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Bristol Bath Railway Path riders (copyrght samsaundersleeds:Flickr)Bath-Bristol path "not the place for reckless speed cycling" says Sustrans after 9-year-old breaks collar bone in collision
Active travel charity Sustrans has said that facilities like the Bristol Bath Railway path are “not the place for reckless speed cycling” after a 9-year-old boy sustained a broken collar bone in a collision on the extremely popular shared-use route.
Sustrans is discussing with the local council and path managers how the code of conduct can be better promoted after the father of Theo Delves-Broughton wrote to the organisation to call for better safety measures on the path.
According to the Bath Chronicle’s Laura Trem, Theo sustained a broken collar bone when he and an adult rider collided.
Theo was riding with his dad Nic, mum Emma and sister Ava, seven when they encountered two pedestrians on the path. Theo pulled out to overtake them and rode into the path of the oncoming rider, who Nic Delves-Broughton said was travelling “way too fast”.
Both Theo and the other rider came off their bikes in the collision. Theo’s family took him to the Royal United Hospital where doctors found he had broken his collarbone. The condition of the other rider, who stopped and was “very apologetic”, is not known.
Mr Delves-Broughton has written to Sustrans calling for better safety measures on the path, including warning signs to encourage people to slow down and take more care, and marshals at busy times.
Sustrans area manager Jon Usher said: “Traffic-free paths are not the place for reckless speed cycling; they cater to a variety of users by providing a safe, non-threatening environment to travel in.
“Unfortunately, a minority of people on bikes choose to speed as fast as they can on these routes, which makes them less safe for everyone else.”
Mr Delves-Broughton said: “It is a very popular path, especially with families with young children.
“Some cyclists go too fast, and accidents can happen.
“I want more to be done to make people slow down, more care needs to be taken on the path.”
Describing the crash, he said: “The other cyclist was coming way too fast for the crowed conditions on that afternoon.
“It was a terrible accident and both my son and the other rider where thrown from their bikes onto the ground.
“The other cyclist was very apologetic about it.
“If that other cyclist had hit an elderly, frail person with brittle bones the consequences could be dire and even result in a death.
“Something needs to be done to keep the speed down on this particular path.
“It is a very busy path, especially on a Sunday and it is packed with young families with learner riders, dogs, the elderly and infirm and also the idiotic who are unpredictable at best.”
Sustrans area manager Jon Usher added: “The Bath to Bristol path is a shared space so it is important that cyclists and walkers follow a few basic rules to ensure that accidents like this don’t happen.
“We are discussing the issue with South Gloucestershire Council and the Avon & Frome Valley Partnership that manage the Railway Path to see how the code of conduct on shared paths can be more widely promoted.
“As cyclists campaign for greater respect on our roads, it’s vital those of us using bicycles give respect to everyone using traffic-free paths.”
A history of calls to slow down
It's not the first time there have been calls for fast riders to slow down on the Bath-Bristol path. Last July Jon Usher blamed the rise in popularity of drop-handlebar road bikes for an increase in complaints along the path, and in May the organisation threatened to put barriers on some routes if riders did not slow down. In April there were calls for crossing marshals and a 20mph speed limit after Anne Tufney was hit from behind by another cyclist.
It has been pointed out that the Bath-Bristol path, completed in 1986, has been somehting of a victim of its own success. Its current popularity was unforeseen and it was not built with current best practice in mind, which would make it wider and have some separation between pedestrian and cycling areas.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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119 comments
Jesus wept.
pssssst...anyone wanna buy a plastic case for their mobile?
Bravo Goingroundincycles - agree with every word you have written here. I normally keep out these threads, but this one has gone to far. The selfishness and intolerance of some posters on here is simply breath taking - no wonder cycling has such an image problem. Also i love the hypocrisy of the 'victim blaming' going on here - yet in other stories where someone makes the mildest suggestion that a cyclist might want to take a tiny bit of responsibility for their own safety etc. there are howls of indignation / outrage. Its clear that many people posting this crap are not parents and have no idea what they are talking about.
Its as simple as this: if you ride at 20 miles per hour and hit a small child, you could kill them. Think about that. That will live with you for the rest of your life. And no amount of selfrighteous ranting will ever change that. My son nearly got run down in similar circumstances few years ago - I wouldn't have been nearly so restrained as the parents above.
i'd rather use the A4 than take my chance on the cycling path with the speeding choppers with no manners and no bike skills and no respect for anyone else. selfish, self-righteous assholes on bikes.
I would consider the right set of rules for any form of mechanical transport, on a highway of whatever form, must be the Highway Code. The point is that everywhere and in every circumstance, we must be considerate of every other person, animal, and any other relevant life form that we come across on or near the thoroughfare we are using, no matter how inane or incompetent we consider them to be. If we aren't and an accident happens as a result, we deserve to be sued for every cent we've got by the injured party.
Have I missed something here? Exactly how fast was this adult cyclist going? "He looked like he was going fast" seems a bit vague.
What was it? A weapons grade muppet? 
Or is everyone filling in the blanks? As they say "Presumption is the mother of all f..ups"
I am loving your quotes GoingRoundInCycles
There's a lot of circularity here but if you use a route subject to certain publicly available guidelines (sound familiar?) and you ignore them and are involved in an accident, don't think that your opinions are going to count for squat diddly in a court of law. The judge will look at the publicly available guidelines (on the internet) and decide if you are outside of them. If you have ignored the guidelines, I hope you are very well insured with a policy without caveats for your own stupidity, otherwise you will be writing a large cheque.
We can argue over who the routes are for etc but it is irrelevant in terms of this story.
Everyone who uses this brilliant facility just needs to show alittle bit of common sense. If it's clear then it's ok to go fast, if it's busy with pedestrians and family cyclists then slow down and be careful.
Pedestrians need to share the responsibility also, I have seen cyclists knocked off their bikes by dogs not on leads.
Accidents are rare on the path, and are minor at best. Please let's all just take a chill pill everyone.
well if sustrans have opened up the route and you want me to defend you on the basis of DfT guidelines you might want to instruct another brief...
Shared use is always problematic but if you assume primacy of the rapid cyclist it will invariably be wrong.
Regardless of who has "primacy of tenure" on any route, what worries me most is that guidelines issued by the likes of sustrans are no more than common sense.
For the beady eyed, you might have seen my questioning of sustrans routes but I get it. As I have said elsewhere, the battle for cycling is nothing to do with those of us who already do, it is the 60% who want to, but are too afraid to do so. That is what sustrans are doing and that is where he battle will be won
It's really not perfectly reasonable. I'm a dog-owner, and she's well trained, but I wouldn't take her on a shared path like this on anything other than a short lead. That said, I wouldn't take her for a walk on one anyway, I just think it's unnecessary to do so on something which has, ostensibly, been designed for people to get around. I consider those taking their dogs on them off the lead, or on an extendable lead to be pretty inconsiderate.
Point of order - I think it's rather unfair to use the 'victim' tag here purely because the child was injured, as it insinuates that the other rider was at fault, when the facts say that the child rode into his path.
I would have to agree in principle, in that reckless speed cycling should be engaged on the public highway along with the reckless speed motoring...but that as The Times would carefully argue is different
If someone were to walk their horse on the M1 and it got hurt society would gather round to pile mutual contempt on the feckless owner.
Walk a dog on a shared use cycle path however and thats just peachy.
Why? Motorways are for cars and shared use cycle paths are a PR exercise to convince the greater public that government cares about sustainable transport solutions...eg they are follies not to be confused with credible transport links.
I presume the TDF organisation will snub British government officials when the VIP passes are being issued given their completely hostile attitude towards the two wheeled tax dodging lycra lout?
"We have no evidence that the adult cyclist was belting along knocking out a strava segment, nor that the parents were not trying to control their child."
Go back to the code of conduct. There is nothing in there about "control" of a child. As an adult, a greater burden of responsibility is (rightly) on your shoulders around children.
I've not read all the comments, so no idea if this has been said.
But, from reading the post, the child pulled out to overtake pedestrians & was hit by an oncoming cyclist?
According to the father that rider was going far too fast.
I have children we cycle on both roads & shared use paths, my 9yro son always rides in front of me, he is an excellent cyclist, but he is small he can't see the road/path ahead as clearly as I can, he can't see over/around parked cars or pedestrians like I can.
The main cycle path we use along the seafront is busy, a constant stream of cyclists & pedestrians going in both directions & yes some cyclists ride faster than they should, but it is my responsibility to ensure my childs safety.
If it's not clear for him to pull out & pass pedestrians then I call out for him to slow down, just the same as if it's clear I'll call out "go for it"
I sympathise this child got injured, and I do believe there should be a 'speed limit' set on these sort of paths, clearly signed, OK it wont stop all the racers, but maybe it would make the majority, think & slow down.
But at the end of the day, if this child was a dog running along the path, around other walkers & into an oncoming cyclists we'd all be blaming the dog owner.
I'm glad he's not specified what type of path user is idiotic, I've seen some pretty unpredictable pedestrians on that path before.
So we want drivers to use caution and respect cycles on the roads shared by bikes and cars, but aren't prepared to use caution and respect pedestrians on paths shared by cycles and walkers? That's what it sounds like reading some of these comments.
Anyone who thinks cycles should have some kind of right of way on these paths is squarely in the same mould as Clarkson.
Yes, pedestrians need to do their bit too, but as the faster users cyclists are ultimately responsible for controlling their speed around other slower users, especially children & dogs who can be expected to behave erratically. Speed up if it's clear, slow down if it isn't - is that so terribly difficult? If that doesn't fit what you want to do, don't use the path.
I hope we can agree that Sustrans opens up routes to cyclists. We may not like shared routes but it is access to a route that did not previously exist. There are plenty of people who hate shared routes who are not cyclists, a good example being the petitioners who want shared access ended on Wandsworth & Tooting common, which would force cyclists back on to dangerous roads (similar to the A4 in this story). It sounds like there are plenty of non cyclists who used sections of this route before and not everyone welcomes the arrival of cyclists. Sustrans should be applauded for getting over this first hurdle. Guess what ? Some of these tracks get tarmaced and become even more accessible. However this doesn't have a snowflakes chance in hell of happening if cyclists behave like numpties on it. Remember, we are like the new kid arriving at school, no one likes self centred gobshites.
As for legal force, I fear it is going to take an injured party suing to demonstrate to some people that there are standards you need to adhere to or else you will be found liable for your negligence. Sustrans have gone to the bother of spelling them out for you. If I were in any doubt, I'd read them, take them on board and adhere to them to make sure I don't become the test case.
And if Sustrans have ignored the DfT guidelines and accidents occur then aren't they also in the firing line for creating substandard paths? Exactly the same as those calling for corporate manslaughter against TfL?
Yes people should use common sense, but they won't we all know that! So it is Sustrans job to ensure the paths are fit for purpose. Once they have decided what that purpose is!
Mr Delves-Broughton said: “It is a very popular path, especially with families with young children.
“Some cyclists go too fast, and accidents can happen.
“I want more to be done to make people slow down, more care needs to be taken on the path.”
Describing the crash, he said: “The other cyclist was coming way too fast for the crowded conditions on that afternoon.
“It was a terrible accident and both my son and the other rider where thrown from their bikes onto the ground.
“The other cyclist was very apologetic about it.
“If that other cyclist had hit an elderly, frail person with brittle bones the consequences could be dire and even result in a death.
“Something needs to be done to keep the speed down on this particular path.
“It is a very busy path, especially on a Sunday and it is packed with young families with learner riders, dogs, the elderly and infirm and also the idiotic who are unpredictable at best.”
-------------------------------------------
Right so what we have is not a commuter (not that it matters in the slightest) but a leisure cyclist cycling on a crowded shared path on a Sunday afternoon, travelling so fast that he was unable to stop in time to prevent a collision with a child.
Not only that but he was travelling so fast that the poor child and this adult halfwit were 'thrown from their bikes onto the ground'.
Right.
You know what, Sorry Kid I Didn't See You isn't good enough. If that was my child I am telling you that he would have needed to have that racing bike surgically removed after I'd parked it securely in his arse crack. The parents are saints.
At the very least, there were two pedestrians and four cyclists coming slowly the other way and this unobservant, inconsiderate or just plain moronic cyclist continued to cycle at a speed sufficient to throw him to the ground in a collision with a child and break the young lad's collar bone i.e. massively faster than walking pace. Totally inappropriate. Totally indefensible.
Reading some of these comments, I don't know whether to laugh or shake my head with pity at the immaturity. The primary purpose of a cycling path (shared or otherwise) is to provide a safer option for those who would prefer not to cycle on the roads. They are not built to save you time on your commute or allow you to average 20mph or whatever. That isn't the criteria for measuring their success.
A shared cycle path that gets you to work 20 mins later than you would have got there on busy roads because you are not a moron and proceed with extreme caution around pedestrians is not a failure and hasn't been badly designed. Using it massively reduced your chances of avoiding a collision, which is its purpose. If you got to work in one piece with massively reduced stress levels, the path did its job.
So if speed and efficiency is your ultimate priority on a bike .... you know where the road is. Good luck.
For the rest of us who would just rather get to our destinations in one piece, shared paths are great at best and better than nothing at worst ... just don't be a muppet around pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers, skateboarders, rollerskaters or anyone else exercising their equal right to share the path with you .... that shouldn't be too onerous a burden, no?
Right, I am going to be a total pedant here but I am afraid people's "rights" is so often misused that it is serving to stoke up a false sense of entitlement which is leading to so many self centred thought patterns. Most frequently, people are using the term "rights" when they really mean privileges or freedoms. The difference is important as it really clouds judgments.
If you want to understand the difference, have a look here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Newcomb_Hohfeld
Over and out.
GoingRoundInCycles you seem to have the world of time at your finger tips, 8 hours spent on this thread yesterday no doubt the same today all defending Sustrans actions on a path. If you find pootling along at cycling at 5mph enjoyable, fine but some of us travel more than a couple of miles a day and have a life at home.
Arrgghh the retired pootler with nowhere to cycle but all the time in the world.
A footpath is a footpath , is a footpath, is a footpath! Whether a footpath is shared or not is irrelevant; it is still a footpath.
On a footpath expect the following:-
Children (on foot, scooters, cycles (with or without stabilisers), individual or in gaggles)
Teenagers (texting, listening to music, on the phone and general mucking about being young)
Adults (doing everything teenagers and children do except being young)
Dogs (on or off lead)
This list could go on and on but the important thing is - ALL these users are unpredictable. Adjust your speed accordingly.
Just remember a car doing 30mph is travelling slowly but a cyclist doing 25mph will be described as 'speeding'.
semper in excretia sumus; solim profundum variat
And the DfT* is quite clear a utility cycle path should be safe to 20mph. So who wins DfT or Sustrans.... Hence why it has to be decided what the path is for.
*section 8.2, Cycle Infrastructure Design
End of the day the accident could have been avoided by a lot of different decisions, and on the basis that the adult cyclist appears not to have been injured i would suggest they weren't actually going that fast! Witnesses are notoriously unreliable!
Problem i have is the path is not fit for purpose if incidents like this happen. You have people complaining about the various cycle superhighways in London being substandard, sorry the issue is global.
Infrastructure for non motorised travel, be it foot or cycle, is so often badly designed and all to often results in stupid accidents. I have seen footpaths cross 70mph dual carriageways or Railway lines! Then there are the subways that flood in wet weather. How about shared use paths that cross driveways or that are covered in tree roots?
To say that conflict will always happen is a very defeatist approach, shall we just say that cars kill people and not try and do something about it?
I see a lot of shared paths and all too often they simply don't work as cycle paths yet this is what is provided, this is what drivers demand we use. How often do you hear the comment, why aren't you using the cycle path? Yet when you look at it the path doesn't work. Humans are vey predictable, the way they behave is predictable and it is down to designers to minimise the results of human stupidity.
People do what is easy, why don't people stop driving and cycle more? Because it is easy to drive!
It won't be won by failing to keep up with the capacity needed and then reacting to the obvious consequences by flaming the users instead of the councils who are failing to provide enough capacity to keep up with traffic growth.
Contrast the failure to expand the Bristol to Bath cycle routes with the dualling of the A4 and the expansions of parallel A roads.
This made up code of conduct by Sustrans, what is it? I mean its not legally binding, it can never be enforced and wouldnt stand up in court, so what is the point of it?
I appreciate some of the work Sustrans have done but their targets are 1) weekend leisure cyclists 2) children 3) students. They are not speaking for me as a weekend club rider and week commuter, they seem to go quite on issues relating to myself and safer roads yet the Sustran cycle routes I have used in Leeds are the most anti commuter routes you can imagine, its safer and quicker on the roads.
Well, we're prepared to do so, but can't we also expect other cycles and walkers to use caution and respect too? This coverage seems like a one-sided pile-in except for these comments.
It probably looked clear enough to the other rider until the child swerved out.
Don't use the path? OK, so if we don't like the cycle-hostile A roads (which the Councils that Used to Be Avon occasionally refuse to make cycle-friendlier because most cyclists use the BBRP), shall we all just give up this cycling for transport lark and drive instead?
Ever heard of shift work? no thought not, you may be surprised to learn that LOTS of people work on every day of the week
If you come to an abrupt halt you tend to some off, proves nothing in itself. If the adult was cut up bruised etc you might be on to something.
Right.
maybe the parents should have told there 9 year old how to ride in a shared environment. That pulling out without looking is probably a bad idea!
speed and breaks are unrelated, it is how you land that causes the problem. a crash at 5 mph might break a bone, it might not.
If you feel the only point of cycle paths is to get cycles off the road, then IMO they have failed. Or you have incredibly low expectations. IF you want people to stop driving you have to make it attractive not to drive, making journeys longer, more convoluted, mixing dogs, runners, etc. using indirect routes to add even more distance, all of this makes cycling less attractive. It also gives a substantial number of drivers a stick to beat cyclists with, you have your "cyclepath" use it!!!!
and a path that takes 20mins longer than the alternative routes won't be used because it takes 20mins longer. If the path is occupied by pedestrians, dogs on extended leads, running loose, it very soon becomes safer to play with the cars because they are predictable in their stupid movements.
No I want to get to work in a reasonable time, If I am in a park I expect to see people playing if I am on the road I don't expect people to be playing. Is that hard?
If the purpose of a shared path is a park, yes, if the purpose of a shared path is transport then it has failed and should never be refered to as a shared path/cycle path or anything else. It is not, is does the chances of getting decent infrastructure in the UK a disservice. So to sum up a bad cycle path is worse than useless.
If you want to create parks and green spaces where people cycle then fine, but you have to design it to accept some will go to fast and stop it happening, people will be people. But DO NOT CALL IT A CYCLE PATH!!!!!!!!
I really dislike the kinds of posts that just make blanket straw-man accusations against unspecified other posters but don't actually engage with anything anyone has actually said.
However, the BBRP was constructed as a shared cycling and walking path by "cycling charity sustrans" then called "cyclebag" (source). As a shared path, it should be shared, and that means everyone sharing responsibility.
And there's the nub of the problem. Is cycling only for people who don't need to get anywhere at any particular time, or have time to pootle along at little more than walking speed?
Here we've got a cyclist probably doing less than 20mph (the BBRP predates current design standards and there are few sections where you can go that fast without risking damage to yourself or the bike) and is still criticised for their speed - while as others opine in earlier comments, the crash may well have happened to some degree at a lower speed anyway because the basic problem was visibility/not looking before you move.
What difference does it make? If this 'shift worker' chooses a shared path to commute to work on a Sunday afternoon then he should leave extra time for his journey knowing that in all probability the path will be busy and therefore a fair proportion of his journey will be achieved at slightly faster than walking pace. If that isn't good enough, use the road.
How do you know that they didn't? Do you know anything at all about children? They take time to learn things and then they forget, lose concentration, get over excited ... etc and then they have to be reminded repeatedly until the lesson sticks. They are not stupid, they are inexperienced and immature. It isn't their fault, it is biology.
Children can be expected to make mistakes. It is their privilege, that is how they learn, as we all learned. You would expect a supposedly mature individual to recognise that and cut them a little slack wouldn't you?
Unfortunately, the little kid got run over by an overgrown deluded kid who seems to think he is the next Chris Froome.
The crash shouldn't have happened at all if the adult cyclist was using the path responsibly.
The point of an alternative route for cyclists is to provide a safer environment for those who would prefer to cycle separated from motorised vehicles. My expectations are realistic. I do not expect existing buildings to be demolished or pavements narrowed on Britain's already narrow streets to create extra space for segregated cycle lanes. Too expensive. Too impractical in most places.
So cycle routes will often need to be more circuitous, sometimes isolated and not necessarily the fastest method from A to B.
If that bothers you, use the roads, quit cycling or lobby the Government to spend millions of taxpayers money on constructing a nationwide network of athlete-cyclist-only highways, no pootlers, no dawdlers, no children, no mobility scooters allowed .... just serious cyclists interested in getting from A to B as quickly as possible without encountering any inconvenience or obstruction on their time trial / commute.
Good luck with that.
Your choice. If it is the choice between getting up 20 minutes earlier for work or chancing getting squished by an HGV, I know what I would choose. Especially in poor weather for visibility. Why are you in such a hurry?
I haven't any stats but I think you are wrong. A collision with a car is probably going to have greater consequences than a collision with shared path users, if you are encountering them at walking pace of course, which you should be.
It isn't a road. It is a shared cycle path and you have no more right to be there than anyone else. So if you don't want to come into contact with people enjoying their leisure, get back on the road.
It can be both. I cycle through Greenwich Park nearly every day. I also take my dog for a walk there twice a day.
I also cycle on the Thames Path. Parts of it are wide open and invite speed but on summer weekends it can be packed with people enjoying a stroll with their kids and pets and that is fine too. The thing is, I adjust my cycling to the conditions at the time, not the conditions as I think they should be, cycling like a lunatic because the sign says 'cycle path' and therefore I should be able to do 20mph at all times if I want to. It's the infrastructure that's wrong, not me!
Last word.
The purpose of a pavement is transport. However, I cannot walk down Oxford Street as fast as I can walk on the pavement on the road where I live. At times, progress can be painfully slow for me as I am a fast walker.
What would you say to a person complaining about the Oxford Street pavements, branding them as failures, because he keeps having to stop for clueless tourists, people walking four abreast, pushchairs ...etc and cannot get from A to B as quickly as he would like?
I know what I would say: "Get a life you arrogant *******! The world does not revolve around you and your needs, nor should it!".
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