Cyclist Mark Wheatley is sharing video of a road race incident that happened in 2017 to raise awareness of what bicyclists endure. (CBSLA)
In that video, a driver in a black SUV can be heard yelling and honking at Wheatley as he continues cycling down the road, but things quickly escalated.
“She lost it,” Wheatley said. “She went crazy. She tried running me off the road, chasing me down.”
The driver is then seen getting in front of Wheatley and slamming on her breaks.
“The whole time this is happening, I’m just thinking I need to get away from his lady,” he said. “I need to try and get ahead of her, because she’s going to keep following me.”
Wheatley said he tried to pass the SUV in order to get away from the agitated driver, but his bike handle scraped the side of her vehicle. He pulled over onto the sidewalk, and the woman got out of her car swatting at the camera on Wheatley’s helmet.
At one point, the woman is seen stumbling over a curb and falling into the street, before she returns to her car only to retrieve an unidentified object.
“At that stage, I was like, ‘What is she going to take out of there? Is it going to be a gun? Is it going to be a weapon,’” Wheatley said.
He said he called the cops following the harrowing incident.
And now that the case has made its way through the court system, Wheatley said he wants people to see the video so they understand what bicyclists on Los Angeles roads endure.
“Really we just need better infrastructure and better bike lane systems so this sort of thing doesn’t happen,” he said.
As for the woman, she plead guilty to battery and was sentenced to 450 hours of community service.
