAnd what indication do you have the opposite wouldn’t happen if the tech were available for them to use with the same caveats except the victim having to be from from somewhere outside of Africa?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- elzbardico 8mo agoWe already do similar stuff for oil, uranium, and cobalt.
- linkregister 8mo agoIf you spent an hour watching traffic in Lagos, Nigeria, you'd see that West Africans themselves value the utility of personal transportation above the safety of their neighbors on the road.
- cwillu 8mo ago
- mh2266 8mo agoDoes London not have some TerryB-style fixed gear riders that are more controversial than this guy? :) Line of Sight definitely had a London section, though it is quite old now https://youtu.be/0npCFw9TEnA?t=1720 https://youtu.be/0npCFw9TEnA?t=1720
- cons0le 8mo agoSome of those TerryB videos are crazy. I still remember one where they got on the highway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbCzWRnKCaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbCzWRnKCaI
- ryandrake 8mo agoOh, this is the "Gandalf Corner" guy[1], who has a lot of videos of himself blocking people trying to drive on the wrong side of the road to skip the queue at an intersection. What always gets me is how smug and entitled the people are, even when they realize he's not going to back down. That and the silly "I'm going to get away with this because I always have" grins his subjects alway seem to have. Good job to this guy. 1: https://www.youtube.com/@CyclingMikey/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CyclingMikey/videos
- petercooper 8mo agoI'm a driver, not a cyclist, and I'm behind those interventions. People are on the wrong side of the road at a blind corner. If I were turning out, I could end up with someone facing me head on. On the phone stuff, I support him too, but that law needs a serious tweak to cover emergencies that require less than a 999 call. Stopped at lights, I saw a hit and run, instinctively reached for my phone for a picture, but stopped myself. That's not a net good for society IMO, but it's the law.
- ravenical 8mo ago111?
- ndsipa_pomu 8mo agoDashcams are the best bet for recording evidence like that. We don't want to create loopholes for drivers to pay even less attention to driving safely.
- detritus 8mo agoI walk around North London a lot and after a recent day of various hijinx involving careless drivers, I looked into bodycams with an eye to just having one run as I walk around to capture the various dangerous transgressions and then report onwards to the relevant authorities. But, the more I looked into it, the more self-conscious I got that a) I would be a sad curmudgeon to do such a thing and, b) I'd be sleep-walking into some horrid authority-complicit sousveillance that raises uncomfortable questions. Still, I'd really like to report those [expletive deleted]s who skip over pedestrian crossings at speed, on their phone. Gits.
- stephantul 8mo agoWhat an interesting long-form portrait. Looking at your phone while driving is extremely dangerous, please don’t do it.
- JCattheATM 8mo ago[flagged]
- eertami 8mo ago> For the most part he's not making streets safer, but just costing people money. It's not just a fine when caught using your phone while driving, it's also 6 penalty points (of a maximum 12). Being caught a second time (or if you are within 2 years of earning your license) results in a ban from driving for 6 months. People who are caught once will likely think twice about using their phone again, not wanting to risk the ban.
- JCattheATM 8mo agoThat doesn't make anything better. No one deserves points for checking a phone briefly while a vehicle is stopped at a red light. In the long run, problems like Mikey sort themselves out - Darwin at work.
- linkregister 8mo agoTwo things can be true: checking a phone while stopped hurts nobody and should not be illegal. Driving the wrong way in an intersection and nearly hitting a cyclist is dangerous and this activity should be curbed.
- JCattheATM 8mo agoThese are two separate, unrelated things, so them both being true is no surprise.
- linkregister 8mo agoI agree. Which is why the second scenario should be considered in your analysis of this Youtuber, not just the first.
- 789bc7wassad 8mo ago[dead]
- mmaunder 8mo agoAh London drivers. I got hit in docklands and went flying off my bike around the time Mikey got started. Good job!
- comrade1234 8mo agoHit in the docklands! sounds painful.
- mellosouls 8mo agoMikey discussed 4 years ago here: ‘I felt powerless – so I started filming’: CyclingMikey on his one-man battle with dangerous drivers (126 points, 221 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29810943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29810943
- morsch 8mo agoIs there a cheap and convenient way to have a front/back camera on your bike, yet? Or a bike helmet with inconspicous front+rear camera? I'm aware of the Garmin Varia line, but it's quite expensive and I don't care about the radar.
- avidiax 8mo agoYou can just get some ball mounts and an action camera or two. The new cameras have such good stabilization that a handlebar mount is very acceptable now. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPMBL924 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPMBL924 + a ball for the handlebar and a short extension. You can use the smaller ball size, it is still plenty sturdy.
- ndsipa_pomu 8mo agoAlso expensive, but the best options for cyclists are the Cycliq front and rear cameras/lights. They're best fitted to the bike and provide excellent footage along with being easy to manage (they overwrite old recordings automatically unless they're marked as being an incident where the camera goes onto its side). Helmet cameras may compromise the "protection" provided by a cycle helmet though cycle helmets are next to useless in a multi vehicle collision anyway.
- mellosouls 8mo agoI'm a cyclist, pedestrian and car driver - I hate the echo chamber approach. I'm sure there is a lot positive to be said for his work; unfortunately he - like many (most?) on each side in the cyclists vs cars vs pedestrians debate - is as much an idealogue as anybody, often unwilling to acknowledge the excesses and poor behaviour of cyclists - leaving him untrustworthy as a good faith participant, while allowing his video evidence as useful in more balanced hands.
- dudefeliciano 8mo agoAnd as always, when this debate comes up, the reply is very simple: pedestrians and bicyclists don't endanger other people's lives, car drivers do. That is really where the discussion should start and finish.
- mellosouls 8mo agoEh? See my comment "unwilling to acknowledge the excesses and poor behaviour of cyclists". Cyclists certainly endanger people, you could have done a 5 second fact check before posting. Eg. Cyclists injured record number of pedestrians last year, data reveals Collisions on pavements and at zebra crossings surged nearly 60 percent in five years https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/cyclists-injured-pedestrians-record-5HjdDww_2/ https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/cyclists-injured-pedestrians-r...
- dudefeliciano 8mo ago> unwilling to acknowledge the excesses and poor behaviour of cyclists when talking about the echo chambers, aren't you painting all cyclists with the same brush here? And even if that were the case, why do you think he should fight that battle? He chooses to go after reckless car drivers, who cause thousands of deaths per year (including his father's). Why would you expect him to engage in this whataboutism on bicyclists?
- mellosouls 8mo agoYou are responding to a comment pointing out you had said something clearly false, but have not addressed it.
- IshKebab 8mo ago> Not many people die by cannibalism every year, do they? But are we suggesting that because not many people die by cannibalism, we don’t actually introduce legislation to outlaw it? Uhm no because there are no downsides to a law against cannibalism. There are significant downsides to a law requiring number plates on bicycles. What an idiot.
- chihuahua 8mo agoThere's a much less effective guy in Germany who does a similar thing, but for parking violations. He'll ride around in his small town until he finds someone whose car is 20 cm from the curb instead of the maximum allowable 15 cm, or a car is 199 cm from a hydrant instead of the required 200 cm, or some similar insignificant situation. He documents these "transgressions", and submit it to the police. He calculates that he's brought the city hundreds of thousands of Euros in revenue. Except the police ignore all of his reports because they're mostly nit-picky bullshit.
- StringyBob 8mo agoVital bit of background context from the article: > Now in his 50s, Erp was 19 and still living in his hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe, when he got the call from a local shopkeeper telling him that a drunk driver had collided with his father, who was riding a motorbike. By the time he arrived on the scene, it was too late. He found his father’s body under a blanket. “I’m long past that”, he says in his thick Zimbabwean accent, swilling his tea. “But my feeling is that if I can save someone else that experience, then that’d be quite a good thing.”
- tim333 8mo agoThis might explain a mystery I was pondering - I cycled up to St Pancras station and some guy I'd never seen before said "no one likes you" which puzzled me but looking at the article my appearance is pretty much like Cycling Mikey. While he probably does a good job, it seems a bit over the top. I don't see that much bad driving in central London. Quite a lot of iffy cycling though especially from the deliveroo guys.
- rich_sasha 8mo agoWhere I struggle with Mikey is that he really pushes the envelope of what a civilian is supposed to do. - Filming his commutes - fine - Reporting when people put him in harm's way - more than fine - Reporting people he sees who don't endanger him personally but are breaking the rules and could create dangerous situations - probably fine, though getting a little iffy for me - Going out of his way to look into people's cars and look for phone use - pretty iffy - Deliberately creating confrontation and direct danger, out of other drivers illegal driving - too far for sure (look up "Gandalf corner") It is sucky that the police don't do more of this enforcement. But as another London cyclist, he crosses the line that makes me feel less safe as a cyclist, due to the elevated level of hate cyclists receive.