A cyclist went through a red light at an East Putney crossing last week, hit a pedestrian, fell off his bike, then got up and punched the man he had struck.
It happened on Upper Richmond Road by Waitrose on Wednesday, at the crossing where a woman in her 70s was hit and killed by a lorry in May last year. TfL fitted countdown signals there after her death, and in January a man was taken to hospital after being hit by a van at the same spot.
The pedestrian in question, Marcus Ramsdale, told Putney.news he had stepped out when the lights changed to let him – and others – cross. The cyclist came from the direction of Putney High Street, went past a couple of other people on the crossing and struck Marcus’s shoulder with his own, then came off his bike. Back on his feet, the rider mouthed off at him and then “took a swing at me and hit me on the jaw”, Marcus said.
He then kicked out at Marcus a few times. “All the vehicles stopped. They didn’t move,” Marcus told us. A van driver lost patience and sounded his horn, and the rider got back on his bike and rode off. “Nobody else said anything or did anything.”
Marcus was not hurt. “He didn’t really catch me very well,” he said, adding that the rider may have hurt his own hand. He said he might report it to the police on the non-emergency line.
Marcus photographed and filmed the rider as he picked his bike up off the road, but did not catch his face before he rode away. Warning: some strong language in the video.
Do you recognise him? If you know who he is, email postbox@putney.news. Please don’t post names in the comments.
A real problem without a solution yet
A bicycle carries no number plate, so once a rider has gone there is nothing to identify the bike by and no one to write to. The exception is a hire bike, if someone caught the number on its frame.
Putney readers have been describing the dangerous cycling they meet since August: bikes going through red lights, bikes on the pavement, and riders who turn on the pedestrians in their way. Graham Morrow, a shopkeeper and former judge, called it an epidemic at a police ward meeting in September. He watches the traffic on Putney High Street for eight hours a day.
Marcus, who walks the High Street a lot, said: “I don’t think there’s been a single time that I’ve gone up and down without seeing at least one bike going through the middle.” The man on the door at Marks and Spencer has told him he sees it every hour, he said.
He thinks it is all down to e-bikes, which he believes have brought people onto bikes who had not ridden regularly before. “They seem to have some sort of sense of entitlement,” he said. It echoes what four cyclists wrote in to say in August: that the problem is rental and dockless e-bikes. Although in this case the bike was not a rental.
Has this happened to you?
If you have been hit, threatened or abused by a cyclist going through a red light or riding on the pavement in Putney, Putney.news wants to hear from you. We are building up a picture from readers’ experiences to raise with the police and the council, the people who can actually do something about it.
Email postbox@putney.news with when and where it happened, what happened, and any photos. Your name won’t be published unless you say so.
eBike riders are certainly a real problem (my take on that is that it seems to be mainly younger riders, who may never have driven and who are unfamiliar with the highway code), but I now notice many ‘real ‘ cyclists following suit, which reflects badly on those of us who obey the rules, and that majes me angry.