Time to run down cyclists?

Published: 24 March, 2011 

• YOUR report (Fined Heath cyclist says: I don’t run down old ladies, March 17) has presented the tabloid “wronged individual against the bureaucrats” point of view. 

You don’t have to actually harm someone to intimidate them or make their pleasant walk a bit fraught, especially on a crowded Sunday.  

Eddison Joseph himself admits that many cyclists ignore the No Cycling signs near the athletic track, so he is probably also aware of others along the paths over and around Parliament Hill.  

I wonder of he has seen a couple of teenagers I saw racing up and down that hill at 30 to 40mph shouting for us, children and dogs to get out of their way.  

They fled to Gospel Oak when I got the rangers after them.

So how would Mr Joseph have us separate his behaviour on more than one occasion from that of these anti-socials?  

Heath pedestrians must be allowed paths free of cycle traffic. If Mr Joseph wants more cycle-able paths, let him get support and petition for them. 

To expect the police to decide if he’s being courteous enough is just stupid. It’s a good example to be made fining Mr Joseph.

RICHARD REED, NW3

Joy – a result

• IT was with a feeling of joy that I read the article (Fined Heath cyclist says: I don’t run down old ladies, March 17). 

Would that Camden felt the same way. Every day one runs the gamut of cycles either on the pavement, crashing lights or going the wrong way down one-way streets. 

If one dares to say something, one is usually subjected to foul language. When are the authorities going to do what needs to be done? Think how much money Camden would make and how much safer we would all be, everyone a winner, except of course the cyclists. Result.

JAY NORMAN-HEDGES
Address supplied

Heath peace

• I AM dismayed at the publicity you gave to Eddison Joseph.  

As a person who has walked on Hampstead Heath for the last 40 years I have become one of the “old ladies” he so sneeringly referred to.  

Over the years I have been walking my child and my grandchildren over the Heath so that they have all learned to love nature and wildlife.  

As Mr Joseph would know if he did the same you cannot always prevent children and dogs in this relaxed setting from darting one way or the next.  

I have witnessed accidents and near-misses with cyclists who invariably scream abuse if challenged.

As far as I am concerned, Hampstead Heath is for people who enjoy walking with nature and in peace, away from the hurly burly of London traffic and crowds, just as on this lovely Sunday when it was full of happy people enjoying the sunshine with their children, dogs and lovers. 

There are enough paths for cycling on the Heath and if that is not enough for Mr Joseph and others they must, please, cycle elsewhere.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED, NW3

Abide by rules

• WITH all due respect to Eddison Joseph, I am delighted that cyclists who think they are above abiding by the rules, are being fined. 

Too often too many go undetected as the constabulary never seem to be around.  

The No Cycling signs are big, are bright yellow and are written on the path where they can’t be missed.  

Mr Joseph thinks the rule is ridiculous but that’s not his call to make. 

And how ridiculous is it that two weeks ago two teenage cyclists narrowly missed a little girl playing and I had to stop short, hurting my back, when a bike zoomed past me on a blind corner at 35mph? 

When cyclists leave tread marks on the wet grass and speed down hills they ruin the contemplative, peaceful, Heath experience for everyone. 

There’s now a big wide tarmac and gravel cycle path but cyclists aren’t happy sticking to it.  

Mr Joseph clearly had no intention to hurt anyone, but these laws are meant to govern actions not intentions. If you can’t pay the fine, don’t do the crime.

JOYCE GLASSER
Savernake Road, NW3

Discipline!

• YOUR story of a bereft-looking Heath cyclist fined £330 came as a breath of fresh air and is worth putting on the notice board.

Eddison Joseph’s similarly illegal pavement-cycling pram-dodging friends are equally adept at avoiding running down old ladies.  He seems to think the law shouldn’t have to apply to himself or them.

In the previous issue John Gulliver’s thoughtful tirade on prison overpopulation also hits the spot and shows, of course, we can’t put the likes of Mr Joseph in jail.

A way must be found to make criminals pay for their anti-social behaviour both to help reimburse the cost of their actions and to avoid the closure of hospital services and libraries etc.

Time to rethink attitudes and to bring about enlightened discipline to areas where its absence has resulted in the present chaos.

BILL WAUGH
Highgate Road, NW5

High cost of ‘justice’

• I am a white Anglo-Saxon pensioner on a pushbike.

All my London life I have carefully cycled the Heath without persecution.

But I also drive a car and recently, in the wee small hours, in the middle of nowhere, a camera took my picture travelling at 45mph. 

I paid a £60 fine. Nothing personal, of course, just a lonely machine programmed to balance the books in the middle of the night.

I believe it’s called revenue with a clear conscience. 

My vehicle, I know for a fact, has a trade-in value of £6,000, but no court in the land would dare to fine me £6,000 even though I was doing a life-threatening 45mph on an empty road in the black of night. 

It cost me £60. But Eddison Joseph on the other hand (Fined Heath cyclist says: I don’t run down old ladies, March 17) paid a fine possibly in excess of the total value of his vehicle – and for a trivial offence.

By my arithmetic Mr Joseph was fined the “equivalent” of £6,000, something not even Camden parking would get away with.  

What’s more this assault was done not only with a straight face, but face to face, in broad daylight and with the added temerity of some PR plod telling us that they “have the enforcement levels right”.

I believe it is true to say that when words fail you bad language may not be an unusual response.

It appears from Mr Joseph’s case, as reported, that when violence fails you, you simply get a job as a justice of the peace, and steal a man’s bicycle.

Just to clear my own conscience, I shall offer to pay Mr Joseph’s fine with the help of as many readers who feel as road raged as I do.

I suppose it’s too much to ask for the name and address of the magistrate, but I will supply my own in case a posse wants to saddle up with me and pedal over to the courthouse.

IAN LEE 
Montpelier Grove, NW5