Doctors have objects thrown at them as they cycle to work

Too dangerous, couldn't get it past the Risk Assesment.

It might have to include riding on the road...

I live just off Old Dalkeith Rd and it's not quite so simple. One side of the road is a park/forest behind a wall, and it is very easy to hide in the park and throw things at cyclists from the top of that wall and then disappear into the forest. The wall is a retaining wall, so it's about 3 metres tall on the road side, but inside the park only about 1 metre, and it's several hundred metres long with only one gate, so if you're on the road, you have no chance catching anybody.

Vandalism has been a problem there for ages, and there are always nests of beer cans just behind the wall for the local secret underage drinking parties.

Thanks for the information

Stephan Matthiesen wrote:

I live just off Old Dalkeith Rd and it's not quite so simple. One side of the road is a park/forest behind a wall, and it is very easy to hide in the park and throw things at cyclists from the top of that wall and then disappear into the forest. The wall is a retaining wall, so it's about 3 metres tall on the road side, but inside the park only about 1 metre, and it's several hundred metres long with only one gate, so if you're on the road, you have no chance catching anybody.

Vandalism has been a problem there for ages, and there are always nests of beer cans just behind the wall for the local secret underage drinking parties.

It would appear that growing a load of wild brambles from the wall into the wood, plus some dense blackthorn or something, spreading several metres into the wood could provide some sort of solution. Anything that is more than 2m tall and dense enough to be particularly unpleasant to try to force your way through would surely do the trick...

Pilot Pete wrote:

It would appear that growing a load of wild brambles from the wall into the wood, plus some dense blackthorn or something, spreading several metres into the wood could provide some sort of solution. Anything that is more than 2m tall and dense enough to be particularly unpleasant to try to force your way through would surely do the trick...

That's a interesting idea, that might actually work. But I fear vandalism here is too adaptable. What happens is that they throw stuff at cyclists for a couple of weeks, then lose interest and throw bricks at foreigners' windows instead (I gor three or four bricks in my windows a few years ago), then lose interest in that too and set fire to a few bins, then throw stuff at buses, then terrorise neighbouring Moredun for a while, then race around on motorbikes for a couple of weeks, then it goes quiet for a few months and then something else starts.

The overall problem is that there is a background of vandalism in many suburbs of Edinburgh that is just low-level enough and comes in waves and from a considerable number of perpetrators so that the police can't really focus on anything in particular, and for us as residents it is annoying but not quite serious enough to spend a lot of time trying to fight it when you have a busy life.

It's very hard to do anything too - I've stopped reporting most motorbikes, for example, because I never get enough details when they whizz past, and instead I have to spend endless time on the phone trying to explain to some call centre person that the middle of the park doesn't have a postcode.

A few times did manage to get a picture of motorbike riders terrorising kids on the playground, so I had to spend days and days waiting in court as a witness just to be told the guy didn't turn up and the case was dropped. I would like to help society and the police, but I just can't afford wasting time like that.

So we have learned to just accept a certain amount of vandalims as part of life rather than trying to fight windmills.

That's really sad.....