Once again, a mountain bike hater seems to have taken his supposed rights into his own hands. 16-year-old Tim Litzba was turning a corner when he saw something stretched between two trees. During the emergency stop, he fell and bruised his ribs, shin and ankle. He reported this to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (subject to charge). The Kreiszeitung picked up the story. What caused the teenager to lock up his brakes was barbed wire stretched across the unofficial trail. The district forester also has his say in the media, calling the barbed wire trap "criminal".

Which of course it is. A few days before the incident, an Osnabrück law firm published an article in which author Henning Bahr explains that setting such a trap can constitute a criminal offense of grievous bodily harm if someone is actually injured in connection with the barbed wire. In 2017, the regional court in Nuremberg (Bavaria) sentenced a man to more than three years in prison for stretching a rope across a path, which seriously injured a 54-year-old cyclist.

Even legal trails are being destroyed

Rabiater resistance to mountain bikers does not appear to be a new phenomenon in Lower Saxony. The district newspaper reports that a freeride trail built on private land with the owner's consent has already been destroyed twice.

Tim Litzba and his bike friends are committed to ensuring that the bikers have a legal route. For now, however, they have to make sure that they don't fall victim to vigilante bike haters. His first reaction to the accident was to remove the barbed wire and warn his colleagues in bike forums about possible further traps.