Rollerblading is like brandishing a weapon

Obvious they're a weapon. Blades, so they must be. 

Lol, a few weeks back cycling on the Cambridge Busway a rear light suddenly appeared in front of me as I wnt down into a long dip as I went to move right so did they then.  I thought about moing to the left, then the the red light moved left.  Doh, then I realised it was a n inline skater

Having run an inline hire van in the 90s and done a lot of inline skating, including stupid, late night downhills and car park raids, I can tell you there are three methods:

The 'brake' - next to useless rubber stopper just there to convince people they can get out of trouble.

The T - as above, you drag the trailing skate at 90 deg to direction of travel to create drag (actually works well) just like you would with an ice skate

Dump-stop - *providing you are wearing pads and wrist guards* you can move from a T and twist, landing on your knees and wrists. Dramatic, very effective, saved me a few times.

As for inline skates in traffic... well that's a terrible idea, about the same as brakeless fixies. Sure there are very skilled people who will be fine, it's the people who are aspiring to be very skilled you have to watch out for.

Bloody ridiculous out of touch judges, again.

What he did was stupid and reckless, and deserved punishment given the state of the womans injuries. But the rollerblades as weapons is just stupid!

You can hockey stop on in-line skates, and they do have some sort of friction brake block that can be quite effective when used properly. So they have brakes, and this completely undermines her following point.

The problem isn't that he was using skates so much, it's that he was moving at speed on a pavement, and couldn't hope to stop in the distance avilable when someone stepped out in front of him. The same could be saidf if he was doing sprints on a busy pavement and plowed into the woman. He should have been prosecuted and sentanced on the recklessness of his actions and the risk posed to others. The use of skates, to my mind, is incidental.

It’s interesting that  Judge Sally Cahill presumably went unchallenged when she said: “He does not have any brakes..............He is going down a main busy street, knowing he can’t stop.” 

Apart from a few minutes at a cycle show, I’ve always skated on ice skates.  It might not be good for the wheels, but can’t you do a ‘hockey stop’ on inline skates?  My short experience taught me that in line skates are very easy to use if you can ice skate. It’s a pity I’ve long lost touch with the mate who used to commute from Mile End to Victoria on inline skates.  It never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t have techniques for emergency braking.