Police warn they will keep fining cyclists who ride in town centre after arrest escalates into violence

People don't look for passing cyclists or pedestrians when they come out of shops, in my experience.

(edited becase alansmurphy and joe9090 were being pedantic!)

brooksby wrote:

People don't look when they come out of shops, in my experience.

Indeed but how do they know they were mown down?

How do they know they have even left the shop if they are not looking? So many questions...

The main shopping area in central bristol is pedestrianised but shared use.  It can get pretty busy, but you just ride slower and/or more carefully.

(When I'm going through there as a pedestrian, I actually find that the users of mobility scooters tend to be more antisocial...)

brooksby wrote:

The main shopping area in central bristol is pedestrianised but shared use.  It can get pretty busy, but you just ride slower and/or more carefully.

(When I'm going through there as a pedestrian, I actually find that the users of mobility scooters tend to be more antisocial...)

I expect the mobility scooter users have had it up to here with general pedestrian behaviour. Is it my imagination or do people just not have any spatial awareness these days?

Very sensible.

IMHO the main reason Kingston works is because they have put a fair chunk of effort into surrounding routes.

Arguably it is carrot and stick;

But the stick in Kingston is 'route x will be rammed with pedestrians so you can barely do 10mph on a bike through it, and that means being a reckless twat'.

The carrot is 'route y is slightly longer, but a lot quicker and still well segregated from cars'

The stick of police fines is no where near as strong as the stick of 'a driver might crush you'; Hence why it never works...

I'm not from the area but take your point.
However. It tickles me when you see this David v Goliath battle. Compare it to the bikejacking and bike theft pandemic happening across the country. And there's not a sigle bloody Rozza in sight!

Low hanging fruit only need apply.

An excellent reason why these don't work.

Introduce a broad brush measure to fix a narrow 'youff" problem, but in practice sanctions cannot be easily applied against minors, so the council end up targeting people who are not part of the problem to justify their stupid intervention.

Do we have a list of places run by stupid bigots which should never be visited? My local one is Mansfield - 5 miles away and I have been there twice in 5 years.

The correct response is precisely the same as e-scooters - segregate to designated mobility tracks and regulate. "Mobility tracks" are called "cycle tracks" by some people.

S13SFC wrote:

Recently they caused havoc at an evening market

So the PSPO has had little effect on the problem then?

They ramped it up because of that. Previously they weren't really that bothered outside of the school holidays.

As I said, you'll not hear a local rider mither as an easy detour to get from one end to another exists. I've even ridden that detour today as the Ironman is on and the centre closed to traffic/bikes/scooters.

Car Delenda Est wrote:

S13SFC wrote:

Recently they caused havoc at an evening market

So the PSPO has had little effect on the problem then?

Low-hanging fruit, no? Council can say they're addressing what sounds like a pain point for some pedestrians. Those tasked with enforcement will be happy if they can report numbers nicked without having to deal with a pack of youths - who might be both armed AND vulnerable *.

Result - the place is spoiled for the more moderate.

* I really don't envy the police in these cases. There's risk to them, the youth are often a step ahead, I wouldn't relish someone filming me at work and posting it on the net. Whatever you do is likely to cause complaints, if not uproar. It is the job they signed up to though...

I find all that "freemen of the land / sovereign citizen" guff that took off during the pandemic to be quite ridiculous.

That arrest would be assault if performed by anyone but a rozzer.  I don't believe grabbing the throat and kneeing is accepted police procedure.  Unfortunately plenty there to cover resisting arrest  

After 30 secs I was wishing for a version with Mark Street dubbed out though. 

Hmm, there's a post office van in the video and it's hardly packed with pedestrians. Seems excessive to hand out a fine unless he was cycling in a particularly anti-social manner. He was being very uncooperative with the police, though not enough to warrant that use of force IMO.

Well, that's some all-round impressive police work in that video!

eburtthebike wrote:

The video is here https://www.facebook.com/matt.street.773/videos/102050299582991

Matt Street turns out to be one of those "sovereign citizen" types who's interpretation of the law is rather different to reality.

Yup "freeman on the land" stuff which is utter nonsense

But the other guy was at it too.  It's unlikely that two such nutters would be randomly involved in the one incident - I'm wondering if the whole thing was set up by them

I thought I'd missed something: is cycling banned there *at all*? I'd presumed that the PSPO covered a pedestrianised area, yet

Quote:

Mr Street also pointed out that where he was arrested is a public road with pavements on both sides that you can drive a car down, but cannot cycle on it.

It's a bit of a weird PSPO order that seems to conflict with the signage on the street. The PSPO bans motor vehicles except for loading between 4pm and 10am, yet the street signage seems to imply you can drive down there if you are disabled or load/unload anytime on a Sunday.

In addition, bicycles are specifically banned at all times! (note no mention of unicycles, tricycles or velomobiles!)