And just after I read this on HN I see this shared by a fellow brit asking WTF https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-camp-cancels-austin-texa... and indeed... it's hard to comprehend of this level of voter and campaign intimidation like this anywhere. When I've read things like this in the past it's been in failed states.

I saw that video. It's not actually clear cut to me who was at fault. The truck was in the right lane, the bus and SUV right behind in the left lane. Bus merged right (into truck's lane immediately in front) SUV could not occupy the space already occupied by the truck as SUV tried following bus. Truck did not yield, SUV tried to wedge in and straddled both lanes. There was subsequent contact but I'm not sure who initiated it. Never the less, you should not drive in two lanes --you should wait till it's safe to merge, it's basic traffic safety to not change lanes till it's safe to do so.

The truck is at fault by being there at all. This is not acceptable behavior. They created the situation with the intent to provoke. It’s classic bullying.

That's not how traffic laws work.

It's a campaign bus, not voters at a polling station. Drivers supporting another party are absolutely allowed to drive next to them.

Texas law is quite open to interpretation. Reckless driving is defined as "a person commits an offense if the person drives a vehicle in wilful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property." [1]

Driving at that distance is wanton disregard for the safety of the persons in the bus, but that's open to interpretation of the officer at the scene.

[1] https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect...

I'm just serving your point by quibbling about the law. The driver's intent is quite clear. Intimidating people because you disagree with them is unacceptable behavior. In this case, I suspect it's also illegal.

The suv merging into the truck also is showing wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property too

I don't know the local laws, but isn't there a minimal distance between cars in the runway? The truck was too close to the bus.

Tailgating is a thing, but so is not merging when unsafe to merge as well as splitting lanes is a thing you should not do (motorcycles excepted in some states).

I agree. It would be nice to see a 3D reconstruction of the whole event from above.

>motorcycles excepted in some state

Only california, fwiw.

And as also a fellow Brit, I think you need to exercise a bit more judgement before leaping on the bash America bandwagon. Firstly, it appears the Democrats are contradicting themselves about what happened. That article links to another article on CBS that directly contradicts their own. Their article says:

"Joe Biden’s presidential campaign canceled a Friday event in Austin, Texas, after harassment from a pro-Trump contingent."

and quotes:

"The Biden campaign’s Texas communications director, Tariq Thowfeek, said holding the event would have placed Biden staffers and supporters at risk."

But the CBS affiliate article says:

"The Biden bus has also been closely followed by Trump supporters while on the road, though Texas Democrats insist their presence didn't affect their decision to call off the downtown Austin rally ... Texas Democrats told us they canceled the event so not to take away attention from vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris"

Then the videos. The Twitter vids don't seem to show intimidation. They're all in vehicles, the trucks are just driving alongside the bus. There's a video of what looks like a failed merge on an overly busy highway, which is described like this:

“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,” he alleged. “They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.”

Even the Daily Beast has to report this as "alleged" because he provides no evidence they tried to drive it off the road. If they'd wanted to do that they certainly could have done, given the number of trucks, but the bus was unharmed.

The only activity described in the article that could possibly rise to 'intimidation' is turning up and making some noise at rallies, but that's not normally called intimidation, is it? It's not exactly unheard of for anti-Trump people to turn up and make a lot of noise at his rallies, and the right don't accuse the left of intimidation or cancel events in those situations.

Look at the full video. The Trump vehicles were in their own lanes. The other vehicles made aggressive moves to merge into the Trump supporters' lanes.