Members of the Trail Riders Fellowship: the organisation that promotes the use of legal carriageways by road-legal motorcycles; are reporting an increasing number of encounters with deliberately scattered nails and concealed nail boards on Byways Open to All Traffic (BOATS) in England and Wales.
Such devices will normally only cause a temporary inconvenience to motorcyclists (their tyres are often tough enough to roll over such obstructions without damage, and punctures are easily fixed) and 4×4 owners, but they do have potential to cause possibly lethal injury to walkers, horses and horse riders, plus great inconvenience to cyclists.
Landowners should be alert to the placing of such devices on rights of way crossing ‘their’ land, as they may be liable under law for any injury or loss caused whether such devices were placed with their knowledge or not.
TRF members and any other users are asked to report all such devices they encounter to the police and RSPCA, so, to avoid trouble, landowners should arrange regular and frequent inspection of rights of way crossing their property.
