A cyclist has appealed for dog owners to take precautions after being seriously injured by an “out of control animal” on a cycle path.
Stuart Butler, 42, expects be off work for at least three months following the incident on the new cycle route by Powderham Castle in Kenton, near Exeter this week.
He says a small black dog ran between the wheels of his bike, causing him to fall and shatter his arm.
Stuart, who works as a train driver, told Devon Live: “I’m 42 years old so I’m not one of these cyclists that goes racing.
“I was just out on a nice late afternoon ride to keep fit when I was knocked of my bike as I was approaching Powderham crossing by a young out of control little black dog which ran straight into my wheels. It was impossible to avoid.
“It was an area where there is two separate paths one on top of bank and the new cycle path below. The dog had run down from the bank and when I fell off the bike I came straight down on my elbow and left side.
“I was in absolute agony and had to wait 90 minutes for the ambulance, but it never turned up because they were dealing with higher priority cases and mine wasn’t an open wound.
“A cyclist stopped for assistance and the dog owner stayed with me until I was collected and taken to hospital. In the end my wife picked me up and took me to the hospital.”
He will now be in plaster for 12 weeks.
“The owner admitted they did not have much control over the dog yet as he was young,” said Stuart. “If he had been on a lead it wouldn’t have happened. I like dogs and I’ve got nothing against them, but if they share a footpath with cyclists then dogs not under control need to be on a lead.
“My concern is what happened to me could happen to anyone, especially now we’re in the Easter holidays and coming into the summer months.”
In 2015 we reported how a man knocked off his bike by an out-of-control dog on a retractable lead won a £65,000 payout from the dog’s owner. Anthony Steele, 59, suffered a fractured skull when the dog leapt into his path while he was training for a Coast to Coast to event in Heysham in 2012.
Steele was riding with 10 other people when he noticed a group of people in the middle of the path and rang his bell to let them know he needed them to move aside.
However, as he passed by, a dog leapt in front of him and his bike became caught up with the retractable lead causing him to fall. Steele was off work for seven weeks and required neuro-psychotherapeutic therapy and cognitive rehab.
29 thoughts on “Cyclist off work for 3 months after “out of control dog” crossed his path”
I totally agree, twice I’ve
I totally agree, twice I’ve clipped dogs not on a lead, first time I was on a public highway and the dog ran across the road in front of me. Guess what?, the dog owner reckoned I was going too fast, 30mph limit, I was doing about 15mph. Second time was on a segregated cycleway/footway, dog owner saw me coming, made no attempt to control the dog. I slowed to walking pace and just as I drew level with the dog, it decided to walk in front of me.
Don’t get me started on retractable leads, they’re more of a menace than no lead at all,just ban them outright. How can a dog on 10 feet of lead possibly be under control?
tourdelound wrote:
I never let our dog off the lead until we’re up on the field well away from the shared-use path, and have a ball out (he’s a bit of a ball-obsessive!). I’d never have him off the lead on the roadside or on a shared-use path.
I have been bitten by a dog
I have been bitten by a dog while on bike and another time I made instinctively a sudden lane change when a dog popped from a sidewalk hidden behind street furniture. If I had time to choose I would prefer to hit the dog and fall rather than take my chances to change lane without seeing, but fortunately I was lucky.
I suppose you can now guess my opinions about pet dogs and pet dog owners…
Does the dog dazer work?
Does the dog dazer work?
No such thing as bad dogs,
No such thing as bad dogs, but plenty of bad dog owners.
Most of the shared use paths have a list of rules, one of which is keeping your dog under control, but this never seems to be enforced, and I’m not sure who would enforce it, and those ridiculous extending leads are just selfish and stupid on any shared space.
isnt there a legal thing
isnt there a legal thing about you must keep a dog under control in public,which when off a lead means they dont go running off by themselves.
amount of times dog walkers see a shared cycle path, because its free of cars, as just an extension of a park and let there mutts roam around at leisure its like an arcade game cycling along some shared paths, will you avoid the random dog hiding in the bushes.
On South Today bit of a
On South Today bit of a Breakfast last week, dog savaged horse and rider, Hampshire police said no law had been broken and no further action was taken.
ktache wrote:
thats unusual to say the least as the laws regarding ‘out of control’ dogs are pretty stringent -unlimited fine plus imprisonment as well as the dog being destroyed. I’m also nearly sure that shared paths are covered by public space orders which requires the dog to be on a lead ( preferably a short lead) at all times. Though how this is policed is another matter in itself. I remember there was a right stushie back over in NI some time back when a council decided to take a harder line on unleashed dogs. The owners were up in arms that their poor dogs were not going to get the ‘exercise’ needed.
giff77 wrote:
Dog being destoryed
Shut your mouth you short minded idiot.
S-J wrote:
In regards to the case that ktache highlighted. This dog was obviously out of control. Why the police didn’t automatically destroy the creature is beyond my ken. At the very least it should have been seized, kenneled and the owner prove to a court that the creature was of no harm to the public. Best case scenario – behaviour lessons and a muzzle. Worst case scenario – destroyed. My dad always said a dog has two bites unless it was a guard dog. 1st got a warning. The second resulting in its destruction.
Here’s a link for you to take time to look at if you can be bothered, before kicking off with insults. It might provide you with some basic knowledge that you appear to be sadly lacking in.
https://www.gov.uk/control-dog-public/overview
And if you are going to insult me let it be for my grammar in omitting to say ‘may be destroyed’ rather than a definitive ‘be destroyed’
ktache wrote:
That does not make sense. From your description the law appears to have been blatently broken..
It is a criminal offence for a dog to be ‘dangerously out of control’ in a public place.
Dangerously out of control, is defined as creating reasonable fear that it will cause harm. That fear of harm need only be a bruise. If it actually causes harm it increases the sentence. Harm does not need to happen.
If the owner states the dog is under control, which many do, and there is an incident, the it is delibrate and a far more serious type of crime.
Farm dogs, very good for
Farm dogs, very good for testing your reactions and ability to sprint.
Grahamd wrote:
and those that come racing out of travellers’ sites – not so quick but possibly more vicious!
Dog owners. It’s the 99% that
Dog owners. It’s the 99% that give the rest a bad name.
My sister has a lovely little
My sister has a lovely little dog, sadly he is keen to go for bikes, motorbikes, scooters, skateboards… it’s wheels he doesn’t like. We generally don’t let him off the retractable lead and keep it short when necessary.
There’s a similar local little dog who has gone for me, from the other side of the road, when I’ve come home late, I’ve u-turned and made friends with it but i don’t think it has understood as the bike wasn’t moving at the time. I feel sorry for it as the owner isn’t capable of keeping it on the pavement, which means it could get run over when I’m going the other way 🙁
It’s the owners that are the problem, not the dog or the lead. Same as cars being totally safe until you put an idiot in the driving seat.
I love my dogs, I love
I love my dogs, I love cycling. They don’t mix. Only an idiot dog owner would let a dog cross a cycle lane, on a lead or not. Only an idiot cyclist would trust humans to be 100% reliable. Shared use paths look lovely in the drawings but the reality is rarely up to spec.
Cycle path – yes, I think
Cycle path – yes, I think loose dogs and children and anyone not on two wheels should keep clear.
Shared use – I shall continue to ride my bike with my dogs off lead. On a shared-use facility, you shouldn’t be going faster than 12mph anyway.
Riding through groups of people, children and dogs at high speed is asking for trouble.
dottigirl wrote:
Well, true enough, but that’s why shared-use paths are crap for anything other than pure leisure riding and shouldn’t be part of any actual cycle network.
Also many of those out-of-control dogs can go for you even if you are merely walking. Am fed up with having mutts leap up at me while barking wildly as they race all over the park with their owner nowhere in sight.
they don’t care; they’ll
they don’t care; they’ll never care unless you snap the dog’s neck
usually the configuration is: walker on the cycle path, dog on the footpath, with lead stretched out in the middle like a garrotte
of course, if you bell them from behind, they give you a snotty look
Nice health care system,
Nice health care system, ninety minutes and no ambulance. That’s more alarming than anything else that happened.
velo-nh wrote:
yeah, no open wounds so not priority is absolute nonsense. Damaged organs, internal bleeding… Nah, you look fine, ’tis but a scratch.
I keep my dog on his lead on
I keep my dog on his lead on pathways and no, it isn’t one of those silly extending ones. But I agree that cyclists should take more care on shared use paths. They’re fine, but you have to be considerate and forget about Strava.
Why are dogs so thick, though
Why are dogs so thick, though? Most seem to be dumb as a box of rocks.
You don’t get cats plotting an intercept course with fast-moving objects larger than themselves. They sensibly confine such behaviour to mice and red dots.
This is the same species that likes to think any stranger coming anywhere near their territory must be a ‘threat’, to be deterred by deranged aggressive barking (and which then smugly congratulate themselves when the ‘threat’ walks past harmlessly, as they were always going to do).
Dogs appear to be singularly incapable of learning from experience.
Yeah, yeah, they have ‘instincts’ – well we’ve all got those Fido, but some of us learn when its sensible to suppress them in favour of reason and logic (some motorists excepted).
Where he was knocked off it
Local knowledge…Where he was knocked off it is actually segreated into a bike and pedestrian path, it’s not a shared path.
However, the walking path is on top of the river bank and as it’s the mouth of the river exe it often gets quite blowy so a small number of dog walkers will tend use the cycling path below which is shielded from the wind. The entire route switchs from shared to divied paths and is also a very popular route to two very busy summer pubs on the river…I tend to avoid the area at weekends it’s a bit of ‘mare.
SingleSpeed wrote:
Unfortunately (or not depending on your point of view), pedestrians still have priority even on bike paths which is why most of the time, I choose roads rather than the so-called cycle infrastructure. What’s annoying is that where you get segregated pedestrian/cycle paths, most pedestrians don’t realise that they’re walking on the cycle side. (Don’t get me started on the dog walkers who let their dogs use the cycle side and then walk on the other side – shared use, my arse).
Gosh willo is back.
Gosh willo is back.
trolls everywhere.
lets get the trolling right though. I have a dog, I hate dogs.
Obviously this his guy got what he deserved, how dare he think just cos he’s only 42 he’s not old enough to race! Just try and tell that to all the league of vets racers! You qualify at 40 to race muppet!
if you rode your bike properly you would have been going fast enough to get gravel rash and not bust bones.
Plus you might have got past before the dog got you, or at least you’d have had a chance to do it some damage.
Final bit bit of trolling is to tell willo, aka bikelikebike, that an assault by a pedestrian with a stick is not a solution, some of us might just stick the stick where you, Willo deserve it!!
“Drop the attitude and stay
“Drop the attitude and stay alive.
I should put that on a T Shirt …”
You really shouldn’t, unless you believe all cyclists killed by left turning lorries or drunk drivers died due to their attitude!
“Who is this Willo person? Seems like a sensible chap by all accounts …”
Only Willo would say that!
Isn’t putting a walking stick
Isn’t putting a walking stick through spokes a sure way to break your wrist?
We’ve had lots of issues with
We’ve had lots of issues with dogs down here. There have been several very serious dog attacks for one thing in Southampton over the past year. Then we need to add into the equation how few people use a lead where they are required. Some even get very aggressive if you happen to have conflict from the dog (like the little runt runs out from the pitch black of night under your front wheel!)