You are reading a single comment by @Oliver Schick and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Oliver Schick
It would be interesting to research the history behind this. While the 1861 law was probably intended to apply in the main to the driving of (horse-drawn) carriages, the first cycling ban, against draisines, not more modern ordinary or safety bicycles, was apparently in London. This was because the earliest machines produced in the UK had no brakes and were mostly ridden on the footway, no doubt scaring people and smashing into them a lot. The inventor of the bicycle, Karl Drais, only added the brake (which he invented) after a few months of trials on the road, by which time drawings without the brake had already reached London and bikes were being produced without them. Even when he added the brake later, it was hidden behind the rider's leg in his illustration.
http://www.grundschulmarkt.com/Fahrrad/Draisine1817.jpg
You can see the brake cord going to the brake (on the rear wheel), but not the brake.
There seems to be this legislative tradition that you can still punish a 'carriage driver' (and bicycles are considered carriages for this purpose) according to this legislation, but the laws setting a framework for the much more powerful later motorised carriages don't seem to grip as well, e.g. in terms of what you need for a conviction etc. Lawyers please correct me if that's nonsense. I'm not aware of any books on the history. Somebody should write one.