He is an avid cyclist, known for taking swipes at bad drivers. But Jeremy Vine admits his three-point turns are not always up to scratch — with one scrape costing him £1,000 in damages.
The television and radio presenter scratched a Land Rover while executing the manoeuvre in a car park. The 60-year-old, who courts controversy online with his videos of dodgy drivers, claimed the damage was 'microscopic', adding that 'oversized SUVs' have ruined the atmosphere in the Devon village where he bumped the Land Rover.
Vine used to wear a helmet camera while cycling and has previously claimed that bad drivers in London do not get enough sex. So far, he has caught a foreign diplomat using his phone behind the wheel, and van drivers dangerously cutting him up. He recently stopped recording drivers due to online abuse.
Speaking about the village of Lympstone, he told Devon Life magazine: 'Only drawback - on my first visit I backed into someone's Land Rover while doing a three point turn in the rammed village car park, they arrived raging in their other car, and I had to pay them £1,000 for the microscopic scratch. Another place, sadly, where oversized SUVs have killed the back-in-time vibe.'
His helmet-cam footage regularly sparks viral debates — sometimes over the driver's actions, other times over his own, such as whether he should be wearing hi-vis gear at night. He was the victim of a vicious rant earlier this year by a fellow cyclist as he commuted to work. Mr Vine, who accepted he should have signalled earlier, labelled him 'Britain's rudest cyclist'.
Vine regularly posted clips of his London commute, often making the case that some motorists in his videos were driving dangerously and urging greater consideration to be given to cyclists. In 2023, he filmed his own bicycle being crushed by a removals van that veered down a cycle lane the wrong way. In a 2022 video titled 'Kensington - where bad roads and bad drivers come together', a Bentley driver swore at him.
Last year, he announced he was stopping posting following extensive abuse of him and threats to his family. Speaking at the time, he said: 'I do have to deal with quite a lot of incoming, what you would have called flak in the olden days, but now they call it trolling. I shouldn't mind, but in the end I just thought I just want to now switch the narrative, I don't want to do this any more and in the end it did get to me,' the BBC Radio 2 presenter added. 'Car driving is a religion in this country,' he said, adding 'if you say anything that runs counter, that's what you get.'
In 2018, Vine told the London Assembly transport committee that he filmed up to 40 driving offences every day cycling from Chiswick in West London to the BBC offices in Oxford Circus. The year before, a woman was jailed for shouting and making a gun sign at him as he cycled home from work.
