No to bells, noise and bike racing in Waterdog

Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too. A tiny, but vocal minority of people complain that trails are unsafe because of cyclists - despite the fact there’s never been a documented hiker/biker collision in over 30 years of shared use. In response to these complaints, Mayor Mates proposes a several policies, including a pilot bell program so people can announce their presence to each other to increase safety. Now this writer complains bells will make the trails less safe. This is based on either sheer ignorance or intentional misrepresentation of what bell programs do (and don’t do.)

This is a classic straw man argument: build up a position that nobody is taking (the straw man), and then knock the straw man down. This letter writer clearly doesn’t understand how bell programs work. Bells are provided to all users to use - not just cyclists - along with educational and instructional signs. Bells do not exempt bell-users from the rules or give them the right of way. They are designed to make it easier to comply with the existing rule of announcing your presence to others around corners - which applies to all trail users, whether they’re hikers, runners, cyclists, or dog walkers. Here is an example of policies from a Southern California trail system with a bell program: https://mwba.org/bell/

- Always yield or stop for hikers and horses;

-A bell is a part of trail courtesy, not a replacement for it;

-A bell does not give you the right of way;

-Please stop for others on narrow trails;

Thus, it is absolutely false that bell programs create a “pecking order” of users or replace existing rules. As the writer admits, the vast majority of riders are courteous and safe. Human behavior falls on a bell curve (no pun intended). Most are in the middle hump of the curve (generally courteous trail users) with a few outliers at each end of the bell curve (On one end, cyclists who ride too fast, dog owners who don’t use leashes and don’t pick up their dog poop, etc. On the other end, users who are extremely courteous and give back by doing volunteer trailwork.)

The writer provides one anecdote that one cyclist with a bell behaved badly on one occasion. Does that mean all cyclists with bells will behave badly? The other week, an aggressive dog bit a hiker on the trail at Waterdog, unprovoked. Does that mean all dogs will bite hikers unprovoked? The arguments in this letter simply don’t hold water.