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A good reason not to go full gas in Richmond Park (CC BY-NC 2.0 aglet:Flickr)London Dynamo rider fined for 41mph in Richmond Park resigns from club
The rider fined for riding in Richmond Park at 41mph has resigned from his cycling club, London Dynamo, although he was not a member of the club when he was pinged descending the park's Sawyer's Hill.
Rory Palmer, 42, was fined a total of £150 after pleading guilty to exceeding the 20mph speed limit in the park on January 2.
Palmer was facing expulsion from London Dynamo, which insists its members obey the Highway Code.
Paul Harknett, chairman of the club, told road.cc that Palmer had joined the club just three weeks ago, and is "embarrassed and apologetic" about the affair.
Harknett says Palmer was new to the area and had not previously ridden round Richmond Park in the clockwise direction that takes you down Sawyer's Hill.
According to Harknett, Palmer "was certainly unaware of possible police speed enforcement, nor their usual trap location at the foot of Sawyers."
He said: "There was no traffic on the descent down Sawyers according to Rory."
Police stop and fine a couple of riders per year, says Harknett but a look at Strava segments such as Sawyer's Hill past Holly Lodge and the notoriously fast descent of Broomfield Hill, now flagged as hazardous shows many many riders going as fast or faster than Rory Palmer.
Given the vast numbers of riders using the park, this is hardly surprising.
"Richmond Park might be the busiest road in the world for cyclists," says Harknett. At weekends, cyclists outnumber drivers three to one.
Park authorities have a challenging task managing the numerous user groups. Harknett is more aware of those issues than most as he chairs the Richmond Park police panel, which brings together representatives of the groups that use the park, local residents and and police and park authorities.
His advice to riders using the park is simple: "Don't take the piss, be observant, be respectful."
Police fine many more drivers than riders, says Harknett, and he believes they take a pragmatic approach to policing the park that helps to keep it a relatively tranquil place and, importantly, helps safeguard the large deer population.
"What we have as exists currently in Richmond Park kind of works," he says. "Despite the vast numbers using the roads it's far safer for cyclists to use the park than the local A roads.
"The police come under enormous pressure to clamp down on cyclists and they are surprisingly pragmatic. Just by parking up they slow people down.
"They do a couple of riders a year but the number of riders who go over 30-35mph must be in the thousands.
"The only way things can get better is through dialog and consultation."
Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park last year called a public meeting to discuss what he called “rising tensions” between park user groups.
But Harknett believes relations between groups, especially cyclists and drivers, have improved recently. "Things are beginning to settle down," he says, "with drivers realising they have to be patient on the hills."
Nevertheless, a follow-up meeting last week set up a working group that is working on initiatives that will improve relations between the different road user groups, improve safety and improve enjoyment of Richmond Park.
"That is the way forward," Harknett says.
Like many cycling clubs that use Richmond Park, London Dynamo has the difficult task of trying to encourage its members to behave responsibly while acknowledging that almost everyone who uses the park breaks the speed limit.
"Police hold us up as an examplar," he says. "They would like more cyclists that enjoy Richmond Park to be members of clubs because we have a code of conduct, we will discipline riders."
Nevertheless there are stories of London Dynamo riders being a little over-enthusiastic as they ride or train in the park.
"We insist riders on club runs wear club kit so if we get a complaint about say a rider flicking a V at a driver in Weybridge we can track them down," says Harknett.
He added that the club has a code of conduct for members (at section 7 of its membership page) and if they are spotted riding inconsiderately, he wants to hear about it.
He told the Evening Standard recently: "We have not been afraid to eject our members in the past, doing so with two cyclists who jumped red lights.”
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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53 comments
Bike courier transports person & goods via bicycle!
I'd say on the basis of LD's official position, the club secretary must have accepted a very large number of resignations
I can not believe that anyone seriously thinks bikes in Richmond Park stay under 20mph especially on the descents. If that is the Dynamo official position it is utterly laughable.
That's the LD *official* position. The *unofficial* position is "don't get caught".
The rules/byelaws/whatever it is that applies in the parks. I think at the moment it suits the Parks to have them so woolly and poorly defined. A bit of confusion is great for allowing a few not-strictly-legal fines to slip through, keep all the riders (mostly) behaving themselves. From the Parks point of view:
if they say "the speed limit applies to absolutely every human powered vehicle" then someone will take them to court and win cos, as pointed out, not all bikes have speedos, there's no official calibration, what about someone galloping on a horse, blah blah.
If they say "the speed limit does not apply to bikes" then every MAMIL there is going to be hitting 40+ mph on the descents and things will get messy.
But a bit of a grey area - it might be legal, it might not. Job done, people will obey the limit (mostly) just in case it does apply.
They've just introduced a "no drones" law in the Royal Parks as well; that one came about due to some aerial footage of Buckingham Palace which was filmed from a quadcopter launched from Green Park so now all the Royal Parks are no-fly zones for radio controlled aircraft. Again, I'm not sure how easy that one is to enforce or indeed how legal their position is on the subject.
London Dynamo rider acting like a pretentious moron. Surely, it can't be true?!
Or, to put it another way, it would be unusual for the Explanatory notes to read, "Yeah, we messed up. It was a close one but we can't have those two wheel maniacs getting off on some technical stuff. This should sort it. Oh yeah, there was some car parking stuff as well."
I thought case law about this was established in the high court in the 70s when cyclists took the fining for speeding to appeal.
Now the law may have changed, hope not.
I have to say fine seems disproportionate.
Road cc had an article on this last year stating lawyer available pro bono to fight these cases.
If plod applies invalid fines, then is found to do so, then does it again there should be a law making that a crime so we stop the repetitive invalid overzealous use of regulation. Don't agree with fining cyclists got going fast unless thee is really dangerous behaviour in which case use the dangerous cycling laws not speed limits. Stop,limiting people's freedom and get a life!
This times lots.
Normal advice for driving a car is 'Don't be the fastest thing on the road'. Same applies to riding a bike in what appears to be London's race bike display centre.
I don't think anybody knows the actual rules around speed limits/bicycles in Royal Parks, even the Parks themselves. There have been various amendments to various bits of legislation but it certainly seems from the various cases that have come to light that there's a huge grey area in the middle of it all and even clear even if speed limits do apply, it's not clear if it could ever be legally binding.
Main thing is simply not to be an idiot. Everyone speeds around Richmond Park - drivers and cyclists - but so long as you're only doing about 25mph and not 40, you're unlikely to run into any problems. Same on any road - 53mph in a 50 mph limit and no-one cares; 80mph and you'd be looking at a speeding ticket regardless of how much other traffic was around at the time.
I've got a couple of laps around RP with an average speed of >20mph and I'm nowhere near the top of any of the leaderboards!
Incidentally, Legislation.gov.uk isn't awfully reliable.
Acts of Parliament are mostly updated but it's a slow process. Most Statutory Instruments (Orders, Regulations etc) are not, so the version you see is an old one.
So looking there isn't really very helpful. I had to use my Lexis Nexis access to get to see the most recent stuff.
But if you read the notes
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/2695/pdfs/uksiem_20102695_en.pdf
the purpose relates to cars, it does not intend to extend the scope to include bicycles into the definition of vehicle, the earlier act does differentiate between motor vehicles and bicycles.
and the really stupid one
so use a mountain bike or a cross bike, and do not put slicks on it!
If you look at the earlier versions they clearly separate cars and bikes into two groups.
The only real solution is a test case, or for another amendment that clarifies.
The Explanatory Notes are not part of the legislation. Statutory interpretation will default to meaning, not what may have been meant.
The Explanatory Notes are not part of the legislation. Statutory interpretation will default to meaning not what may have been meant.
The Explanatory Notes are not part of the legislation. Statutory interpretation will default to meaning not what may have been meant.
Believe it or not cyclists can break the law, and when they do, they should face the consequences (just as half the posts on this sight are about the need for irresponsible drivers to face consequences).
Surely the 'Club' should also expel any other members who have recorded Strava segments that breach the Highway Code? Starting with any of their members speeding on that stretch, expanding to any other local stretches with regular speed offenders and proceeding to any that fail to record a complete stop at stop signs, and so on.
just thought i would google LD,
http://londondynamo.co.uk/downloads/RichmondPark_Ride.pdf
I may be taking this the wrong way, and it doesn't say chaingang so speeds may not be that high, my local CG averages mid 20's, but even a reasonable group cruising is going to be shifting at over 20mph for a fair part of the ride.
How can you claim you aren't breaking the rules when it is going to be almost impossible not to? and has been stated Strava does suggest a lot of riders aren't sticking to the 20rule.
London Dynamo are the most visible in the park (as they have to wear club kit), but are mostly fine.
It tends to be people in relica pro kit that seem to overtaking badly/dangerously.
If he joined LD after this event, why is he resigning from the club? Especially when, as others have noted here, London Dynamo members dominate the Strava segments around Richmond Park?
Makes no sense.
Someone's lying.
From the original article: 'Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court was told that police officers spotted the cyclist overtaking cars as he headed towards them from the direction of Richmond Gate.'
From this article: '"There was no traffic on the descent down Sawyers according to Rory."
Well the police would never lie about anything, nor continue lying about it for 26 years...
London Dynamos won't have any members left if they throw out everyone who breaks the highway code. Can't seem to view the strava segment for Sawyers Hill (guess it has been removed) but 6/10 of the fastest going down Broomfield Hill are members of the London Dynamos and have all clocked over 35mph... https://www.strava.com/segments/5633695
There are police sanctioned time trials that go down Sawyer's every summer, which probably explains that.
Six riders out of 600 members. Hardly a representative sample.
Try again, Poirot.
I got bored after a while, but, 1700 riders have a average above 30mph, 22278 riders are 20mph and above, this is from a total of 25099 riders. How many of the 600 are in the bottom 3000 and how many in the top 22000?
As a point the OP says 6 out of the top 10, if you click randomly plenty more appear throughout the top of the leader board, and if you read comments they know they are traveling quickly.
TBH i don't really care too much, just strikes me as a rather hypocritical stance to take. The evidence exists that plenty of riders are disregarding the rules and are i assume still club members?
Makes me wonder if at some point in the future these Strava uploads could be considered 'admissible evidence' for speeding or dangerous cycling charges.
well no because the files can be edited and digitally doped, and none of the devices used to record Strava data are in any way calibrated or maintained to a standard, if my mobile phone strava data tracks were to be believed Id be the current cycling speed world record holder
So the vast majority of riders who go faster than 20mph are not Dynamos. Many will be affiliated to other clubs. And tellingly, you're not questioning why those clubs aren't ejecting them.
Do those clubs ask riders to abide by the highway code and not speed in Richmond Park?
I wonder if they expel them if they get speeding tickets in their cars as well
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