Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
‘Road rage’ bedevils bicyclists
Driver found guilty of simple assault in confrontation with cyclist
Chester County is known as a heaven for bicyclists. But there are times when those who enjoy the roadways on their two wheels can go through hell.
“We are blessed in this area,” said Victor Ohnjek, president of the West Chester Cycling Club, an 800-members-and-growing organization that holds bike rides that attract hundreds of cyclists on a regular basis. “Chester County is probably one of the premier areas in the nation for cycling.”
“The terrain is rolling countryside,” Ohnjek continued in an interview last week. “There are pastures and horse farms and small little towns to bike through.” Roads are generally well-maintained, and a rider can escape from his or her suburban development or downtown home and be in the rural outdoors in minutes.
But with those delights come the occasional battle with other, more powerful means of transportation that rule the road — automobiles — and their drivers. Ohnjek said that although most of the time the two communities
— Cyclist, Robert Greaves, said about the incident that occurred on a rural twolane highway in southern Chester County more than two years ago. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid in my whole life, I was afraid this car was going to kill me.”
— drivers and riders — “coexist peacefully,” there are times when tempers flare and the two go toe-to-toe, or tire-to-tire.
“Sometimes drivers will do things that are silly,” he said. “Sometimes cyclists do, too. I would say (angry encounters are) not supercommon, but a bonehead is a bonehead, whether they’re in a car or on a bicycle. And if you have a person who screws things up for everyone else, people remember that.”
A prime example of the confrontations between riders and drivers played itself out in Common Pleas Court at the county’s Justice Center last week, as an East Fallowfield man was tried on criminal charges that he attempted to run a cyclist off the road after an encounter that enraged him. At one point, according to testimony, the man steered his car into the oncoming lane of traffic and came within inches of colliding head-on with the rider, a West Whiteland triathlete.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid in my whole life,” said the cyclist, Robert Greaves, of the incident that occurred on a rural two-lane highway in southern Chester County more than two years ago. “I was afraid this car was going to kill me.”
On Thursday, the jury in Judge Anthony Sarcione’s courtroom convicted the driver, Daniel Keith Waltson, of two counts of simple assault and one count of recklessly endangering another person. Sarcione also found Waltson, a lawn service company owner, guilty of summary charges of harassment, careless driving, and reckless driving.
But the panel of six men and six women also found Waltson not guilty of the more serious charges of felony aggravated assault and terroristic threats. Waltson testified at his trial that the encounter between himself and Greaves had been largely instigated by the cyclist, who he said cursed and spit at him as they traveled side by side along the Route 841 highway, north of the village of Chatham in West Marlborough.
“He got pretty mad at me, and he yelled, ‘Bring it on!’” Waltson told the jury in his version of events. “He swore at me, and spit at me so I could feel the spray hit my arm.”
The conviction by the jury indicates that they largely believed Greaves’ version of events, primarily because part of it was witnessed by a local resident who saw Waltson speeding on the road and shouting angrily at Greaves. But the panel apparently did not find that what Waltson had done — swearing at the cyclist, forcing him off the road and ultimately aiming his car at him, amounted to an assault with a deadly weapon intended to cause the rider serious bodily injury.
Waltson — who also faces other non-related criminal charges, including stalking and harassment, stemming from angry and threatening encounters with his neighbors — will be sentenced in the future. He remains on bail in the case.
Ohnjek, who had not heard of the case and spoke to a reporter during a break on a bike ride in West Brandywine on Wednesday, said that even though the relations between drivers and riders on the county’s roads are generally good, “every cyclist knows someone who has been hit by a car and injured.”
That would include Greaves, whose brother, John Greaves, was struck and killed by a motorist in June 2009 on a highway near his Walnut Creek, California, home. Both men were avid cyclists, but after his encounter with Waltson and the death of his brother, Graves said he no longer takes to the road on his bicycle.
On Sept. 17, 2014, however, he was in training for a triathlon, an event which combines cycling, swimming, and running. Greaves left his home in West Whiteland in the morning, intending to put in 100 miles in his training regimen, cycling through the southern county region into Delaware and Maryland and back.
“It was a beautiful day,” he testified under questioning by Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Morgan, who prosecuted the case along with state Trooper Daniel Wetzel. “I just wanted to ride. It really is an international attraction, riding around
here. There are creeks and byways and miles and miles of paved roads.”
As he headed north through Chatham on Route 841 around 2:30 p.m., he came upon an automobile accident that he had to swerve around. Shortly after, he heard a car behind him, honking its horn, and the driver “screaming” at him. “He appeared to be trying to ram me,” Greaves said.
Greaves described the encounter as Morgan showed the jury a video filmed by Wetzel of the stretch of Route 841 where the encounter occurred.
He said the driver speeded up and came very close to the back of his bicycle. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the driver, who “looked very, very angry,” his face flushed. At one point the driver pulled alongside him and threw what he thought were peanuts out the open window at him, and swerved, “definitely trying to knock me off my bike,” Greaves said.
The confrontation kept up along the road until at one point the driver raced ahead, turned around, and pointed his car directly at Greaves as he bicycled north. He ditched the bike off the road, got back on, and made a mad dash for a home ahead where he saw men working outside. The owner of the home ran down to help him just as the angry driver pulled into the driveway.
“If I ever see you again on these roads, I’ll run you down and I’ll kill you,” Morgan quoted the driver, later identified as Waltson, as saying. In conclusion, Greaves said that to this day he does not know what might have set the driver off. “I can’t fathom what happened,” he testified.
But under cross-examination by Waltson’s attorney, Vincent DiFabio of Paoli, Greaves said he could not explain why he waited until two days after the encounter to telephone police and report it, even though he said it left him shaken. He also acknowledged taking a bicycle pump out of a backpack and using it against Waltson.
In his testimony, Waltson said that he had seen the bicycle rider as he approached Route 926 and beeped his horn as he tried to go around him after seeing the accident off the side of the rod. Others cars had honked as well, and the sound seemed to annoy the rider, Waltson said.
The two continued side by side along the highway, and the rider began swearing at Waltson, he said. He denied swerving the car at the rider, and intimated that any aggression had come on Greaves’ part. He said he drove back to the scene to get insurance information from the rider.
Other testimony came from the homeowner, John Taylor, and Wetzel, both of whom described Waltson’s demeanor as angry and profane. Wetzel said that he contacted Waltson after identifying his car through a sign on the side advertising his lawn care service. He said Waltson, even a month later, was still furious over the encounter, and started swearing at the trooper when he learned that criminal charges would likely be filed.
Despite the incident, Ohnjek maintains that relations between motorists and cyclists are good in the county, with only a few exceptions.
“Ninety-nine percent of the drivers will pass you and they are respectful, and the same with cyclists,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that sometimes we are judged by the minority, and not the majority. We tell riders when someone starts honking (aggressively) at them, just smile, wave, and let them go by.”