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Comment by WilTimSon | Hacker News Reader

The owner must not have thought it through then, because most tourists will chug on straight through their field. Having a marked path is to their own benefit if they have the (mis?)fortune of living on the way to a landmark.

I remember a similar case on Malta, where I went up a hill to get a nice view from a cave, recommended to me as part of the tourist route. The whole access to the cave lies across private property and there's about 20 signs explicitly pointing where to go and what will happen if you go anywhere else. I got to the cave, enjoyed it, got out, never once stepped outside the designated route. I imagine the owner worked out that meticulous path a while ago to minimise tourist noise.

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Some landowners I suspect hope that if they let the public footpath get poorly maintained and poorly marked, walkers will tell their friends its a bad walk, easy to get lost, and fewer will try to walk it. That if people can't identify the legal path across a field, they won't cross at all for fear of breaking the law.

Needless to say, this doesn't work well on the stubborn, hardy types who'll spend hours ascending hills for fun - but it might deter the more casual walkers.

Aye - this is definitely the case near me in North Wales - it’s normal to find posts that held trail markers hacked down, stiles festooned with barbed wire like it’s time for some trench warfare, and paths that just disappear into a bog, a river, or a newly built housing estate.

The local farmers generally detest ramblers, as it’s not unusual to find picnic leftovers, balloons, condoms, whatever, in a field with livestock, so I can understand their desire to discourage walkers. Heck, where I live most of the time in the wilds of Portugal, I initially had no reservations about people using our land to access the river - until they started leaving trash and faeces around the place. Now we have no trespassing signs, which saddens me, but I’ve picked up my last pile of shit and toilet paper.

Creating a marked path can increase liabilities. It implies that the path is safe. When someone falls and is hurt, the landowner doesnt want to hear that the "designated pathway" was unsafe, that the totally innocent member of the public was literally sent down the garden path to an injury. So landowners will ignore many paths, adopting an "enter at your own risk" approach. One increasing area is accessibility levels. If a landowner installs a gate or other structure on a path, does that structure have to be wheelchair accessible? Can a landowner install a gate designed to disuade bicycles?

Are you American? I am, and this line of thinking screams "uniquely American" to me, but I'm curious if "liabilities everywhere" is similarly a concern across the pond.

My understanding has been that every other country has much more "common sense" than we do in these matters.

People who claim that someone who breaks their ankle on an unmaintained footpath through a field or in the woods in the US will routinely track down the landowner and sue them really need to provide some documentation that's the case.

That's fair. I think it's a (possibly logical) extrapolation from the undeniably litigious nature of Americans. See recent: https://6abc.com/water-bead-warnings-are-beads-safe-dangers-...

> At least one parent has sued the maker and distributor of one of the products. The lawsuit says some children are ingesting them, and the beads are blocking airways and organs.

Health Insurance companies will follow-up with determining if the property/land owner is responsible for the accident and try to sue. Months after ER treatment, I've had to respond that my child's cycling accident on a camp site was not because of the camp site owner's site maintenance. So it's not necessarily the victim who sues, but the victims' insurer.

I'm honestly skeptical that's a common thing however. I've certainly never encountered such a thing and, while I've seen a few cases such as yours mentioned online, it's not something I've ever heard from anyone I know.

If someone received an insurance payout (ie medical expenses covered) then there was absolutely a subrogation discussion between the insurance companies of each party. Upon being given access to electronic law records, new law students are often shocked to see their names on lawsuits they never heard about. That bicycle accident at the mall when you were a kid ... your dad's work-based health insurer sued the mall's insurer to get back the money they paid to the hospital that stitched you up. Thousands of such tiny actions are filed and settled every day.

Last time I had a cycling accident that required an ER trip, I received a packet from my insurer a few weeks later asking for details. The way the questions were phrased, they were absolutely looking for somebody else to pay. Is it common that the insurer takes the next step (actually suing another party)? No idea, but they definitely look for ways to pass the buck.

Well you'll have to define common, then. From the parent comment and "cases mentioned online" I would personally say it's common enough in the US. It's how our system works.

That line of thinking is certainly not British. Rights of way exist; it's not a matter of "creating a marked path". Farmers have a duty to keep the rights of way clear. See https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/environment/countryside/public-r...

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