I'm against allowing people to ride on the pavements.
Of course, if people want to cycle these days, which is to be encouraged, then they want to be safe. Most cyclists now seem to routinely cycle on the pavement, even if they are going along a wide, safe road. Pedestrians are at risk from this and it is illegal.
Bicycles are, in law, carriages (as a consequence of the Taylor v Goodwin judgment in 1879) and should be on the road not pavement.
By pavement we mean, in law, a footway. A Footway means a way comprised in a highway, which also comprises a carriageway, being a way over which the public has a right of way on foot only [Section 329(1) Highways Act 1980].
When I was a kid in Totnes cycling was only on the road. If you went on the pavement then you always worried in case a policeman saw you and reprimanded you. Same if you cycled home without lights at night. Noone ever cycled down the town.
Nowadays though the police seem uninterested. On the pavement outside my house my wife and kids have been nearly run over several times by adults on bikes cycling the wrong way down the one way street on the pavement. Do they feel it is their right? Do they just not know the rules?
The defence is of course that it is safer to cycle on the pavement. Not, I don't think, when it comes to junctions. Cycling on the road is much safer when going across side roads. Cyclists seem quite happy to risk life and limb each morning at Redworth lights nipping across in odd places between lines of traffic. Watching cyclists go across at Pelican crossings with the pedestrians scares me too.
Kids should be taught how to cycle safely on roads. The more that local cyclists cycle on the roads then the more that car drivers will get used to them and accommodate them. Cyclists should always wear a helmet - even when just on cycle tracks. They stop you damaging your skull when falling 4 or 5 feet onto a hard surface. They don't protect you from getting run over.
Cycling offences are punishable by on the spot fines. I think cycling down the town in Totnes is dangerous and should be penalised. "Furious cycling" is the old term for cycling recklessly. Lets hope Jason and the other PCSOs know this one.
