A CYCLIST who was knocked off his bike in a hit-and-run collision attacked the driver and smashed his window with a D-lock.

Police referred motorist Ian Lowson, 41, to the driver improvement scheme but cyclist Richard Alan McDermott, 37, was charged and ended up in court.

York magistrates heard McDermott pursued Mr Lowson, tried to get him to stop and give his insurance details and when the motorist objected, pushed him around and smashed the passenger window of the 4x4 with his D-lock in a fit of temper.

His solicitor Kevin Blount said: "Had he (Mr Lowson) stopped at the scene, had he helped out, had he offered assistance, I am sure this would never have deteriorated to the level it did.

"There could be no conceivable way that the driver didn't know he had hit the cyclist."

McDermott, 37, of Fossway, York, pleaded guilty to criminal damage to the car and assaulting Mr Lowson and was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay the £150 cost of repairing the window. He had no previous convictions.

Senior magistrate Malcolm Smith, sitting with two colleagues, said: "We feel there was a lot of provocation on the part of the driver of the vehicle."

Cathy Turnbull, prosecuting, said the 4x4 and the cyclist had a "stand-off" at the junction of Heworth Green and Mill Lane at 6.30pm on October 22 as they decided which of them would go first through a temporary junction laid out with road cones.

When they did go through the junction, heading in opposite directions, Mr Lowson knocked McDermott off. One eye-witness said he saw the vehicle swerve to avoid a cone, another said he saw the vehicle accelerate and drive towards the cyclist, said Ms Turnbull.

Mr Blount said the vehicle "effectively rode" over part of the bicycle leaving the handlebars and both wheels damaged. McDermott was extremely shaken.

Ms Turnbull said the car drove on without stopping and McDermott pursued it, catching up with it in East Parade, where an eye-witness saw two men in the road, one pushing the other around.

Mr Blount said McDermott had wanted to get Mr Lowson's numberplate and details. "The driver clearly wasn't having none of it, clearly had no intention of stopping and no intention of putting right what he had done and provide his insurance details," said Mr Blount.

McDermott had then lost his temper. He regretted what he had done and accepted that two wrongs did not make a right.

Ms Turnbull said according to the police, the layout of the road with the cones was partly to blame for the collision as it was not clear where traffic should go.

After the case, a North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Following police enquiries into the collision, the 41-year-old man was referred to the driver improvement scheme".