Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
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bikes4two
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Location: SE Hampshire, UK

Re: Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

Post by bikes4two »

How do car satnav manufacturers get around the liability issues (and they obviously do)? We've all read about (or done it ourselves) and slavishly followed the instructions and ended up in a pickle!

There has to be a sensible answer to bikehike's problems.
Without my stoker, every trip would only be half a journey
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benm
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Re: Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

Post by benm »

In practice liability disclaimers are not worth the paper they are written on...

My personal unqualified opinion is that the site owner didn't want the potential hassle and cost of taking steps to ensure he wouldn't get involved in litigation with respect to the routes.

I imagine that the OS license for commercial use of their mapping is fairly expensive as well and they are much more likely to get twitchy about the non personal use (permitted as long as you put the crown copyright message on every printed sheet) of the material than someone is to sue about a problem with a route.

When push comes to shove we are just guessing - I am very happy to be wrong about the reasons :)

B.
ebygomm
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Joined: 13 Feb 2010, 10:03pm

Re: Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

Post by ebygomm »

I imagine that the OS license for commercial use of their mapping is fairly expensive as well and they are much more likely to get twitchy about the non personal use (permitted as long as you put the crown copyright message on every printed sheet) of the material than someone is to sue about a problem with a route.


Bikehike uses OS Open Space, a free opensource mapping application provided by Ordnance Survey for use by individuals for no commercial gain (and a few other terms and conditions). There is no problem with Bikehike from an OS perspective, if there was the OS would simply cancel the API key needed for it to work. From what I understand from reading elsewhere, the issue was purely with people following routes that had been uploaded by other individuals. Hence why the site is still working, only now without the option to save routes.
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richardyorkshire
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Re: Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

Post by richardyorkshire »

The interesting thing about this closure of the route database on BikeHike is that it nicely demonstrates a particular problem:

We don't have a litigation culture in this country.

We do have a "fear of litigation" culture.

There has never been a case of a publisher of walking books being sued because a walker encountered problems whilst following a route in the book. There has never been a case of cyclist suing a publisher of cycling books because they encountered a problem following a suggested route. It is extremely unlikely that such an event would happen.

But suppose you publish such books, and you seek legal advice as to whether there was any guarantee against possible litigation. The answer will obviously be "no, there is no such guarantee". Then, because of the fear of litigation, you stop publishing the books.

That would be an example of a "fear of litigation" culture, not an example of a litigation culture.
Wisest is he who knows that he knows nothing.
Tandem Man
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Re: Bikehike.co.uk. curtailed by litigation culture.

Post by Tandem Man »

Satmap have a route planner and route share section on their website.

http://www.satmap.com/satmap_route_net/

I wonder how they get around the difficulties suggested or wether they just accept the risk.

ian
Ian From Wakefield
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