What a load of cr4p....only saw probably half of it but the 4x4 owners they interviewed where at a P&P NOT laning, and they showed the trucks churning and climbing up stuff which they wouldnt have done if on a lane...
at least they interviewed someone sensible from the Trail riding group...
Really one-sided program if you ask me...all the stills and background shots showed crossers and other non laning offroad activity...journelistic licence to them I guess, but distorting the truth if you ask me...
That fella that was interviewed with the trailriding guy, who was anti laning (and probably has a house next to a lane which will go up in value by £25k if there wasnt a road next to it!)...mensioned about a load of vehicles where stopped and 4 werent taxed/mot/insured, and a few where unroadworthy...
My thoughts are that if they go on the lanes illegally now with no consideration for the law, then if the lanes were not allowed to vehicles then these idiots would still be on them...So the problem would still exist, but the legal users would be excluded unfairly...
As for unroadworthy...if the police stopped 20 random cars on the road I guarantee that some of those cars would have issues that rendered them unroadworthy in the eyes of the law...you might even find one or 2 that werent insured/taxed/mot'ed...so where is the difference with laning, apart from the 4x4's are less likely to kill someone at 10mph on a lane than a car doing 70 on a road...Its also worth noting that the totally illegal vehicles probably got the lane on a tarmaced proper road, if they had been caught there it would be percieved as a win for justice, sooner than them getting caught on a lane and it just giving ammo to the anti's.
I think its good that the police are active in getting those that taint the name of our hobby...but if the results from the activity are going to be presented as they were in this program, then we might almost be better taking the line of police victimisation if we are repeated stopped and checked...
Considering that a muddy number plate or headlight could be the "unroadworthyness"that was mensioned, it does occur to me that stopping our trucks on lanes for this is a massive waste of Policing rescourse, which would be better spent catching drink drivers who kill people.
Of course finding unroadworthyness all depends on exactly how hard you are prepared to look....not saying the police were unfair, but lets face it if we are buying a used car its very easy to find things wrong if you look hard enough if there is an incentive to find faults...
Maybe I would be an idea if someone took John Craven out laning for a day...and show him first hand that its not all about ripping up the countryside, and show the damage that horses make to public rights of way, and the attitude that we get from bobblehats when we are doing nothing wrong and are polite and considerate...
End of rant!
