Antisocial Behaviour

Pumpkin Positive

I rode the Exmoor Beast yesterday - great event, great course, great part of the country.

I couldn't believe the amount of discarded gel wrappers lying on the road. In a National Park!

It seemed to me that there was more of this type of litter yesterday than at most events I've done. What does that say about our sport and the people who participate?

Where do people get the idea that they can behave in this way? Do they seriously think that for £25 (or whatever it cost to enter) that the organisers are going to send an army of litter pickers out to clear the course behind them?

I also passed a guy taking a pi$$ in someone's front garden in Exford - a village surrounded by thousands of acres of open moorland, woodland and fields where a discreet pee would have upset nobody.

Sportives (and their associated inconveniences) are tolerated because of the benefits they bring to the local economy. When people see cyclists behaving like louts their patience is likely to wear a little thin.

pheez

Agreed. The behaviour of some at sportives is a bit of a let down.

I think its simply a case of education. On our local club runs newbies are told the do's and don'ts and because of that even in large groups everyone is respectful.

It's nothing to just put an empty gel wrapper back in the pocket it came from.

bigpikle

sadly, this is part of the result of the growth in cycling as a sport. Many people are simply anti-social selfish ignorant to55ers and with more and more people taking up cycling its inevitable that a % of these new riders come from the above category of human beings

Herbsman

People who drop their gel wrappers on the floor should have other people's weekly waste disposal dumped in their living room.

Alternatively some sort of incentive could work e.g. http://www.gelwrappers.com/

All companies who make energy gels should realise that littering is a problem. Not saying that they should take responsibility for other people's slobbish behaviour and lack of respect for their environment, but at least do something to discourage people from littering...

FoldingJoe

OK, just playing Devils advocate (not condoning the guy pee'ing in somebody's garden, and if I'd have seen him I'd have let him know my feelings) but we all know how cold and wet it was out there on Sunday.

Granted, I did think I saw a marked increase in the number of gel wrappers that I did on the Dartmoor earlier in the year (and undoubtedly there are some people who will deliberately and blatantly litter) but don't you think a large proportion of that could have been down to the fact that it was cold and wet and trying to get gel wrappers back into pockets on the back of jerseys (most probably tucked underneath a rain jacket or similar) there is a good chance that some wrappers are going to get dropped?

Herbsman

No.

FoldingJoe

And you know this for a fact, Herbsman?

SwainsL

FoldingJoe wrote:

OK, just playing Devils advocate (not condoning the guy pee'ing in somebody's garden, and if I'd have seen him I'd have let him know my feelings) but we all know how cold and wet it was out there on Sunday.

Granted, I did think I saw a marked increase in the number of gel wrappers that I did on the Dartmoor earlier in the year (and undoubtedly there are some people who will deliberately and blatantly litter) but don't you think a large proportion of that could have been down to the fact that it was cold and wet and trying to get gel wrappers back into pockets on the back of jerseys (most probably tucked underneath a rain jacket or similar) there is a good chance that some wrappers are going to get dropped?

Could be the case. Especially if you have full fingered gloves it's hard to tell.

pheez

It could possibly be a case for a handful of gel wrappers but realistically we all know that this is not the case. I have been on a few Sportives ( mainly summer ) and it's a problem that happens wherever you go.

I dont think anyone goes with the intention of littering but they just dont think about their actions.

Southgate

I think the solution is for the sportive organisers to make not littering a condition of participation, and prominently display this on the entry form with a box to tick to confirm agreement. At the start of the event riders should be reminded that it is anti-social and damaging to cycling, and informed that anyone caught deliberately littering will be scrubbed from the list of entrants and told to remove their race number from their bike. That ought to fix it.

FoldingJoe

Southgate wrote:

I think the solution is for the sportive organisers to make not littering a condition of participation, and prominently display this on the entry form with a box to tick to confirm agreement. At the start of the event riders should be reminded that it is anti-social and damaging to cycling, and informed that anyone caught deliberately littering will be scrubbed from the list of entrants and told to remove their race number from their bike. That ought to fix it.

Good idea.

Nothing worse than seeing somebody deliberately litter.

I ate a energy bar at about 55 miles but my hands were so cold I couldn't get the wrapper into my back pocket under my rain jacket, so just cycled the last 5 with it in my hand.

mr_goo

Golf went this way back in the 80s when it became popular. In the summer you would have blokes turning up at the course in shorts, a singlet and trainers, swigging cans of beer all way round.
Unfortunately as others have said, when a sport gets higher profile and popular it attracts some undesirables and those who do not understand the etiquette and rules.

JamesB

trying to get gel wrappers back into pockets on the back of jerseys (most probably tucked underneath a rain jacket or similar) there is a good chance that some wrappers are going to get dropped?

so the solution would be to stop, put wrapper in pocket, start again. NOT a race. This topic seems to come up time again so obviously offenders eitehr don`t read these threads or care about their actions.

Pumpkin Positive

Mr Goo wrote:

Golf went this way back in the 80s when it became popular. In the summer you would have blokes turning up at the course in shorts, a singlet and trainers, swigging cans of beer all way round.
Unfortunately as others have said, when a sport gets higher profile and popular it attracts some undesirables and those who do not understand the etiquette and rules.

I think you're right to a point but I don't see it so much as an etiquette thing. I was taught as a child not to drop litter or piss in peoples gardens.

I think that perhaps new comers to the sport see events such as this as being akin to pro races where gel wrappers and bidons are discarded. I presume in events such as ToB there is a clean-up team who follow the riders and remove litter and the bidons will be picked up by souvenir hunters.

However I'd say that an event like the Exmoor Beast is likely to attract fewer novice / newcomer cyclists as it's out of season and a fairly tough event.

reformedfatty

Disappointing to see people had some problems - personally I only saw people being very diligent, battling numb fingers to put away rubbish in their jerseys, and making use of quiet field entrances in the sticks to answer the call of nature. Worst I saw was one banana skin dropped in a hedge, not bad for near 1000 riders on the (100k) course.

Pumpkin Positive

reformedfatty wrote:

Disappointing to see people had some problems - personally I only saw people being very diligent, battling numb fingers to put away rubbish in their jerseys, and making use of quiet field entrances in the sticks to answer the call of nature. Worst I saw was one banana skin dropped in a hedge, not bad for near 1000 riders on the (100k) course.

Yes I think that's the point. It's a small minority of people causing trouble for the rest of us.