Oh dear. I only hope he’s brand new out of the box and is still trying to learn what his job is about.

There was public clarification way back from the police that the rule about cycling on pavements, regardless of rider age, was to be enforced where twattery on the part of the cyclist was evident, such as causing pedestrians to scatter and so on. (I’m paraphrasing slightly, but that was the gist of it).

Ah, that explains it.

Funny stuff. There are pillocks in every job.

Tempted to register just to tell them all how stupid they sound.

Keva I was run over by a Austin Allegro that had been coasting down a hill. He asked if I was all right and said I shouldn’t have been in the road then drove off.

The fact that I hadn’t just stepped out, was walking and he’d been silently coasting from round a corner didn’t help his eyes and alertness not noticing me either…

I shouldn’t have looked at that police forum, it has done nothing but reinforce my existing beliefs.

But then again perhaps that’s a good thing, after all first impressions are generally true to form.

Move along now…nothing to see……

Not all coppers are bad of course. I ride with a couple of ’em and a Traffic Inspector can be quite a handy riding buddy.

I cycle past the cop shop on the path with my kids

Always sticking it to the man 😉

one of those if roads were safe I would ride on them with my kids but they are not and my kids attention to detail is still not great

I got a ticking off from the Police for stopping in front of the ASL last week. I pointed out that if i was in the ASL, i’d also be in the blind spot of the Tipper lorry that was stopped behind, and the police just said “yes, not this time, i meant in future”.

Thing is, i can see less confident cyclists just blindly obeying the advice.

I wonder if they are trying to make things safer? Or trying to make people blindly obey the law to appease some people who’ve complained?

Every job interview these days…

“Do you plan to use common sense as you carry out your job?”
“No”
“Excellent, you’ve got the job!”

*sigh*

So someone gets it verbally wrong out of over 100,000 of his/her colleagues. No action was taken, no one was cautioned, no one was arrested and its suddenly a big news story for the BBC

I know it’s daft to caution a 4 year old over this, but they are perfectly right in saying it’s illegal. It’s a pavement beside a road (and assuming it’s not a marked cycle path), so yes illegal.

Where do you draw the line though? There are tonnes of idiots, teens and adults, who blast down narrow pavements, round corners running into people (certainly had many near misses myself) as they don’t want to be on the road and likely because they have no lights when it’s at night. Public attitude would be hatred towards these types, yet when it’s a small child it’s the complete opposite.

Not saying I agree with the law one way or the other, though some pavement riders are idiots.

depends how you view it the 4 year old cannot commit a crime so it is clear there is nothing to caution the child for. the clear guidance on pavement cycling issued to the police is not to do anything in these circumstances. Common-sense suggests that the child is posing no risk and best on the pavement . so I would draw the line well above 4 year olds on stabilisers and somewhere below teenagers blasting around corners running in to people.

It’s not really that difficult. The police even manage to have some quite sensible guidance on where to draw the line.

Are you really suggesting that because there are some idiots who ride bike on pavements that the PC was right to stop this little girl and that small children shouldn’t ride on pavements – because of the difficulty of deciding where to draw the line?

FWIW in a meeting with the local community PC and PCSO I mentioned that my kids ride their bikes on the pavement (it came up when I mentioned that I used to ride on the road with my 8yo coming home from school, but won’t now because of the construction traffic on our local roads). Didn’t even consider there might be any problem with that at the time – they are currently pursuing a van driver who drove onto the pavement next to where my kids were cycling though…

And the police wonder why no one trusts or want to talk them 😯

The Home Office issued guidance that says “you can ride on the pavement if you don’t act like a dick”. I paraphrase slightly…

Anyway, it’s good to see them focus on the important issues.

PCSO stopped me once riding my bike through the park, threatened to give me a ticket

I said go on then! (Knowing of course that I was not on a footway by the side of the road, therefore PCSO had no power , and that at the time no authority to enforce byelaws in our area)

Turned into a fifteen minute argument with me demanding a ticket and him avoiding giving me one…

He got quite irate about the whole thing, most amusing!

Jumped up traffic warden police Walt tossers!