There’s a certain sect of the car world that’s locked in an eternal battle with cyclists. These drivers, for whatever reason, simply can’t accept that they have to share the road with people riding bikes, and hate the fact that cyclists are increasingly being granted bike lanes of their own in major metropolitan areas.
Personally, I can’t understand this attitude. Sure, it might be a tiny bit inconvenient to make room for a cyclist as you drive past them, but when you’re driving through a populated place or down a fun, twisty road, that’s just part of the environment, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What’s wrong with playing nice with one another?
Alas, some people just can’t figure it out. The occupants of a BMW took things a bit too far when they decided to start road-raging against a couple of bikers in California, forcing one off the road and throwing liquid at another, before speeding off. Instead of just ending things there, the driver of the BMW started messaging the biker on Instagram, asking to fistfight. Now, they’ve been arrested.
A Bike Lane Is Called A Bike Lane Because It’s For Bikes
This all started last Saturday when pro biker Luke Fetzer, who goes by the username sendy_mcgee on Instagram, published a video on the social media platform of a BMW M3 driver running up behind him and his friends while they were biking down the marked bike lane on the Pacific Coast Highway in Corona Del Mar, a neighborhood in Newport Beach.
View this post on Instagram
The video shows the BMW driving fully in the bike lane, inching up to the cyclist behind, who eventually has to hop up onto the sidewalk to avoid getting struck. After that, the BMW comes up next to Fetzer before the passenger splashes a drink onto him and chucks the empty cup out the window before speeding off.
The clip immediately went viral, accumulating millions of views in just a couple of days. According to Fetzer, the interaction didn’t begin when the camera started rolling, but a few minutes before that. He published a follow-up video explaining the entire encounter, before and after the camera started rolling:
We’re riding single file, and we move right in towards the bike lane. At this intersection, the driver honked at us, swerves at us, and then the passenger rolls down his window, yells, slurs it at us, and then they get stopped at the following stoplight.
I was angry, adrenaline was pumping. These guys had just tried to kill us by swerving their car into us, and in the heat of the moment, I grabbed my water bottle and I squirted onto his car while he was stopped at the red light. When I did that, I had no idea that they were going to try to run us off the road. I pulled out my phone because I knew that there was gonna be some angry drivers, and I was filming for my own safety.
It’s at that moment you can see what the BMW driver and their passenger do in the video above. While Fetzer isn’t totally, 100-percent innocent in instigating the situation, I’d say the BMW driver took things a bit too far, especially when you hear what happened next.
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According to Fetzer, the BMW didn’t just speed off into the distance, never to be seen again. He and his friends actually stopped down the road to blockade the bikers and harass them further.
A few miles down the road, him and four buddies all stop on the side, waiting in line at the Shake Shack, a local burger joint. Cars will usually park and wait in the line at Shake Shack, blocking cyclists, which is fine. We move to the left, and we go around. But this time, these four individuals got out of their cars, ran into traffic, pushed into the two right lanes, blocked us, told us that they were going to kill us, and tried tackling us.
Well, that’s no fun. And Fetzer says it wasn’t just his crew that got stopped, either. Two other bikers who were totally uninvolved until this point were caught up in this:
It didn’t only do it to us. There were two other cyclists that weren’t involved with us at all who were also put in harm’s way by these guys. In shock, I stopped with these two two cyclists who were clearly already on the phone with the police, trying to get an officer to the scene.
Eventually, everyone went their separate ways, but the story doesn’t end there. In fact, it gets even weirder.
The Aftermath
After the video blew up on social media, Fetzer was interviewed by CBS News Los Angeles, where he shared messages he claims were sent from the BMW driver over Instagram DMs. If you don’t feel like or can’t watch the video embedded above, I’ve reprinted the messages here:
haha you’re a [redacted] dork, pro cyclist making 20$ an hour thinks it’s ok to spray gatorade at a $100k car, hope you enjoyed the soaking wet bike ride back home peasant ????
Hey bro let’s both sign waivers and meetup for a consensual Full MMA sparring session, let’s settle this like Men
if you have the [redacted]
Something tells me that the fight might have to wait. Yesterday, the Newport Beach Police Department released a statement saying it served a warrant in the nearby city of Corona and arrested an individual identified as Samir Weiss, charging them with assault with a deadly weapon. The police say they also seized a blue BMW M3 from the residence where the warrant was served, as evidence.
The investigation is ongoing, but Fetzer told The Canyon Carver in a Thursday interview that he’s happy with the outcome so far. “It’s good to know that he’s in Johnny Law’s hands now, and they’re going to throw the book at him, and we’ll just see where it goes from here,” he said.
If there’s any lesson to be gleaned from this, it’s to simply mind your own business and give people space to enjoy themselves, whether they’re on a bike, a motorcycle, a car, or a three-wheeled contraption that falls somewhere in between those. At best, you’re ruining someone’s day, and at worst, you end up in jail. Just share the road, people.
Top graphic images: sendy_mcgee on Instagram
I try to teach my kids how to de-escalate. It is difficult. Like it is just not part of human nature.
Often, it is simple. Choose your goal. Then aim for that goal.
If you are a cyclist, what is your goal? To enjoy your tour and arrive home safely?
OK, then be aware that you will encounter dickhead drivers. And when you do encounter dickhead drivers, give them space. Stay calm. Do not engage. Never give them the opportunity to escalate.
This way you can reach your goal by enjoying the rest of your tour and arriving home safely.
If you are a driver, what is your goal? To enjoy your drive and arrive home safely?
OK, then be aware that you will encounter dickhead cyclists. And when you do encounter dickhead cyclists, give them space. Stay calm. Do not engage. Never give them the opportunity to escalate.
This way you can reach your goal by enjoying the rest of your drive and arriving home safely.
As a car lover and a cyclist, the problem is some drivers are more than happy to intimidate cyclists without provocation. I had one guy stalking me for a month and waited for me to ride through an unincorporated neighborhood and tried running me (and a few other cyclists) into the drainage ditches. I used this route to avoid major roadways, but it was safer to ride them than deal with this guy. The worst part is police started stopping cyclists on that road… at least until he hit a kid riding to school
I witnessed the driver of a Ram pickup force a young man into the curb, then get out of the cab and scream that he might have damaged the pickup.
I was riding the opposite direction, but I stopped and got between the POS and the young man.
I called it in while the French Shower was standing in front of me. M. LeDeuche drove off. I gave dispatch a description of the perp,, direction of travel, and his plate.
Nothing ever happened to him. So let’s have a round of applause for the Newport Beach CA police.
I doubt the Newport Beach police would have done anything if the incident hadn’t hit the news.
I lived there on Newport Island in the early 1980s, and at that time they were pretty good.
Not so much an attack on the Newport Police, just that police in general often don’t take crime against cyclists seriously.
The impound lot has the chance to do the funniest thing possible and “accidentally” send the definitely-not-$100k car to the crusher.
The canyon carver is a raging douchebag, the BMW driver was a raging douchebag, the biker shouldn’t have instigated but is most in the right. shitty situation all around but the biker handled it best I guess.
How many packets of ramen will the BMW driver sell for in jail?
But it has Electrolytes (Idiocracy), I primarily ride on bike trails anymore, I have a route I can do 60 miles. I still run into these same idiots, one spot the trail runs along the road and I’ve had several instances of diesel pickups slowing down and try to roll coal on me. At a road crossing another clown starting yelling at me and paced parallel to me driving down the road yelling at me. These cases I was on a separate bike trail and never had any interaction with these people. When I used to ride on the road, early Sunday morning country road no real traffic a lady paced me all the way down a hill honking her horn at me. I don’t get what’s wrong with these people.
mind blowing to call someone a peasant while you are driving a relatively expensive masstige brand car. The parenting is exemplary.
As one who really enjoys certain BMWs, it really annoys the piss out of me that so many asshats driving the douche canoe versions give the brand such a bad name. M or X-anything and chances are far too good there is a moron behind the wheel.
If he’d tried this shit with me, he would have found out what a vintage frame-mounted Zefal tire pump can do to his “$100K car” (that he probably bought used anyway). But douchebags don’t usually try to pick fights with 300lb gorillas. I’m not exactly built today like I was when I raced bikes in the 80s (and had my share of such idiot encounters).
I would pay good money to see that live.
He was afraid all those electrolytes would put him even more underwater on his loan 😀
Again: when biking with my spouse I start out the ride with: NEVER trust a car. Meaning that many drivers are total tools, blind, otherwise engaged on a phone or just blowing through the red right or the stop sign. The worst are usually Karens in huge SUVS, second place to all BMWs, and of course participation trophy to the eggheads in jacked up pickup trucks.
I’m a lifelong car nut since I got into Legos and Matchbox and Hot Wheels as a kid. I’m also a lifelong cyclist who has worked in the bike industry for 26 years until I bailed due to really low pay.
Sadly, I don’t ride on roads with car traffic anymore. I’ve had a similar incident where I had to call the cops on a lady who was using her vehicle as a weapon against me since I was going slow up a hill and she was annoyed that she couldn’t pass. I pulled off the road onto the grass to let her by since she was driving inches from my rear wheel and yelling at me. (I wasn’t taking the lane, I was basically riding the white line). Instead of proceeding once I got off the road and stopped, she stopped in the lane and continued yelling. There was a line of cars behind her. When I tried to walk down the grass shoulder, she just idled next to me keeping pace. So I called the cops, and they just gave her a warning. She was using her vehicle as a weapon to intimidate even though I got 100% off the road and out of her way.
That and another time when one car taking an inside line on a curve almost killed myself, my wife and kids as we were riding to go get ice cream.
Never again.