Forum menu
The gate isn't shut across a cycling path, it's shut across a road and the (really poorly designed) path goes round the gate.
I’m kind of surprised that people are so relaxed about a gate being seemingly arbitrarily shut across a cycle route when it’s obviously causing a hot spot for a potentially horrific accident on a cycle route but this is stw after all.
They're nationwide, we have loads down here, they stop cars and motorbikes using them, they've not been chucked up to annoy cyclists, this one appears to be at the end of a road, so stopping access both ways (one bollards, one gate for access), down here there are a few that have been put up to stop fly tipping, and anti-social behaviour with bikes and so on, you just have to pay due care and attention on any shared path, it's not rocket science.
I pass this regularly, it’s been painted so it’s easier to see, the gate is also usually open.
End of thread
Well this is all a bit dramatic - hope you never ride in the countryside and come across gates that evil farmers open and close on a random basis!
I just lifted this from cycle chat.net
According to Sheffield CC, there are 70 sites in the city and reading a few of the minutes of the Allotment Advisory Group the main issue is with fly tipping / trespass so they close the gates - the few causing problems for the many. Surprised no-one has made a claim on the council's insurance policy or perhaps there is too much evidence of people not looking.
So some poor sod on a ride might sustain life changing injuries due to a poorly signed and randomly closed gate designed to stop unauthorised trucks/cars from fly tipping.
I pass this regularly, it’s been painted so it’s easier to see, the gate is also usually open.
Before or after these incidents?
We had a similar barrier next to our factory and when opened it was even more dangerous as it was just a 1 foot grey square pointed towards the cycle path. We had the post moved so it was no longer pointing into the cycle track and had the end painted bright orange. The gate was already painted and had a reflective strip along it. This should be common practice really.
Galvanised steel is actually very hard to see against tarmac. You won’t often see it placed in the middle of roads (not sorry), but around here in Cambridgeshire the county council have gone back and added retroreflectives in contrasting colours where they used it on (flat) cycle infrastructure because it was so frequently collided with.
Chuff knows how to upload a vid (or sensible sized photos) so you're getting screenshots...
From the top of the hill, the gate is open so its hard to see what it was like but you can just about make out the posts.
. From the bollards...
From right in front of the thing...
Coming the other way, this is where the "large crowds of pedestrians" would be...
And lastly its only been painted on one side so I presume its a concerned local not anyone in authority because Sheffield council would have probably written "**** cyclists" on it and mounted a Gatling gun.
Columbo can now sleep easy after all you armature detectives have massively failed to establish what's going on.
Its been painted for ages, that vid has been doing the rounds for years.
Its hard to tell but looking at the traffic going up the Parkway in the last shot I suspect the vid has been sped up to make it look like the cyclists were going faster than they really are, people do razz up that road but it looks slightly unnatural, however both my pics and the vid do flatten the hill out and it is easy to get up a lot of speed in a short time there.
Thanks for taking the time to upload that podge. Whatever my earlier protestations, I'm glad to see that someone took it upon themselves to paint the more dangerous side of it at least. 👍
I still can't see even a hint of yellow on the periphery of that gate and posts from the admittedly poor CCTV angle though?
So some poor sod on a ride might sustain life changing injuries due to a poorly signed and randomly closed gate designed to stop unauthorised trucks/cars from fly tipping.
There's has to be an element of personal responsibility here. It's quite easy not to crash into large static objects when you make the effort.
If it's happening on multiple occasions though, there may be one, or a number of factors contributing to it. As per one of the comments above, it looks like a badly designed cycle route if anything.
The bollards in the picture above look worse to me. What a mental place to put them.
Both, bollards and gate, clearly pose a risk in the event of a brake failure. Which is going to happen to somebody at some point.
I still think the gate and posts weren't painted at the time of the accidents of I'm honest.
From podge (thanks again):
From the CCTV:
Even from the differing angles you can see the right hand post was grey, the left was indeed black but had the remains of hiviz tape stuck round it.
Id put a tenner on those guys hitting the gates before the yellow paint was applied.
On that note, I know when it's time to leave a thread before poopscoop hunting season is officially here.
As I say, that vid and a longer one has been doing the rounds for years, highly likely they predate the paint. I've been going that way for years but not until recently on a regular basis so couldn't say when things changed, I also tend to go out of the city that way and return a different way so wouldn't have noticed the paint anyway.
The bollards in the picture above look worse to me. What a mental place to put them.
To be honest I'd have thought something around about where they are that forced cyclists to slow significantly (some sort of chicane type furniture maybe) would be ideal. Aside from the cyclists self harming on the gate issue with those houses there you really don't need gravity fed bikes interfacing with kids playing out etc.
Asked up thread. Speed bumps max height 100mm.
https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/speed-bumps
You assume any kind of thought was put into it. There's a really good chance there's five different schemes from five different time periods all totally unconnected to each other going on here.
Coming the other way, this is where the “large crowds of pedestrians” would be…
It doesn't have to be a crowd, it just needs to be one person walking wearing dark clothing. Or, it just needs to be one cyclist riding the opposite direction and you have a potentially fatal head-on collision. If those riders in the video couldn't see the gate, they are probably not going to see a kid or a cyclist coming the other way either. Those cyclists in the video were just going much too fast for safety. That's why they crashed.
they are probably not going to see a kid or a cyclist coming the other way either.
Absolute rubbish, but carry on.
My tuppence worth. The top bar of the gate lines up nicely with the edge of the path. The lower strut mimics the turn of the path to the right. Not saying it’s difficult to see but it could be that the visual context helps to camouflage it.
Here's a thought, what if they're not going fast but the prevailing conditions mean an unpainted, non-reflective gate is all but invisible until the last moment?
I've been caught out like that before, it's not fun. Wasn't going unreasonably fast either.
If that was an industrial setting industrial safety would be crawling over that as its not painted up to be easily visible. The key term here is 'reasonably practicable'. Thats a very obvious fail.
So some poor sod on a ride might sustain life changing injuries due to a poorly signed and randomly closed gate designed to stop unauthorised trucks/cars from fly tipping.
This stuff is never properly thought through though, and you can never stop antisocial behaviour without also inconveniencing larger numbers of legitimate users. See also discriminatory barriers that stop people on non-standard bikes using ‘cycle routes’ because of youth on scrambler bikes.
|Idiot cyclist not riding according to circumstances.