A school in Spalding says it will sanction students flouting road safety rules, after locals complained that young people on bikes are “running into pedestrians” and causing motorists to “brake sharply” in the centre of the Lincolnshire market town.
However, cycling campaigners in Spalding have responded to the claims by urging parents to set a better example when driving to school, criticising the “angry, intolerant” nature of the UK’s roads.
According to the Spalding and South Holland Voice, the behaviour of young cyclists in the town centre has proved an issue in recent years, and has been raised in council meetings.
This week, an anonymous member of the public contacted the local newspaper to claim that they had witnessed young people in Spalding Academy uniform “running red lights, running into pedestrians, and causing cars to brake sharply”.
“Before long, someone is going to be seriously hurt, whether accidentally or intentionally as disgruntled road users take matters into their own hands,” the anonymous local said.
In response to these complaints, a spokesperson for the South Lincolnshire Academies Trust, responsible for the running of Spalding Academy, insisted that the school does not tolerate “any form of poor behaviour”, adding that an increased staff presence has been situated in apparent problem areas outside of the school grounds.
“The school takes road safety seriously and this forms part of our Personal, Social, Health, and Economic (PSHE) education programme for Years 7 to 11,” the spokesperson said.
“As well as providing information on road safety in assemblies and tutorials, the school organises full days with external speakers including the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership and Lincolnshire Police to improve the personal safety of our students.
“The school works with Brake, who are a national charity, to raise awareness of road safety and each year we use the opportunity to incorporate the Road Safety Week into our curriculum.”
They continued: “As the school does not tolerate any form of poor behaviour, they enforce sanctions if students do not adhere to road safety.
“Since the start of this academic year, the school has ensured there is an increased staff presence from the senior management team outside of the school and at the top of Halmer Gardens.”
However, local cycling campaign group Pedals said the issue goes beyond road safety education in school, calling for all road users to show more respect and look out for each other.
“What can we expect of schools? They are overloaded with initiatives of various kinds, but there must be scope to teach basic safety,” Pedals spokesperson and Spalding resident David Jones said.
“How can parents be encouraged to set a better example? Are we becoming an angry, intolerant nation? Above all I would recommend being kind and talking to each other.”
This week’s debate around student cyclists isn’t the first time this year that issues concerning responsibility for safety on the roads, and how that impacts children on bikes, have been raised in Spalding.
In January, a Reform UK councillor told cyclists to “take their own responsibility” for their safety on Spalding’s roads, as a campaign was launched in the town, featuring support from Halfords and the local police, urging people on bikes to wear hi-vis clothing and use front and rear lights.
The ‘Don’t Be Dim, Be A Bright Cyclist’ campaign, which ran between 21 January and 21 February, aimed to “raise awareness about keeping cyclists safe on our roads” by emphasising that “visibility can save lives”.
Discussing the campaign at a meeting of Spalding Town Forum, independent councillor Aaron Spencer called for better education for young people when it comes to safe cycling, arguing that the town forum itself should aim to fund protective equipment which could be handed out in local schools.
Reform UK councillor Ingrid Sheard agreed that the responsibility for ensuring cyclists wear lights and ride safely is “not just down to police”.
“It’s also down to parents to ensure their kids have lights on their bikes and everybody to take responsibility,” she said, before describing an encounter with a young cyclist she had told to “get off” his bike in Spalding town centre.
“I’ve been in town and when a young person has cycled past me I’ve said, ‘please get off your bike’,” she said.
“They biked away, came back and gave me a mouthful. I had a conversation with them. I asked them why they felt the need to ride through and they said, ‘because everyone else does it’. So I said, ‘why does that make it right?’
“I think that’s the opportunity I need to spin. Also, people need to take their own responsibility.”
19 thoughts on “School to sanction ‘dangerous’ young cyclists jumping red lights and forcing drivers to “brake sharply” – as locals warn “disgruntled” motorists will “take matters into their own hands””
Fair enough, as long as the authorities sanction dangerous drivers.
Two unrelated issues here. The police should be nailing these kids along with any car drivers being silly. However, speaking from a teachers point of view, outside school the school should mind its own business.
Speaking from a former (and married to a current) teacher’s point of view it is a school’s business what pupils do outside school when wearing the uniform and travelling to and from school and the DfE guidance makes this very clear. What pupils do outside school can cause lasting reputational damage to the institution and when it comes to pupils bullying and threatening other school members clearly the school’s remit should not end at the school gate.
Whether the school is right to respond so strongly to an anonymous letter in the local press is another matter, but more generally there are lots of things that pupils do, or that happens to pupils, beyond the school gates that are still the school’s business.
Teachers do have the power to discipline pupils for behaviour outside school and there might be occasion when this is appropriate. But just as with the truancy legislation, it is ends up being used in overreach when in many cases, the outcomes should be parental. On the other hand, schools often get letters from local residents complaining about pupil’s behaviour outside of school. Why they don’t respond by telling the complainant that it’s a parental responsibility until they enter the school gates, I don’t know. If there’s a pattern of complaint, such as in this case, then they can design some parental comms and in-school coaching around that. However, the biggest problem around schools is not the pupils in my experience, but the incredibly poor driving of many parents – parking on verges, pavements, on corners and zig-zag lines is commonplace outside my local secondary. And most of them live within walking distance anyway.
Every day’s a school day; I had no idea that cyclists had to ‘wear lights’. Silly me, I thought the lights had to be fixed to one’s bicycle. I’m grateful for Ms. Sheard for taking the time and trouble to enlighten us all, chapeau!
In fairness, the actual quote says “ensure their kids have lights on their bikes” – the ‘wear lights’ bit seems to be a Mallonism.
…and I enjoyed being a sarcastic so-and-so.
“….causing cars to brake sharply…”
If a car has to brake sharply it is usually a result of the motorist not concentrating, not anticipating or not leaving large enough gaps or driving at an inappropriately high speed.
Usually? Or often? Or just sometimes? Someone stepping out in front of them, or another vehicle pulling out from a side road or swerving into their path – suddenly needing to brake sharply can be down to a number of unexpected things that are nothing to do with a lack of concentration on the braking driver’s part. Sometimes the unexpected event could be a schoolkid on a bike doing something unpredictable, as kids sometimes do. Kids take risks on bikes – I know I did when I was a kid. I got away with it, but I look back as an adult at some of the things I did while cycling in traffic and I realise that I was probably a nightmare for more than one poor driver whose path I crossed.
Why the assumption that if someone had to brake sharply for a child on a bike, it must have been down to the driver’s inattention?
Ok. Perhaps very often is a better phrase to use.
My comments are based on my observations from spending hundreds of hours driving and cycling on urban and rural roads.
The general levels of drivers’ concentration, anticipation and allowance for the unexpected and consideration for other road users are absolute pants these days.
Most days while cycling I experience drivers overshooting onto roundabouts or braking hard behind me because they have noticed me later than they should.
“…an anonymous member of the public contacted the local newspaper to claim that…”, this isn’t worth an article.
The fact that an anonymous member of the public contacted the local newspaper to complain about cyclists isn’t worth an article, the fact that a school has reacted to said anonymous complaint (which as well as being anonymous seems quite threatening in nature) by saying they’re going to increase monitoring of their cycling pupils and sanctioning them definitely is.
Show us the video, otherwise it didn’t happen. If I lived in Spalding, I would soon provide a video of drivers behavingvery badly, and the police would ignore it, and that would be the end of this outbreak of outrage. We know the hyper-junk press make up anti-cyclist propaganda to feed the frothing nutters, and this could all be typical fictitious right-wing tripe. I don’t see any cyclist misbehaviour up here, although that’s largely because there aren’t any cyclists. I haven’t seen any cyclist committing red light offences like this:
(sorry, the road.cc system is not yet able to cope properly with links to UpRide, but it usually works in the end)
but the police don’t accept that it’s a real offence, just like they view long term MOT offences such as HN21 VXB. When I sent the Garstang Neighbourhood Policing Team this photo of the vehicle illegally parked for 2 days continuously 150 yards from the NPT base at Garstang Police Station, they eventually replied that they didn’t have the time to investigate (an actual quotation) “your alleged offences”
The kids should set up Critical Mass Spalding, that would really set the cat amongst the pigeons. BikeStormz Spalding?
How many of the people complaining voted for political parties that are complicit in the close of youth clubs etc?
@boopop Presumably simoninspalding of this parish would be up for leading a “pack” (“mob”?) of such cyclists, if not already doing so?
Out of curiosity, I took a look at the final issue in the story – I’ve occasionally ridden past the town centre on Audax events, and I know the confusion there has been in my local area over what is actually a motor vehicle exclusion and not a full pedestrianisation.
Two minutes’ research shows that the pedestrianisation was botched, and further that councillors did not intend to exclude bikes (because they were debating asking cyclists to slow down). However, the newspaper report still talks of excluding “vehicles”, when the sense of it suggests that they only wanted to exclude “motor vehicles”, and in any case they only actually managed to exclude parked motor vehicles:
https://www.lincsonline.co.uk/spalding/news/new-order-is-needed-so-that-town-traffic-rules-can-actually-9440551/
https://democracy.sholland.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=19674
On Street View, there are 6-10 main entrance points to the area. The photos are four years old but, at that time, I could only find two with No Vehicles signs. Bizarrely, one of those had car parking just beyond it (i.e. motorists had to ignore the sign in order to park). Otherwise it was mainly bollards (which don’t of themselves mean No Cycling) and no actual signage at all. Two small alleys also had No Cycling, fair enough.
Teaching careful cycling is always a good idea. However, if, as appears to be the case, no-one in Spalding actually understands what the rules are or how the law works, it seems harsh to ask the schools to help to enforce on children rules that are not actually in place.
‘…….criticising the “angry, intolerant” nature of the UK’s roads.’
Angry intolerant drivers surely? That’s the thing about drivers, it’s always someone else’s fault.
well done that school
i daily drive the main access road to a huge secondary school and this is what i see on a daily basis
– cycling while using their phone
– no lights
– suddenly swerving into the middle of the road
– never stopping at junctions
Remember these are the future car drivers
But their motor vehicles will already have lights fitted, and not that easy to steal. And there are only a couple of weeks around the winter solstice that it will actually be dark at school opening and closing time, a few more the further north you go.