Woman faces legal action over video of driver in racist road rage incident

Jessica Roberson has seen road rage before, but she was shocked when she witnessed a driver take his hands off the wheel to pull his eyes back in a racist gesture towards her ride-share driver.The 38-year-old said her driver had slowed down in Gold Coast traffic as they approached a car accident, when the driver of a ute behind began honking his horn. "He pulled up alongside us and did a racially charged gesture towards my Uber driver," she said.Ms Roberson filmed the incident and said she felt obliged to apologise to her driver for the other driver's actions."I was absolutely mortified that anyone would do that to another person," she said."My Uber driver was more concerned about not aggravating him … she was like, 'It's OK, it's OK.'"Ms Roberson's online response to the action she witnessed two weeks ago has led to legal threats and demands for a retraction by the driver's company.Social media posts and legal threatsMs Roberson said she was frustrated by the interaction and shared it to social media to push for the company to take "accountability" for the driver's actions.With no way of identifying the driver, she instead highlighted the fact the vehicle in the footage belonged to hydro vacuum excavation company Provac Australia.Jessica Roberson posted the video of the incident to her social media page. (Supplied: Jessica Roberson)Ms Roberson began her first video with the words: "TikTok, you need to do your thing and find this fruit loop because I am so sick of racist pigs."Her videos quickly gained traction and received hundreds of thousands of views before the company responded with a cease-and-desist letter three days later.The 10-page document, seen by the ABC, states the company has suffered commercial harm because of Ms Roberson's videos and asked that she remove them immediately."You have sought to attribute the conduct of one individual employee to Provac as a company and have conveyed, encouraged and perpetuated the false imputation that Provac itself is racist," the statement read.It came after the company's co-general manager, Rhys Lambert — the son of the director and former One Nation candidate Matthew Lambert — apologised for the driver's actions in the comments of an unrelated Provac Facebook post the day after the incident."To the driver involved, what happened to you was wrong, and I'm sorry," Mr Lambert wrote."It happened in our vehicle, on our time, by someone wearing our name. That's ours to answer for."In response to questions from the ABC, Provac Australia issued a statement through its lawyer, Cliff Savala, who said the company had "zero tolerance to racism, which it abhors in any shape or form".Mr Savala said there were individuals "who have chosen to weaponise the alleged incident to deliberately and wilfully engage in both defamatory and offensive conduct".Provac Australia did not respond to the ABC's question about whether the worker was still employed.Gesture 'sad but not surprising'Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, said racism had become more visible in society."We've seen an environment where parties with racist platforms are gaining popularity, where political rhetoric is openly embracing the White Australia policy," Mr Sivaraman said.Giridharan Sivaraman says racism is becoming more prevalent in Australia. (Supplied: Giridharan Sivaraman)He said he felt disheartened seeing politicians like Pauline Hanson referring to multiculturalism as a "failed policy" and felt it emboldened inflammatory debate."That rhetoric infects the population and spreads like a disease and leads to more overt racism on our streets," he said.Mr Sivaraman said people who called out racism often faced greater consequences than alleged perpetrators of racism."It's one of the reasons people are scared to call out racism," he said.Mr Sivaraman said there needed to be structural solutions to make it safe to report racism, like the National Anti-Racism Framework pitched by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2024.'We should be loud'Ms Roberson said she had set up a fundraiser to pay for a lawyer.Jessica Roberson says she needed to call out the behaviour publicly. (Supplied: Jessica Roberson)She said despite the looming threat of a lawsuit, she felt it was her duty, as a white Australian, to call out racist behaviour publicly."We should be loud. We have a privilege we should be using," she said.Since posting the videos, Ms Roberson said she had heard from people across Australia who had witnessed or been subjected to similar racist incidents.She said hearing from other people who spoke up publicly had "restored her faith in humanity".