In Munich’s hectic traffic, cyclists are often one of the species worthy of protection because they are rather slow on the move, no airbag and no crumple zone. But of course cyclists can also race – and get really mad. One grabs the pepper spray, the other brings a woman down, another rams his front tire into the opponent’s genitals with full force. Three scenes of a mud fight on two wheels.
There are no young savages in the dock, rather “honorable defendants,” as District Judge Klaus-Peter Jüngst put it. He is a 63-year-old doctor, she is a 59-year-old in management. The fact that there was such an escalation “hopefully that scares you the most,” says the judge to the gentlemen. On a beautiful Sunday in June last year, they were out cycling at Schererplatz in Pasing. There is the Church of Maria Schutz. The victim would have needed the latter.
Engineer Antonio K. drove to the Sunday service with his fiancé in the car. He says two cyclists were riding in the middle of the road in front of him. He honked as a warning, overtook her and then gave the signal again “in protest”. The older faction claims that the driver passed them “very close” and that the 59-year-old was shocked. Whereupon her partner decided to confront the driver. “That was the usual mistake,” says his lawyer Peter Guttmann, “instead of thinking ‘idiot’.”
The angry cyclist Werner H. hit the rear and the exterior mirror of the car with his fist, the engineer, who had just parked in front of the church, got out. Quarrels, jostling, then the doctor is said to have instructed his companion to film. Antonio K. raised his hand because he didn’t want to. It was unclear whether he touched the woman, in any case she put the cell phone away, pulled a pepper spray out of her pocket and got started. Right in the eyes of Antonio K. He wandered around blindly, his fiancée pulled him away. The doctor followed and continued to spray the 35-year-old’s face. “And at your age,” says K.’s fiancee to the accused.
Irrespective of age and wisdom, the nerves of two-wheelers seem to be on edge. A 45-year-old from Munich recently joined the row of criminals on two wheels. He was sentenced to a fine of 1,500 euros for negligent bodily harm. In Maxburgstraße, not far from the Munich police headquarters, the e-scooter driver got into an argument with a cyclist. Apparently he was in such high spirits that he drove after the woman, overtook her and intentionally cut so that the handlebars touched and the woman fell. She sustained bruises on her wrist, elbow and hip.
“The older people were aggressive, loud and argumentative”
It was even worse for a driver in Haidhausen: a 63-year-old Radlrambo demolished his car and repeatedly hit him with the front of his bike between his legs. Which resulted in a contused testicle and a hematoma and an abrasion in the crotch. As in all cases, the occasion was rather trivial. The driver wanted to turn right from Einsteinstrasse into Seeriederstrasse, which is where the cyclist was coming from. The two-wheeler was of the opinion that the driver had come into his lane and even brushed him.
He kicked the bumper properly and, according to the court, caused “not inconsiderable damage”. When the driver stood in front of him and clamped the front wheel between his legs so that the person who caused the damage could not escape, he hit the sensitive parts several times with the front end of the bike. A magistrate sentenced the rabid cyclist to six months’ imprisonment for dangerous bodily harm.
“The older people were aggressive, loud and argumentative,” says a witness to the incident in Pasing mentioned at the beginning. The pepper spray was not necessary, especially when the young man “already had his eyes closed and couldn’t see anything anymore”. The 59-year-old sprayer, who runs “chill-out” and “anti-stress training” courses in her spare time, said in court that she felt threatened. “If I feel threatened,” says Richter Jüngst, “then I go away and don’t film.”
Antonio K. had problems with his eyes for two months. For this, he received compensation from the brutal couple in the amount of 2250 euros, his fiancee, who also got spray, 1200 euros. The “honorable defendants” are sentenced to fines of 9,000 and 5,000 euros for dangerous bodily harm. “If two people are involved in such an act, the assault weighs even worse,” says the judge at the end.