Boston Driver Says Cyclist Went Too Far In Video Confrontation
BOSTON (CBS) - A driver caught on camera in a road rage incident is now speaking out to defend himself.
"I didn't do anything wrong," says James, who did not want his last name revealed.
He was driving to an interview for a second job back in September.
He was on Massachusetts Avenue at Boylston Street, when he got caught behind a bicyclist named Eoin O'Carroll.
O'Carroll was wearing a high-tech helmet with a camera mounted on it.
"He comes within six inches from my left handlebar. It's absolutely terrifying. I thought of my ten-month-old daughter and my wife," explained O'Carroll.
When he posted the helmet video on YouTube, bicycling advocates demanded police do something about the problem.
WBZ-TV's Christina Hager reports
"I was close, but I wasn't trying to hit him, I was trying to get where I was going," the driver now explains.
The video shows James stopping his car, getting out, and telling O'Carroll he shouldn't have been in the street.
He even challenges O'Carroll to get off his bike and "handle this".
"I noticed him coming up on the drivers' side of my car, so I didn't know what to expect, so I got out of the car and asked him what was the problem," says James.
He says he never meant it as a threat.
"I felt threatened by him approaching the drivers' side of my car, I just wanted him to share the road."
He says O'Carroll was deliberately driving slow and "flipped me the bird."
O'Carroll says he never gestured and was traveling at a safe speed.
The head of Mass Bike Coalition, David Watson, says O'Carroll did everything a cyclist is supposed to do.
He says bikes have the right to use the same travel lanes as cars, and are subject to the same rules of the road.
"If the bicyclist had moved over, he would have been moving too close to the parked cars, putting himself in danger of being doored."
Watson says he's had his own similar brushes with drivers.
He's concerned about what appears to be a pattern of hostility, at a time when the number of cyclists on Boston roads has quadrupled in three years.
After this latest video of the Mass. Ave. confrontation made rounds on YouTube, police contacted the bicyclist.
A spokesperson tells us police are investigating and, "actively pursuing the driver."
James tells us no one has contacted him about it.
