AN AID TO PEDESTRIANISM

From Cycle (CTC's magazine - Apr/May 2008)

You may be interested in a Scottish Legal decision in the 1930s, which was reported (at my request) in the Scots Law Times Law Reports, in which the Court of Session held that a bicycle was not a vehicle, but that a pedal cycle was only an aid to pedestrianism, when it came to consider whether a bicycle could use a pedestrian right of way.

A cyclist on a pavement is therefore only using his cycle as an aid to his pedestrianism! But I am sure the Road Traffic Acts would view this differently.

Lord Mackay declared: 'The age old distinctions of the civil law, via, inter, actus, and the not quite corresponding distinctions in our Scots law, viz: cart road, bridle road, footpath, loaning, were not developed out at the date when a velocipede or any such wheeled contrivance existed. Probably then they did not contemplate such a monster. But the expression "horsedrawn vehicle", or the expression "vehicle" itself as use in right of way cases, is, in my opinion apt to express a sharp distinction between machines for carrying passengers over the country by some sort of motive power which precludes them from using their own legs for the purpose, and, on the other hand, any form of contrivance, such as a skate or roller skate or ski or snowshoe, which merely facilitates the use of the individual's own muscle to cover the ground more quickly.

Accordingly I take the view that the pedal cycle is only an aid to pedestrianism. I think it would be unfortunate in Scotland to take any other view, for otherwise tracks which had only been used by the comparatively innocuous two wheeled pedal cycle might be appropriated by the public thereby to all purposes of traffic.'

Crispin Agnew QC, Edinburgh