Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)
  • Rant at mountain bikers
  • allyst170
    Free Member

    A comment on this story made me very angry. Lets all reply.

    http://www.thepress.co.uk/news/4153075.North_Yorkshire_off_roaders_crackdown/

    GNARGNAR
    Free Member

    This is a good rant..

    It’s backfiring though. Now the 4×4’s have moved on, the mountain bikers have moved in with a vengence. There are people pegging around Dalby at speeds which are twice the 4×4 limits and causing serious damage to tracks and ramblers alike. My friends father was almost killed by someone on a bike hitting him at 35mph. Can he sue, can he hell thanks to the selfish mountain bikers refusing to take out insurance for this sort of accident. He is now seriously injured and unable to earn money. If he had been hit by a 4×4 on a green lane, the vehicle has to be insured by law, failure to do so is the same as driving on the A64 with no insurance. The biggest difference between mountain bikes and trial bikes/4×4? You can control motorised transport with laws and gates, not mountain bikers…it’s a matter of time before someone is killed in Dalby by a mountain biker. For once, pedal power is causing more damage than diesel power!

    And before anyone starts the environment argument, Langdale forest is 10,000 acres of tree sized lungs which can more than deal with 10-15 tanks of diesel being burned amongst them each day.

    BoardinBob
    Full Member

    😆

    How did they know it was 35mph?

    Oh and why would you need insurance to allow someone to sue you?

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    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Whatb BoardinBob said. The other one is “almost killed”. Exactly how near death was he? 10% chance of survival?

    Maybe he shouldn’t have been walking on the BIKE path.

    Olly
    Free Member

    And before anyone starts the environment argument, Langdale forest is 10,000 acres of tree sized lungs which can more than deal with 10-15 tanks of diesel being burned amongst them each day.

    that kind of argument really winds me up
    just because statistically its been calculate it CAN doesnt mean we HAVE to.

    you Dick! (under-used profanity, i hope it doesnt get word filtered)

    miketually
    Free Member

    Maybe he shouldn’t have been walking on the BIKE path.

    If Dalby is FC land, you can walk where you like, including on bike paths.

    andym
    Free Member

    Hmm. We don’t know the rights and wrongs here, but if somebody you knew got seriously injured by an MTB you wouldn’t think it funny.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    That trees sucking up pollution argument really annoyed me too. The trees are already failing to suck up the pollution of millions of cars, planes, power stations, factories etc etc so adding more ain’t gonna help.

    People with no concept of science trying to use science to justify themselves. ARGH!

    PJ266
    Free Member

    BUT if there are signs advising people it is a bike trail they cant complain if they do get hit 😉

    GNARGNAR
    Free Member

    andym
    Hmm. We don’t know the rights and wrongs here, but if somebody you knew got seriously injured by an MTB you wouldn’t think it funny.

    Well it happens to me every weekend and I still see the funny side…..maybe not seriously injured mind (touch wood).

    miketually
    Free Member

    BUT if there are signs advising people it is a bike trail they cant complain if they do get hit

    I bet they can. The riders still have a duty of care, regardless of what any signs say.

    varzi
    Free Member

    compared to a lot of the halfwit posts on stories on the press site that’s pretty mild.

    hora
    Free Member

    I’ve nothing against 4×4 or MX riders. I do think some mountainbikers need to show more care to walkers. Lets have balanced views please.

    kinda666
    Free Member

    Surely if the guy had been hit by a 4×4 on a green lane at 35mph he’d be dead?? Lucky it was a mountain bike really!

    soobalias
    Free Member

    agree mike,

    perhaps more emphasis on combined use in fc carparks, are walkers aware of the trails and how to spot them and the dangers……

    its all about education, and mtbers have just as much to learn.

    flippinheckler
    Free Member

    ITs always the same if you were being a bit naughty and rode down a trail marked for walker there would be hell to pay, and quite right to, however if some numptie chooses to walk down a mountain bike trail its again the fault of the mountain biker, you just can’t win. I have been to Nant y Arian 4 times and each time seen off road motorbikes going where they should not. I now know why they have all those gate thingies in South Wales. Dont they have gates or barriers to stop these 4×4’s or does the terrain and area prevent this.

    PJ266
    Free Member

    Ok then miketually, last weekend i was at nant yr arian, on the last descent back to the visitor centre (high as a kite) I came round a blind corner at a not inconsiderable speed to find three people in the middle of the trail. No accident happened because i reacted quick enough, the trail had a very obvious sign at the entrance saying it was a mtb trail. Would i have been to blame for a collision?? or them??

    hora
    Free Member

    Dalby is mixed use, people can get lost and adventurous as well. Just like mountain bikers. Oh and ‘cheeky trails’ don’t exist either. Share the world, its everyone folks …holds up a candle and releases a dove of peace (but not holding any children like that Michael Jackson would)

    miketually
    Free Member

    Is it FC land? If it is, they had a right to be there and were not doing anything wrong.

    I don’t intend to get into an argument about it, but you should always be able to stop within the distance you can see.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    I always thought this was one of the arguments in favour of trail centres, the fact that you’re on a (usually) one-way trail which is closed to other users.
    Obviously it still doesn’t give you the right to blat round at top speed, you may come round a corner to find someone lying injured on the trail right in front of you or fixing a puncture etc but it riders certainly don’t expect to see a walker stood in the way.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    No-one should be that careless when riding mtb trails. Even if they were bikers only you couldn’t guarantee that there’d be no walkers on it, or slow/stopped/crashed bikers even.

    hora
    Free Member

    Or a Duck convention (QUACK) 😕

    miketually
    Free Member

    I always thought this was one of the arguments in favour of trail centres, the fact that you’re on a (usually) one-way trail which is closed to other users.

    The access at FC places is a bit odd. Walkers have a right to go anywhere. MTBers also have the right to go anywhere, except on public footpaths through the land. I’m not sure why walkers having a legal right to walk there should stop cyclists being given permissive access – I’d guess it’s mainly because the FC wouldn’t want to deal with the complaints from walkers who don’t understand access laws.

    Ironically, I believe that MTB trails can be closed to walkers, even though there’s the “right to roam” stuff over the border.

    hora
    Free Member

    Christmas day before last I rode around Penmachno- through one tree section I came across a couple and their young daughter. They looked startled and abit embarrassed(?). they were the only people I’d seen all day and I wasnt going to hold back on the merriest Christmas to them or the big smile.

    Guess some folks would have wanted me to rant at them calling them irresponsible parents/bad example/get owf moi land? etc? 🙄
    Ps. I didnt see any Duck Conventions that day either.

    swamp_boy
    Full Member

    Whole thing sounds like a massive exaggeration, but it made good press so it got into the paper.

    Did the 4x4s really scare off the mountain bikers? doesn’t sound plausible to me. Not that it stops people griping, it seems to be a way of life for some, especially some ramblers – and I don’t mean the thousands of people who like walk in the country, I do too, I mean the vocal minority that are anti everything, including farming.

    It would have to be a very smooth green lane for a 4×4 to get up to 35mph, not sure my land rover could do that off tarmac and stay in one piece. I can think of plenty of places I could / would go faster on the bike and its nothing special, just a 15 year old 21 speed hard tail.

    duckers
    Free Member

    I was out on my mountain bike a few sundays ago, at the place I was cycling there is an old concrete train platform with a sign saying “Cyclists dismount”, it is clear the platform is for walkers.

    Next to the platform is an open grass area that has a single well defined path through it, clearly carved by cycles. This old woman was walking on the bike track with a bunch of dogs taking up pretty much all of it; Rather than stop I hopped up onto the concrete platform as she clearly wasnt going to move(the platform was absolutely clear of pedestrians) she shouts “Your not supposed to cycle on the platform”, well I probbaly gave her more reason to dislike cyclists as I just stopped the bike and swore at her continuously until she moved off the track and onto the platform.

    I would describe myself as very tolerant and considerate but some people just ask for it.

    pk-ripper
    Free Member

    hora and miketually are correct on this one.

    Those arguing otherwise I’m afraid are basing their arguments in a scenario that just won’t exist.

    jonb
    Free Member

    T refuse to obey the cyclist dismount signs until they tell you where you can remount. Otherwise you have to continue your journey on foot or just dab and get back on as it doesn’t specify where exactly this non cyclist area is.

    PikeBN14
    Free Member

    I’m going to enjoy driving my diesel car from the sunny south to Dalby with my mountain bike in the back all the more on Friday now, watch out the red socks!! 😆 🙄 😆 8)

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Did the 4x4s really scare off the mountain bikers?

    It’s not that they scare bikers off, it’s that they f*ck the trails beyond all recognition so there’s no point even going there any more.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    I came across a couple and their young daughter

    No wonder they were embarrassed.

    I’m unsure about this. Not been to Dalby so not sure how it is there but what about at CYB or Afan? There could be a walker around the corner so gonna take it slowly? Well I’m fairly cautious so I’d probably not hit anyone but I wouldn’t blame a more competent rider for hitting someone on a blind corner. I have seen people walking on marked bike trails at CYB so wonder if they knew what they were doing.

    Of course some people just blast through even if they see a walker think that they shouldn’t be there; that ain’t right.

    Rockdodger
    Free Member

    As someone pointed out earlier we all have a responsibility to others when we are out there on out bikes.But so do the walkers who on occasion behave as if there is nobody else in the forest/trail and if there are other people they seem to think you should get out of there way.Well maybe just maybe this is what happened at the 35mph incident.
    As we all know there is good and bad in every aspect of any pastime and some people just need to learn to live together and enjoy whats out there.
    Also dog people pick your s… up.

    stealthcat
    Full Member

    With regard to the walkers on bike trails, I had a conversation some years ago with one of the staff at Coed-y-Brenin, who had had the president of the Ramblers’ Association there on what sounded like an official visit. He seemed to have got a certain amount of satisfaction from telling her that even she wasn’t allowed to walk the bike trails there…

    aracer
    Free Member

    Isn’t the apocryphal CyB story that Dafydd Davis met somebody walking on one of the bike trails who claimed she’d every right to be there as she’d been walking along there for 30 years since before mountain bikes existed. He of course pointed out that it hadn’t been there that long, which he knew because he’d built it!

    duckers
    Free Member

    I’ve just been running through a local country park this afternoon and it looks like they’ve been doing some trailside tree/bush/etc maintenance over the winter, but with a tractor,, so what was previously a nice smooth trail perfect for high speed cycling is now a rutted ripped up mess with potholes (currently puddles) all over.

    scraprider
    Free Member

    Ramblers’ Association very worring people, very powerfull as well,

    andrew
    Free Member

    The other one is “almost killed”. Exactly how near death was he? 10% chance of survival?

    As near to death as any made up character used to allow someone to rant about their pet hate could ever be I’ll bet.

    MtbCol
    Free Member

    As a member of the group that help build and maintain the Dalby trails, ?I can see we’re getting towards the “storm in a teacup” stage. At the moment, it’s one guy on a news forum who’s had a bad experience with a mountainbiker in Dalby. If you visit Dalby and ride the recognized waymarked routes, you can’t fail to notice the No Access” to walkers, horses and motorized vehicles at both the start and exit of the non fireroad sections. Suffice to say, I’ve met both walkers and horses whilst I’ve been riding round, but there’s never been conflict as such. A friendly word with them and they usually get the idea that there’s safer areas to walk/ride in the forest.
    Unfortunately, this doesn’t help when you get rogue riders hooning down waymarked walking routes, of which there are plenty, and then coming to grief when they meet a group of walkers. Unfortunately, as the forest is so big, and there’s numerous unmarked trails too, the whole idea of policing routes is just too difficult to manage.

    Interestingly, there is Cropton Forest, which no one has brought up – where there is waymarked horse trails, an unofficial allowance for quads and trail bikes and lots of secret mtb trails hidden in there – a veritable playground for everyone, and there seems to be very little conflict between users.

    On a lighter note, we’re not far off finishing a new section of red trail in Dalby – further details can be found on the forums at http://www.singletraction.org.uk/
    And some teaser photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbcol/sets/72157612668656759/

    RepacK
    Free Member

    We do have to be very carefull here what we say to other people regarding MTBs. An awful lot of people dont “get” our sport. The last thing we need is to get into is a slanging match with other trail users..If you are going to post on other sites keep it clean, keep it reasoned & dont rant. There are enough idiots riding MTBs causing trouble/accidents. Your average trail user (not on a bike) probably wont remember the biker who held a gate open for her or stood to 1 side on a muddy section to let his Family through, but they sure as hell will remember the biker who nearly mowed him down on a fireroad..Thats the bad press we dont need.

    Just because someone else wants to be a selfish, self-rightous bigot doesnt mean we should descend to their level. Stay calm & just smile (no matter how tempting it is too go off on one).

    If we f*ck someone off today we might be screwing up our Sport for the future..

    [Links deleted by request – Mod]

    IanMunro
    Free Member

    Please no one click on that first link. He who cannot be named might look in his referal log and come visiting 🙂

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