Tangled Metal wrote:Imho a barrier is an inconvenience only when passing through it. Once through you're back into happy cycling. I personally just get on with it. Even if that means unloading my touring recumbent, carrying bike and bags over or through obstruction then loading up again. It's annoying but hardly life or death or threatening injury. Unless you're going too fast and may cause injury to yourself or others.
Twice, when I came across barriers like this, I was faced with situations that could, indeed, have been dangerous. Not just to me, but to my little ones.
One time, I encountered chicane type fences on a shared use facility, on both sides of a road. The path was my only alternative to a 70 mph A road. I didn't think that I could get through with the tandem and trailer together, so I pulled off to the side, Mini V, who was 5 at the time was stoker. I disconnected tandem and trailer, and took the trailer (with Littlest, aged 2 inside) across the road with Mini V & left the trailer there, with her in charge. I told her just to hold onto the trailer and wait, while I went to get the tandem. While I was waiting, someone came along with a large dog on an extendable lead & let the dog approach my children. Mini V suddenly had a rather large dog right in her face & started yelling. I could do nothing because there was a car on the crossing, but I went as soon as I could. The dog started barking, the owner pulled it away. When I got there with the tandem, the dog owner starting effing and cursing me because I left my kids 'unattended'. Not only was it a horrible experience for me, it took Mini V years to not be afraid of dogs. And what if the dog had reacted badly to either Mini V yelling, or it's owners aggressiveness towards me?
The other time, such barriers caused me a problem, they were actually set too narrow for my trailer to fit through, so I had to get Littlest out of the trailer, and lift it over. Mini V was supposed to hold his hand & make sure he stayed in place, but she got distracted and he followed me. I was aware of it, and just solved it by making my kids go back and forth with me as I moved first trailer, then tandem. But it was difficult & stressful to have a toddler and 5 year old unrestrained, potentially in the presence of traffic, dogs, cyclists, etc., especially after my previous experience with such barriers.
I learned to avoid routes with barriers as much as possible, but there were a couple of places where my choices were horrid barriers or horrid road.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom