Yesterday at work I (M28) was having coffee with some coworkers and one guy told us he was planning to buy a dirtbike. I asked him we're he was going to ride, as there are several motocross clubs/tracks around here and I used to be a member of one of them.

He said he was probably just going to ride on dirt roads in the woods. I asked him if he owned those woods or had permission from the owner. He said no. Here in Sweden we have a law that says you can go around on other peoples land freely, but that doesn't include motor vehicles.

He just said that it doesn't hurt anyone and no one cares.

I told him that the landowner definitely care, and it sucks having your land and private roads torn up for no reason. I also told a little story.

I grew up on a farm with both forest and animals. At some point when I was a teen, we were having problems with someone riding around on my parents land. We found a lot of tracks, but never saw anyone. The thing is, half of the year we had cows in parts of the forest. Which means there were barbed wire gates across some roads.

One day my dad and I found a crash site, where someone had seen the gate too late, put the bike down on the ground and gone into the ditch. There were only some plastic parts and a broken lever left on the site.

My coworker called me a psycho and that the guy could've died. I said that there would be zero risk of dying if he had followed the law. Also, the wire was there to stop cows, not dirtbikes.

AITA?

edit: The fences went up at the same time and at the same place every year. We didn't put it up early or anything just to stop this guy. There are private road-signs and car barriers on the edge of the forest, but those are easy to get around with a smaller vehicle