Bicycler wrote:Crank v Brooks establishes (in the context of a person crossing a zebra crossing) that a person wheeling a bike is a foot-passenger (pedestrian) and therefore a driver had been under an obligation to give way to the person on the crossing. This is irrelevant to the matter of trespass.
It's not entirely irrelevant, since it established the first sentence of your next paragraph, but I wasn't trying to read more out of it than that sentence.
Nobody is disputing that a person wheeling a bike is a pedestrian. Case law suggests that pedestrians do not have unlimited rights on footpaths. The debate surrounds whether a bicycle is a "usual accompaniment" for a pedestrian and thus whether pushing one falls inside the right to pass along a footpath, or whether it does not fall into that category and is a trespass. In R v Matthias (1861) the judge directed the jury:
that the owner of the soil may remove anything that encumbers his close, except such things as are usual accompaniments of a large class of foot passengers, being so small and light, as neither to be a nuisance to other passengers or injurious to the soil.
Excellent information - nothing in there is defined, just as UK law should be
What is a large class of foot passengers?
- Parents of toddlers/babies? Disabled? Wrestlers (think about it..)?
What is "so small and light"
- A torch? a bike? a wheelbarrow?
Sheffield CC were definitely wrong to state as fact those items which do and don't constitute usual accompaniments and may or not be "taken on all Public Rights Of Way" as that has never been determined. At least the latter 2 criteria depend upon local circumstances so it is likely that whether or not something is a trespass depends to some extent on the footpath itself.
There aren't many things that would be lighter than a bike without a person atop, and with most council footpaths being tarmac (for the benefit of the parents/disabled above) it would be hard to suggest that they do significant damage.
Actually I can't think of many mud tracks which would be more damaged by a bike being wheeled along than by the feet of the person doing the wheeling...