Coach driver tells cyclist with child he "shouldn't be on the path"... right under a shared use path sign

youve not encountered a Lochs & Glens coach tour before then

the driver was totally wrong to challenge in the way they did, however I totally understand where they were coming from in that situation where their responsibility is look after their passengers to the expense of others completely, and alot of those passengers arent really fully focussed on getting out of a coach, let alone getting out of a coach and sharing the same space with a very slow cyclist passing by at the same time

lets face it that shared path isnt the greatest way to share space between people cycling and coach tours dropping lots of people out of coaches is it ?

As it has been a shared path for at least 4 years, you would have thought any responsible coach driver would be aware of that and looking along the path for cyclists / warning his passengers. 

However the same road also has cycle lanes painted in the road so having both methods of transport along the same route won't help in arguments like the one that happened. 

Awavey wrote:

lets face it that shared path isnt the greatest way to share space between people cycling and coach tours dropping lots of people out of coaches is it ?

There was a tragic death of a cyclist in Leicester a few years back where the cyclist was doored into the parh of a car when a passenger exited a black cab into the road - I recall there was a court case and the taxi driver shared held a level of responsibility for the death as they had a duty of care of passengers exiting the vehicke safely.
Since passengers are offloaded to a shared cycle path, perhaps there should be an obligation on the driver to inform their passengers to be aware although i dint think the bus driver waa in this case.
My view is that the cyclist was cycling carefully and courteously using the bell correctly to inform pedestrians of their presence and not using it to barge them out of the way. I hate using my bell as it feels that sometimes pedestrians will read it as a 'get out of my way' rather than to alert of presence. I tend to prefer freewheeling a good distance (>5m) behind and matching their pace until the path is wide enough for a safe/non-startling pass - my squeaky disc breaks can be a blessing too in providing a subtle alert of my presence and audible signal of a slow reduction in speed with no urgent need to pass.
Hate it when cars drive too close behind so I try and apply the same logic when behind pedestrians and provide space.

Please complain to lochs.com

Complete waste of time: we take your comments seriously, etc. etc. but we're not going to tell you what we've done [which is nothing at all] because of GDPR. Anyway, there's nothing to complain about- stupid people are allowed to say stupid things.

There is no point disputing with half-wits. Otherwise, eminently sensible cyclist completely in the right.

To be fair, someone did decide to paint "coach drop off point" in big yellow letters exactly where those coaches are, so it's a legit place to disgorge a bunch of tourists. Shame the shared use path sign is a bit tiny. At least it's mounted high enough so 9ft tall pedestrians (and penny farthing cyclists) don't bang their heads on it. Safety first and all that.