Bath-Bristol path "not the place for reckless speed cycling" says Sustrans after 9-year-old breaks collar bone in collision

Fundamental problem, and no amount of codes, rules or anything else is going to help.

Some people like speed, and some people will travel fast. Why do people speed In cars? because they can! Have we learnt nothing? If you want people to ride slowly on paths you have to make it impossible to ride fast.

The alternative is to make sure that you do not mix fast and slow. Mopeds are banned from Motorways for a reason!

Quote:

So: child rides into path of oncoming cyclist, causes crash, injures self. Father blames cyclist.

No independent verification of speed of other cyclist.

Sorry, but shouldn't this be: 'Parents asked to keep children under control on popular shared path'?

You can't say either way as the only people that know are the people that witnessed it...

Anyhow, the lad is learning to ride and is 9 years old, you've got to expect them to make mistakes, whenever I am on a shared use path (reluctantly) with walkers about, i always slow down (assuming they aren't blocking the whole path and it is passable (knowingly or not).

I digress, everyone could talk about this all day but we will still be none the wiser to as to what happened.

I suspect like in a lot but not all collisions it was 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, the other person did apologise which is a good thing, some might just ride off or be rude.

If you ride on these paths do everyone a favour, leave your ego at home. Don't chase segments and ride to the conditions, if it's busy slow down or better still ride on the miles and miles of roads where you can hammer it!

Couple of questions immediately pop to mind;

1. How fast is too fast?
2. Would the father have cared less if it hadn't been his son?
3. Marshals and signs, really as if speed limit signs, police and speed cameras on roads work in this country?
4. When will people realise, the ringing of a bell is to alert other of your presence, it does not give you the right of way? Either way it's totally pointless when you consider the high use of mp3s and phones.
5. Is it not time those such as councils and Sustrans decide who they want to use the paths? Dog walkers constantly stopping, walkers travelling no more than 6mph, families on bikes at maybe 10mph or the more "experienced" nutter at 15plus. Yes people can slow down but in this day and age, we won't. These situations are like sending a delivery lorry dropping off every hundred or so yards onto a 3 line motorway and expecting traffic to flow as per normal.

You can actually see the remnants of faded white lines up the centre of the path in some places! It's been tried and didn't work.

People get hung up on the supposed dangers of the cycle path (witness the 1,000 signature-strong petition calling for a speed limit on bikes - to be measured and enforced by unspecified means). It doesn't help that every few months there's a collision serious enough to be splashed all over the local anti-cycling rag.

In the meantime, traffic in Bristol continues to be awful, and properly serious injuries and deaths on the road are all too common (most recently a 3 year-old who was killed after a trailer detached from a vehicle). I wish Sustrans, and indeed this website, would stop going along with the "man bites dog" aspect of these crappy local media stories and do more to remind people of the bigger issues that we face.

These routes are promoted as the saviour of cycling it seems...then they wonder why these incidents happen and scream bloody murder (not the dad, he is fairly reasoned to be annoyed), it's not hard to ride these paths "safely".

Come on Sustrans, have you not got some homebrew elderflower wine that needs tending to?

If I was in a car and I pulled out to overtake another car and collided with a car going the other way, could I too blame the car coming the other way for going too fast? Speed isn't the problem here!

Having both ridden pretty quickly and taken my 2 boys (5 and 7) for family rides on the B2B I feel uniquely qualified to comment

There are sections that beg to be ridden fast, but the responsibility has to be on the faster traffic to slow for high risk groups (peds/kids/dogs etc.), if you're with a family you should try to corral the kids but it's not straightforward - the B2B is motorised traffic free so an ideal place for youngsters to learn good road skills, but they need to be given the space to fail too.

Yet another "My little prince can do no wrong" parent blaming others for their child's actions, no doubt driven by guilt that maybe, just maybe, this boy's parents might have taught him to ride a little better before letting him loose in public.

Last summer, when out running, I was ridden into by an eight year old on his bike. That was my fault too, according to Daddy.

"Theo was riding with his dad Nic, mum Emma and sister Ava, seven when they encountered two pedestrians on the path. Theo pulled out to overtake them and rode into the path of the oncoming rider, who Nic Delves-Broughton said was travelling “way too fast”."

So the kid pulls out into someone else and the patents blame the victim... Isnt it always the case with parents these days, never their little angels.

I don't think demarcation with white paint is the answer - just as with cars on roads, putting down a line that infers this is 'my' side of the path/road/whatever means some will then go faster, thinking that others won't stray over or it's 'their fault' if they do. In an environment packed with kids learning to ride, dogs, elderly etc it's a recipe for ongoing conflict.

No, the only answer in a popular shared space is for people on bikes to slow down, people herding children to keep them on a tight-ish rein, those with dogs to use short leads/keep them close, and for no-one to blame any other user group when shit happens. I see no difference between the B2B or Two Tunnels path and a pedestrianised shopping area that you are allowed to cycle through. Except it's harder to get a coffee.

Better yet, build more routes to the centre of Bristol and Bath. If you want to cycle into Bristol on a half-decent non-stop route, for a sizeable chunk of east Bristol the Railway Path is the only way.

There should be proper segregated facilities along the A4 through Brislington, Fishponds Road and others, to take the fast commuter traffic, and leave the Railway Path for the families and dog walkers.

And needless to say, it shouldn't be left to a charity to get these installed. Local authorities have a much wider range of powers and for the people I know who work at Sustrans, overcoming local government inertia is a much bigger source of frustration than cyclists with drop handlebars or Strava segments.

How fast is too fast when a child randomly pulls out behind a pedestrian?

As a daily user of the B2B, more spatial awareness and common sense needed from both cyclists and pedestrians.

I agree with the other posters. One of the main problems with this path is not speed - its that the tarmac is just not wide enough for the level of traffic!

The real estate is there, double the tarmac width and put a line down the middle with arrows. It also needs to separate the bikes from the pedestrians.

On a Saturday afternoon it is a bit crowded and it is easy to go too fast around people, but the problem is largely crowding and the mix of pedestrians and cyclists.

"It has been pointed out that the Bath-Bristol path, completed in 1986, has been something of a victim of its own success. Its current popularity was unforeseen and it was not built with current best practice in mind, which would make it wider and have some separation between pedestrian and cycling areas."

Well, make it wider and put in some segregation then. It appears that this type of 'shared use' path is not fit for purpose.

So: child rides into path of oncoming cyclist, causes crash, injures self. Father blames cyclist.

No independent verification of speed of other cyclist.

Sorry, but shouldn't this be: 'Parents asked to keep children under control on popular shared path'?

People break arms slipping in the bath / on wet ground, let alone adding a bike and speed above walking pace. Yes, on shared paths (or any path for that matter) you should ride at a speed that forgives the *reasonable* mistakes of others. But not to the point that you are moving at walking pace with a man waving a red flag in front. We cannot live/ride allowing for every single act of error / stupidity / medical emergency. We'd never leave the house.

There are Strava segments on the Bristol - Bath route, why? If you want to ride fast between Bristol and Bath use the A4.