Cycling vigilante Cycling Mikey has confessed to jumping a red light – telling haters: ‘So what? I’ll pay the fine!’
Mike Van Erp, 52, who is better known by his YouTube moniker, rides through London with his GoPro as he attempts to catch drivers users on their phones – before confronting them on video and taking their number plate.
The road safety warrior claims to have ratted on more than 2,000 offenders since first strapping on his ‘helmet-cam’ back in 2006 – with his motoring victims including Frank Lampard, Guy Ritchie and Chris Eubank.
But Mr Van Erp – who works as carer and roller-skating instructor – has now been caught out by his own cameras as he pedalled over a London crossing despite the lights being red on April 8 at 13.16pm.
In video he posted on his own channel Mr Van Erp carried on riding through the crossing of Eccleston Street and Ebury Street next to Victoria Station despite a red light being shown.
But he placed the blame on the area – where he claims the traffic lights for cars coming from the other direction had been turned around so he believed it was for him.
Confessing to his fans, he said: ‘So this next bit of video, you’re going to see me run a red light. Yeah, it’s my mistake, I hold my hands up – I’m at fault there.’
He added: ‘I’m sure that some trolls would like to report me for running the red light – you’re welcome to. I’ll even give you the time and the date.
‘If the police prosecute me so what? I’ll pay the fine. You’re not going to see me complaining.’
He even posted the link to where you can report road crime online in London with his video.
Appearing to minimise his crime, the pedalling pest claimed that the intersection in central London was ‘fairly quiet’ and claimed other motorists had also nearly fallen for the traffic light.
He also said he had looked left and right and he crossed – which he said is ‘probably the most important thing’.
The peddling vigilante later added that he thought a ‘drunk’ may have twisted the sign ‘to point down the wrong road’.
Unlawfully passing through a red light is a criminal offence and is enforced by the police, who take action against offenders detected through TfL cameras.
Mr Van Erp continued: ‘Essentially what happened is somebody spun round the traffic light for the cycle lane to my right and had it facing down this road. And when that turned green I thought I had a green.
‘And I missed that the other two traffic lights were still red. I realised something was wrong when the scooter next to me revved his engine and then stopped – so he obviously also got caught too.
‘And he and the other scooter rider behind me too didn’t follow through. And that’s probably the best use of video cameras I have over the years is that I can go back and look at when there’s been a point of conflict or something’s gone unexpectedly and I can find out what went wrong and change my own riding as a result.
‘So I suppose that the really good thing is when I went through this fairly quiet intersection I still looked left and right to check for traffic to the side.
‘That’s probably the most important thing you do, is that you look to where the hazard is.’
The video shows Mr Van Erp approaching the intersection, where a red bus is crossing in front of him.
Before he reaches the intersection, the scooter he is following stops at the red light.
But while he breifly pauses, he quickly begins to make his way across as the light turned towards the other cycle lane begins to change – despite the three facing him continuing to show red.
He looks left and right as he crosses the road – showing a queue of traffic headed by a Porsche 4×4 going the opposite direction.
As he reaches the other side he looks back – muttering to himself: ‘I’m sure that was green for me! I’m really confused about that!’
Beneath the video he includes a foul-mouther quote from a friend that appears to make light of the situation – saying: ‘I look forward to people absolutely s******g the f******g bed over it. At least one hundred tags of the police, bet a tenner on that.’
While the crossing Mr Van Erp cycled through does not have any reported accidents in the last five years, there have been eleven at the intersection leading up to it- including two that were deemed ‘serious’, according to Crashmap.co.uk.
There were two slight accidents on the crossing in 2010 and 2007.
The Met Police and the City of Westminster council been contacted for comment.
Mr Van Erp, who works as a carer, told Southwark Crown Court in 2022 – where he lost his case against a celebrity talent agent he accused of trying to bulldoze him with his Range Rover – how he first gained ‘notoriety’ after broadcaster Jeremy Vine retweeted one of his videos of him on the bonnet of a silver Mercedes.
One of his most high profile scalps came in the summer of 2020 when he caught Guy Ritchie driving his Range Rover through Hyde Park. The film director was ultimately given six points, fined and banned from driving for six months.
Asked afterwards what motivated his crusade, he told MailOnline: ‘My dad was killed by a drink-driver when I was 19, I still remember him, so I feel very strongly about road safety. I first got my helmet camera in 2006 and realised its potential.’
In a separate interview, the Dutch national – who was born in Zimbabwe – recalled how he had arrived at the site to see his father’s body in the road, covered by a rug.
Mr Van Erp claimed to have caught more than 1,000 drivers in last three years alone, after it became easier for civilians to report crime via the internet. Over 600 were prosecuted.
In 2022, it emerged that former England footballer Frank Lampard had been caught on camera by Mr Van Erp 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.
Others have not been so fortunate. In September 2021, 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,’ Mr van Erp reflected in an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘Although I can’t imagine Chris Eubank really being scared of anyone, can you?’
Having moved to the UK in 1998, aged 26, with his then-wife — they have since divorced — to work in IT, Mr Van Erp said he became acutely aware of dangerous motorists as he cycled to work.
‘I was commuting in from Kent to London and there would be at least one incident a day where my personal safety was at risk,’ he says. ‘People driving right up behind me or within a whisker of me.’ So, by 2006, when chat on cycle forums turned to the availability of helmet cameras, he decided to buy one.
Back then, reporting an offence was a laborious process. ‘You’d have to burn a DVD and go to the police station to fill out a long form, so you only did it for the really serious ones,’ he says. ‘For a long time, it was purely to try to stop people from driving recklessly around me.’
That changed in 2018 with the emergence of online reporting. ‘It made things much easier — you just edit footage and upload it with a few more details,’ he says. ‘I got a few of those to court and I thought ‘wow I can really make a difference’. That’s when I started focusing on people more generally.’