Sorry, but all I can picture is someone waving their fist and yelling "Stop, or I'll say 'stop' again!"

Well, you'd have trouble citizens arresting someone in their car when you were on your bike, but that's not the situation your man described, is it? I considered doing a citizens arrest on my neighbours son - he was off it on cocaine, had kicked their fence down, broken a window, attacked his dad, punched me in the face when I tried to calm him down, then tried to hit me with a piece of the fence. I restrained him (I'm big, like I said), and we tried to get him to go home. If he hadn't, I would've called the cops, and it would've been a de facto citizens arrest. I'm glad it didn't come to that, because as it ended, he was apologetic, whereas if I'd handed him to the scuff, he most probably would've hated me forever.

dude! "the scuff"!! i love that!!

See also "Plod" "Filth" "Rozzers" etc etc etc

"If it's in a dense urban area, you can get little guns that shoot magnetic tracking devices with those small gps devices they use in cell phones that'll hopefully stick to the car (or better yet place it underneath), then track it using something akin to mologogo. Accounts of what the driver/car did and looked like could be updated online after the incident since the cyclist will have the ID number of the device they just tagged the driver with and can associate a desciption with that unique gps device. Considering sub $100 cell phones have them the gps devices probably aren't that expensive and are probably pretty durable, the tough part would be modifying a paintball gun (CO2 canisters for minimal noise) to shoot the magnet/gps combo. All the software shouldn't be too bothersome."

Check out the latest issue of Popular Science magazine. They are working on just such a thing for police to help end high speed chases. I think a civillian version would be nice.

Andy
www.myvemma.com/unbent