The middle-aged man at the wheel of the smart Volkswagen convertible is so engrossed in his mobile that he fails to see a cyclist approaching on his right-hand side.
In fact, it’s nearly a minute before he spots Mike van Erp, the cyclist, who has been filming him texting and has now drawn up to point out that he’s breaking the law.
What’s more, Mike explains, he’s recorded him doing so on the small professional camera strapped to the top of his bike helmet.
Enraged, the man unleashes a stream of invective and nearly mounts the kerb as he steams off, craning his neck to continue his volley of abuse.
It’s little wonder he’s cross; when Mike uploads the footage to the Metropolitan Police’s online crime reporting forum, it’s likely he’ll be prosecuted, given a six point penalty, £200 fine and hike in his insurance premiums.
Raised in Zimbabwe, when he was 19 his father was killed by a drunk driver while on his motorbike. Mike arrived at the site to see his father’s body in the road, covered by a rug
He wouldn’t be alone: since Mike, a genial 50-year-old, started using his ‘helmet-cam’ back in 2006, he has snared about 2,000 offenders — mostly people illegally using their mobiles.
Around 1,000 have been in the last three years alone, after it became easier for civilians to report crime via the internet.
Some 600 have been prosecuted, with many more in the pipeline. What’s more, some of them are well-known.
This week it emerged that former England footballer Frank Lampard had been caught on camera by Mike 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.’
Others have not been so fortunate. In the summer of 2020, film director Guy Ritchie was given six points, fined and banned from driving for six months after Mike, a YouTuber known as CyclingMikey, filmed him using his phone while driving his Range Rover through Hyde Park.
Since Mike, a genial 50-year-old, started using his ‘helmet-cam’ back in 2006, he has snared about 2,000 offenders — mostly people illegally using their mobiles.
‘I respect him more than most as he was very calm, he wasn’t rude and he didn’t deny what had happened,’ Mike recalls.
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,’ Mike reflects. ‘Although I can’t imagine Chris Eubank really being scared of anyone, can you?’
As for Mr Lampard — he drove off without engaging with him at all.
Either way, Mike insists he’s an ‘equal opportunities’ crime fighter; it’s not celebrity profile but behaviour he’s interested in.
That’s why, after his day job working as a carer for a boy with Down’s syndrome, he patrols areas of central London close to his commute home, which is also in the capital.
His only ‘equipment’ is the GoPro attached to his helmet.
Sometimes he does it several days at a time, other weeks only once. ‘It’s as the mood takes me,’ he says.
He’s one of a new breed of ‘cycling vigilante’ pushing back against what they say are endemically dangerous levels of driving on Britain’s streets.
Father-of-two Mike 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.
‘Studies have shown that phone driving is worse than drink-driving in terms of the way it delays your reaction time,’ says Mike.
That said, Mike claims he has spoken to police officers who admitted cases are being ‘binned left and right to reduce the massive backlog’ in courts caused by the pandemic.
So what drives, as it were, a man to devote hours each week, putting himself at risk on congested roads, to police motorists’ behaviour?
Amiable and friendly, he insists he is not a cycle obsessive. Nor does he seem to have much interest in fame, although following a successful prosecution he does upload footage to his YouTube channel, which has 71,000 subscribers, much to the bemusement of his teenage sons.
However, his crusade is more personal, for Mike has experienced first-hand the devastation caused by careless motorists.
Raised in Zimbabwe, when he was 19 his father was killed by a drunk driver while on his motorbike. Mike arrived at the site to see his father’s body in the road, covered by a rug.
‘I dealt with the grief a long time ago and I didn’t think much about road safety at first,’ he tells me. ‘But, of course, it stays with you.’
Having moved to the UK in 1998, aged 26,
