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To the horror of some motorists, a cyclist cut across four lanes amid the morning rush-hour traffic on Wednesday. He also taunted a female motorist who honked her horn at him. This comes after several incidents of cyclists behaving badly this year.
An accountant, who wanted to be known only as Ms Huang, 35, provided Lianhe Wanbao with video footage from her in-car camera, which caught the cyclist in the act.
The clip shows Ms Huang's car driving along Ophir Road at around 9am. After passing Raffles Hospital, the cyclist in office wear - long-sleeved shirt and pants - is seen riding in front of the car and cutting across four lanes, despite there being other vehicles on the road, reported Wanbao.
Within seconds, the cyclist moves from the leftmost lane to the rightmost lane. On the right lane, the cyclist wobbles at times. To avoid hitting him, a grey car brakes suddenly.
At one point, the clip also shows Ms Huang's car reaching a junction with the cyclist in front and to the right. She sounds her horn to alert the cyclist, who moves to the right to avoid her car, before repeatedly turning back to look at Ms Huang.
After staring at her, he cycles in front of her car and starts shouting, causing Ms Huang to jam on the brakes.
Ms Huang told Wanbao that she initially did not want to react to the cyclist. But after seeing him riding recklessly and very close to her car, she was worried for his safety. So, she decided to sound her horn to alert him.
"But I didn't expect him to be so overbearing. He stared at me and raised his voice to scold me. He was clearly trying to provoke me," she said.
Ms Huang added that when the incident happened, it was during the peak period, so traffic was heavy. The cyclist was "playing with his life" by riding recklessly, she said.
The incident follows other instances of badly behaved cyclists. Wanbao reported in August that a cyclist in Bedok crashed into a 58-year-old woman before telling her: "This is not your grandfather's road."
In February, The Straits Times reported that a Caucasian cyclist was caught on camera taunting and gesturing rudely at a driver along Thomson Road. The video was uploaded on Facebook nine days later and, within a week, police launched an appeal on social media for information on the cyclist to help investigations into a possible traffic offence.
In the same month, Wanbao reported that a Caucasian cyclist got into an argument with a 60-year-old woman in Loyang and later broke her car mirror. The woman reported to the police.
According to the police, there has been a rise in the number of cyclists who break traffic rules. In 2012, there were 1,290 cases, but last year, the figure was 1,407, a 9 per cent increase.
If cyclists ride recklessly or cycle on pedestrian walkways, the police can take action and charge them with breaking traffic rules. They could be fined $20 if found guilty.
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