Whoa! Warning if you ride on the pavement

gtvlusso

http://road.cc/content/news/71854-cambr ... g-pavement

Well, he won't get a firearms cert, that's for sure!

mybreakfastconsisted

Where I live, pavements are often impassable because of cars parked on the pavement. Driving on the pavement is a criminal offence, and the cars weren't lifted there by chinook.

SteppenHerring

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

Where I live, pavements are often impassable because of cars parked on the pavement. Driving on the pavement is a criminal offence, and the cars weren't lifted there by chinook.

It takes a special kind of c**t to park on a pavement so as to block it to wheelchairs/pushchairs/prams. There seems to be no will on the part of the authorities to deal with this.

meanredspider

Yup - lorries often park on the path at a couple of lay-bys that I pass. They seem to think it's fine - despite forcing peds and cyclists into the dual carriageway and screwing up the path.

adskis

Two things on this one;

http://goo.gl/maps/cPhVb

1. I used live near where the guy was tugged and the signage is really poor. Earlier up the road he cycled along, the footway is shared use, but there are no end of shared use signs. There is a very well signed shared use footway going left at Milton Road/Arbury Road junction, about 500m from the last blue shared use sign. Considering the state of the some of the shared use footways in Cambridge, I think that his assumption was valid.

2. Is it a 'criminal' conviction? I would not have thought that magistrates could record a criminal conviction for a minor offense. I am happy to be corrected here.

bails87

Well, he won't get a firearms cert, that's for sure!

Mad. I happened to see the 'personal info' sheet for the bloke who punched me after clipping me with his car, the one who the police didn't want to take any action against.


One of the 'warning flags' up against him was a note to the officers that he's got a shotgun license (as welll as a heck of a temper). :shock:

alfablue

Adskis wrote:

2. Is it a 'criminal' conviction? I would not have thought that magistrates could record a criminal conviction for a minor offense. I am happy to be corrected here.

All convictions are "criminal" convictions.

freebs

I take it from the responses above we (on this site) are now advocating that we should be riding on pavements?!

bg13

yplac.com

may give you some idea of how rife poor parking is!

Beware of bad language being used throughout the site!!!

Kieran_Burns

alfablue wrote:

Adskis wrote:

2. Is it a 'criminal' conviction? I would not have thought that magistrates could record a criminal conviction for a minor offense. I am happy to be corrected here.

All convictions are "criminal" convictions.

Not true:

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7611370_civil-conviction.html

daviesee

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

Where I live, pavements are often impassable because of cars parked on the pavement. Driving on the pavement is a criminal offence, and the cars weren't lifted there by chinook.

I saw a classic example of this while driving through Dundee recently (I know, I know).
A busy street with lots of businesses, double yellow lines on both sides as it is a narrow street and one side with a wide pavement.
A pavement full of parked cars and vans.

Really, this Country's deficit could be wiped out next month just by traffic wardens and Police slapping tickets on all illegally parked vehicles.

walkingbootweather

freebs wrote:

I take it from the responses above we (on this site) are now advocating that we should be riding on pavements?!

It is a bit of a grey area discussed in other places including here.

If I can quote a couple of pargraphs that resonate.

On 1st August 1999, new legislation came into force to allow a fixed penalty notice to be served on anyone who is guilty of cycling on a footway. However the Home Office issued guidance on how the new legislation should be applied, indicating that they should only be used where a cyclist is riding in a manner that may endanger others. The then Home Office Minister Paul Boateng issued a letter stating that:

“The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of traffic and who show consideration to other pavement users when doing so. Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required.”

Most of us will realise that riding on the road is generally the quickest, safest and easiest way to ride, but I confess to riding on the pavement for short distances when I consider a stretch of road or a junction particularly dangerous. If doing this I will always ride slowly and give way to pedestrians.

alfablue

Kieran_Burns wrote:

alfablue wrote:

Adskis wrote:

2. Is it a 'criminal' conviction? I would not have thought that magistrates could record a criminal conviction for a minor offense. I am happy to be corrected here.

All convictions are "criminal" convictions.

Not true:

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7611370_civil-conviction.html

Correction: all convictions pursued by the state are criminal convictions.

adskis

freebs wrote:

I take it from the responses above we (on this site) are now advocating that we should be riding on pavements?!

@ Freebs,
I might have misread some of the earlier posts, but I am not sure that anyone was advocating riding on a footway.

The guy said that he believed he was legally riding on a shared use footway. He was not.
That was his argument in court.

See here;
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Cy ... 122012.htm

My point was that the signage is poor, and I can see how easy it would be to make that assumption.

anti_podean

bg13 wrote:

yplac.com

Ha! I didn't realise there was more than one of those sites. The one I knew about was YouParkLikeAnAsshole.com, which may have a better chance of making it through work web filters than the one you listed.

Not sure if YPLAC does it, but the latter lets you print out strips of paper with the website address on to leave under a windscreen wiper. Though I'd imagine getting caught leaving one may get a bit sweary...

meanredspider

freebs wrote:

I take it from the responses above we (on this site) are now advocating that we should be riding on pavements?!

Only advocated when it's a shared use path.

That said, there's a section of path I use that is pretty ambiguous. It runs alongside the dualled section of the A9 and, frankly, nobody in their right mind would ride along the A9 there. The path (about 1 mile) is signposted at one end as being shared use and is frequented by cyclists in a ratio exceeding 10:1 cyclists to peds. In a letter I recently received from Traffic Scotland, it would seem that the path is intended to be shared use but isn't up to the standards required to be "officially" shared used. If I were ever prosecuted for riding on it, I would need to ask to have another 500 offences taken into consideration

Koncordski

Should have just paid the fine, bit like when i finally got busted for driving in that bus lane between teddington and twickenham. I shouldn't have been in it, i got caught, i paid up.

bails87

Koncordski: I'm not sure I agree with that. Imagine a motorist was driving along a NSL road, they come to a T-junction, turn and carry on at 60mph. Then they get stopped a mile later by a police car, having passed no signs, only to be told that the limit on the 'new' road was 40mph so they were going to get points and a fine for speeding. I'm sure that would be contested.

The comment form the councillor of "if there are no signs then assume you can't cycle there" is daft. How far apart do the signs have to be? This pavement is shared use, but there are only signs at the beginning and end of it, at least a mile apart.

memsley89

road.cc wrote:

was one of 40 cyclists who were caught on the pavement in Arbury Road in a police sting.

One of 40! Surely this backs up his statement of lack of signage, if 39 others are also doing it... stooopid.

rick_chasey

Cambridge police don't like cyclists.

SteppenHerring

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cambridge police don't like cyclists.

They're in the wrong town then.

meanredspider

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cambridge police don't like cyclists.

Not sure I noticed that in the 25 years I lived there. I'd imagine cyclists form a disproportionate amount of their workload however

(ETA - Northern Constabulary are far less friendly to cyclists than Cambridge)

rick_chasey

Cambridge police were lowest of all police when it came to public perception and opinion when I was growing up there.

meanredspider

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cambridge police were lowest of all police when it came to public perception and opinion when I was growing up there.

Yup - I didn't say they were any good Just don't think they pick on cyclists in particular....

gabriel959

I haven't noticed them being any worse or better than other police forces anywhere but anyway, I cycle up and down that road and junction every week as part of my commute and haven't noticed anything bad about it but may be its because I use the road every single time. Regarding the shared path, I know exactly where it ends and where it starts, it isn't rocket science. May be he was trying to play the "ignorance" card and it didn't work out for him.

I personally can only congratulate the police on this, I wish they did it more often but also on the same vein that the prosecuted car offenders as vigorously as cyclists. It is only fair.

Ian.B

Adskis wrote:

Two things on this one;

http://goo.gl/maps/cPhVb

1. I used live near where the guy was tugged and the signage is really poor. Earlier up the road he cycled along, the footway is shared use, but there are no end of shared use signs. There is a very well signed shared use footway going left at Milton Road/Arbury Road junction, about 500m from the last blue shared use sign. Considering the state of the some of the shared use footways in Cambridge, I think that his assumption was valid.

2. Is it a 'criminal' conviction? I would not have thought that magistrates could record a criminal conviction for a minor offense. I am happy to be corrected here.

Same junction, different view - it certainly seems like there's plenty of scope for law enforcement/revenue raising!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=52.220797,0.134199&spn=0.000003,0.002041&t=m&layer=c&cbll=52.220795,0.134292&panoid=_7OYvBnJDo4ojhwMv8b8Qw&cbp=12,276.56,,1,11.55&z=19

esspeebee

Ian.B wrote:

Same junction, different view - it certainly seems like there's plenty of scope for law enforcement/revenue raising!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=52.220797,0.134199&spn=0.000003,0.002041&t=m&layer=c&cbll=52.220795,0.134292&panoid=_7OYvBnJDo4ojhwMv8b8Qw&cbp=12,276.56,,1,11.55&z=19

Where those cyclists are, on the Milton Road footpath, is shared use. The footpath on Arbury Road (if any of those cyclists turned left) isn't at that point, though there are shared use sections further along.

All of those sections on Arbury Road are clearly marked, though, so I don't really buy the argument here. Follow Street View down that road if you like; it's quite clear where is and isn't shared use.

gabriel959

esspeebee wrote:

Ian.B wrote:

Same junction, different view - it certainly seems like there's plenty of scope for law enforcement/revenue raising!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=52.220797,0.134199&spn=0.000003,0.002041&t=m&layer=c&cbll=52.220795,0.134292&panoid=_7OYvBnJDo4ojhwMv8b8Qw&cbp=12,276.56,,1,11.55&z=19

Where those cyclists are, on the Milton Road footpath, is shared use. The footpath on Arbury Road (if any of those cyclists turned left) isn't at that point, though there are shared use sections further along.

All of those sections on Arbury Road are clearly marked, though, so I don't really buy the argument here. Follow Street View down that road if you like; it's quite clear where is and isn't shared use.

Are you sure? I don't think I have ever seen anything that says it is. In fact I am pretty sure that on that stretch of road there are only road cycle paths.

TheLondonCyclist

What a joke. Lol Do Cambridge Police have nothing else better to do? catching people on the sly just as they come off of the shared path. That's cruel.

Ian.B

gabriel959 wrote:

esspeebee wrote:

Ian.B wrote:

Same junction, different view - it certainly seems like there's plenty of scope for law enforcement/revenue raising!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=52.220797,0.134199&spn=0.000003,0.002041&t=m&layer=c&cbll=52.220795,0.134292&panoid=_7OYvBnJDo4ojhwMv8b8Qw&cbp=12,276.56,,1,11.55&z=19

Where those cyclists are, on the Milton Road footpath, is shared use. The footpath on Arbury Road (if any of those cyclists turned left) isn't at that point, though there are shared use sections further along.

All of those sections on Arbury Road are clearly marked, though, so I don't really buy the argument here. Follow Street View down that road if you like; it's quite clear where is and isn't shared use.

Are you sure? I don't think I have ever seen anything that says it is. In fact I am pretty sure that on that stretch of road there are only road cycle paths.

I don't know the road personally, but I see no signs of it being shared use on that approach along Milton Road, and there is an on-road cycle lane marked all the way from the roundabout until the road widens out to two lanes just before the junction