By Isle of Wight Observer
This reader’s letter published in the Isle of Wight Observer on 8th February, 1902 tackled the tricky problem of how to stop cyclists riding where they shouldn’t. These days they just put up a sign – but it seems Island Road’s spell-checker has gone on strike!
CYCLING ON THE SEA WALL.
To the Editor of the Isle of Wight Observer.
Sir, – I wonder how many more accidents will have to occur (I hear there was another this week) before cycling on the sea wall is stopped. I am writing now, not in the interests of the selfish hair-brained wheelman themselves,- for they really deserve all they get when a mishap takes place – but for the sake of the pedestrians on the wall, who are in almost as much peril from the practice as the cyclists. If cycling on a footpath, or “sidewalk” by the roadside is dangerous to foot passengers, far more so is it to them on the sea wall, I suggest, as a remedy, that some posts, or, perhaps, horizontal barriers should be placed at comparatively short intervals on the wall; these would be little hindrance to those who walk on it, but they would necessitate frequent stoppages to the rider, and the lifting of the machines over each hindrance. If cycling on the sea wall were thus made a kind of “obstacle race,” foolhardy wheelman might, perhaps, prefer the road to what is really but a narrow footpath.
Your obedient servant,
FOOTER.