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Pittsburgh police investigating road rage incident involving bicyclist in Oakland

If you haven’t seen this video already, we’re letting you know it’s pretty scary to watch. At around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 25 a motorist attacked a cyclist at the intersection of South Bellefield and Fifth Avenue. The video opens with an aggravated driver throwing the cyclist to the pavement and ends with the driver picking up the bicycle and throwing it at the cyclist.

Although the video does not start at the beginning of the altercation, witnesses say the SUV driver was “driving erratically behind the bicyclist” and then “revved his engine as though he was going to hit the cyclist,” prior to the start of the video.

Let’s be clear. This is criminal. This is assault. We urge the City and police to track down the driver and treat it as such. We cannot tolerate this kind of behavior. On Saturday, January 27, City of Pittsburgh Public Safety published a press release mentioning that investigators were continuing to look into this matter but neither the bicyclist, nor the driver for that matter, have contacted the police.

What we know

Unless the person riding the bike comes forward, it is extremely difficult for the police to charge the attacker, even with the license plate number and video footage. If anyone has any additional information regarding this attack or what led up to it, please call Zone 4 police at (412) 422-6520.

Oakland’s wide lanes breed speed, and it’s telling that this assault occurred a block from where Susan Hicks was killed in 2015. The completion of the bike lanes and improvements, that the City has only recently begun to install on Forbes Ave (but not Fifth) can’t come soon enough.