This is the bizarre moment a cycling vigilante caught an angry driver on his mobile phone who launched into an incredible barrage of weird and filthy insults.
The footage, captured by Mike van Erp, 50, better known by his YouTube name, CyclingMikey, shows a man sat in traffic behind a bus in a Fiat 500 while on his mobile phone in Chelsea, London.
But when Mr van Erp confronts him, the driver says ‘What are you f******* worried about it for anyway?’ before claiming he has cancer and is on the way to hospital.
He tells the cyclist to ‘f*** off’ and threatens to get out of the vehicle, before driving off shouting ‘go on report me you f****** c***’.
The driver’s head then pops back out of his window and he shouts ‘And I bet you’re a Chelsea fan and all aren’t you!’.
He tells the cyclist to ‘f*** off’ and threatens to get out of the vehicle, before driving off shouting ‘go on report me you f****** c***’
The dialogue takes a weird twist with the driver asking Mr van Erp about his virginity, making explicit requests, and even offering explicit sexual favours in return.
He says: ‘What a f****** k*** you are. I bet you’ve got no mates have you.
‘You’ve never had a bird have you. I bet you’re a virgin aren’t you. You f****** ugly little c***.’
Mr van Erp responds by laughing at the man’s barrage of insults and tells him he has reported thousands of drivers for being on their phones.
He claims to have caught more than 2,000 offenders since first strapping on his ‘helmet-cam’ back in 2006 – including top celebrities like Frank Lampard, Guy Ritchie and Chris Eubank.
Around 1,000 have been in the last three years alone, after it became easier for civilians to report crime via the internet.
And some 600 have been prosecuted, with many more in the pipeline.
The dialogue takes a weird twist with the driver asking Mikey about his virginity, making explicit requests, and even offering explicit sexual favours in return
Mr van Erp (pictured) responds by laughing at the man’s barrage of insults and tells him he has reported thousands of drivers for being on their phones
In January, it emerged that former England footballer Frank Lampard had been caught on camera by the cycling vigilante holding a phone while at the wheel of his car.
Lampard was filmed driving his £250,000 Mercedes G-wagon holding a cup of coffee and his mobile but escaped prosecution because the CPS said there was ‘insufficient evidence’.
The ex-Chelsea midfielder had employed the services of Nick Freeman — the lawyer known as ‘Mr Loophole’ due to his success at getting famous clientele off — to defend him.
He’d denied a charge of ‘using a handheld mobile phone/device while driving a motor vehicle on a road’ and Mr Freeman successfully argued that it could not be proved that Lampard was interacting with his phone.
It left a sour taste in Mike’s mouth. Of Mr Loophole, who has also represented stars including Ranulph Fiennes, Van Morrison, Jimmy Carr and Jeremy Clarkson — he said: ‘He’s a smart man but if I met him in person I might ask him how do you sleep at night,’ he says.
‘I believe in the legal system even with all its flaws, but even so I wonder if it’s being pushed too far.’
In the summer of 2020, film director Guy Ritchie was given six points, fined and banned from driving for six months after Mr van Erp filmed him using his phone while driving his Range Rover through Hyde Park.
And in September that year, former boxer Chris Eubank was given three points and fined for running a red light after trying to flee from Mike, who had challenged him for trying to connect to his hands-free phone system.
‘Apparently he said he was worried that I was a stalker,’ Mr van Erp said. ‘Although I can’t imagine Chris Eubank really being scared of anyone, can you?’
Asked what motivated his crusade, he told MailOnline: ‘My dad was killed by a drink-driver when I was 19, I still remember him, so I feel very strongly about road safety. I first got my helmet camera in 2006 and realised its potential.’
In a separate interview, the Dutch national – who was born in Zimbabwe – recalled how he had arrived at the site to see his father’s body in the road, covered by a rug.
But he vehemently dislikes the term vigilante — ‘I’m not dealing out punishments, just trying to highlight behaviour,’ he insists — instead seeing his efforts as doing his bit to improve road safety.
The statistics are certainly sobering: each year 1,800 people are killed on our roads, and 24,000 are seriously injured, while DVLA statistics show that more than 90,000 drivers have been caught driving while distracted in the past four years.
Having moved to the UK in 1998, aged 26, with his then-wife — they have since divorced — to work in IT, he became acutely aware of dangerous motorists as he cycled to work.
‘I was commuting in from Kent to London and there would be at least one incident a day where my personal safety was at risk,’ he says.
‘People driving right up behind me or within a whisker of me.’ So, by 2006, when chat on cycle forums turned to the availability of helmet cameras, he decided to buy one.
As to whether there is a typical profile of the reckless phone-using motorist, Mike insists not. Although he admits that those with the most expensive cars are often offenders.
‘I think there is a sense of entitlement there,’ he says. ‘Range Rover drivers in particular are pretty bad.’
On balance, he thinks that women are better drivers. ‘But they can still be crazy too,’ he says.
‘The reality is that something bad seems to happen to people when they get behind the wheel.’
