Yesterday.
Liffey Quays, Dublin.
Hundreds of cyclists took to the streets to highlight the need for a safer cycle infrastructure.
Kieran Ryan of the Dublin Cycling Campaign, writes:
The event, organised by Dublin Cycling Campaign, involved more than 500 cyclists of all ages and abilities riding their bikes from the start point in the Phoenix Park all the way to the Point Village in Dublin’s Docklands.
Cycling has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently with five cyclists losing their lives on Irish roads in the first three months of this year.
A further ten cyclists died in the Republic of Ireland in 2016 and this worrying trend of cyclist fatalities has highlighted the need for proper, safe cycle infrastructure such as the proposed Liffey Cycle Route.
Dublin Cycling Campaign’s vision is for a vibrant, living city where everyone can safely enjoy everyday walking and cycling.
FIGHT!
Last week: Cycling This Sunday?
Pictures: Aisling Finn
The quays on both sides of the Liffey should be for busses and bicycles only.
So what about the people who live facing the liffey. How do they get their cars in and out.
Cack idea.
Buses are not a solution to anything.
nonsense. the quays should be only for freckled people.
Fair play to all involved (nice video, too).
Even the thicks without helmets?
Do you wear a helmet walking about, or as a passenger on a bus, or driving a car? Didn’t think so.
I don’t walk about on the road weaving through traffic.
Ye naughty pants.
Helmets dont provide any safety from road traffic, go to holland and educate yourself
I got knocked off my bike on the Quays in 2003, guy in an M3 drove by me and cut in front of me going left, i hit his left side, left the bike and rolled over his bonnet onto the ground landing on my bag and hid my helmeted head. The helmet was badly cracked….My head wasn’t.
But I’m sure falling and hitting your head with a helmet is the same as falling and hitting your head without a helmet.
I’m not saying they’re 100% going to work, but they help if you get clipped etc. I’m not talking full on crash at 50kmph+
But yeah helmets provide no safety. At all. Fact.
Knocked off your bike on the quays.
What about a segregated cycleway?
It would be good, would it not ?
Helmets provide excellent safety from road traffic here in Ireland that don’t pay enough care and attention to other vulnerable road users like cyclists, unlike those in The Netherlands.
Also, the cycle network is far superior, thus minimising the risk for serious accidents.
Did you know that they even are thought to open the door with their opposite hand to give a better view? It’s called the ‘Dutch Reach’ but it’s just part of the good practice there, they don’t have a name for it.
Perhaps you should go there and educate yourself….
C’mere to me, safety this, vulnerable road user that, blah blah blah.
How many of those super safety conscious bike riders campaigning for safer cycle lanes are NOT even wearing a bike helmet?
Does it matter?
Chaz, if it didn’t matter, then why are the parents putting helmets on their kids?
He’s got a point you know!
More pedestrians have been killed than cyclists. Should we all wear body armour when out for a walk? How many car occupants suffer fatal or life-changing head injuries? Should we all don helmets every time we sit into a car? (By your logic, we should.)
Cycling is not dangerous.
Getting hit by a car is dangerous.
Wearing a helmet will not stop you getting hit by a car.
There are two philosophies on helmets. My own view is that you should wear one in case you have a collision. The other view is that helmets don’t prevent accidents – what prevents accidents is (a) better road design, (b) more care from drivers and (above all) large numbers of cyclists on every road, which will eventually give you (a) and (b). If cycling is presented as a risky activity, for which you need a helmet, then that puts people off. Cyclists in Holland don’t wear helmets. I don’t completely go along with this second philosophy, but I accept that some people choose good not wear a helmet on principle.
It’ll stop your head cracking open if you come off your bike.
Yes
Lets go on a protest campaign for road safety and everyone driving up the quays with no seat-belts eh?
+1 Should be the law to wear one. Anyone who thinks its not an increase in safety to wear a helmet is a clown.
Your concern is admirable, but to wear or not to wear a helmet is an irrelevance compared to pressing issues like segregating cyclists from heavy traffic.
Ah yeah, sure its easier to fiance, develop and build a city wide cycle masterplan. No need for the helmets in the mean time. Way easier then changing a law that would probably quickly gather support, and actually put attention on other issues relating to cycle safety.
Are you a politician?
No I’m a cyclist who cycles about 30 KM every day.
Wearing a helmet crops up in conversation once in a while, usually with my mother or GF.
I myself don’t feel any particular need to wear a helmet.
I don’t think about it much.
What I find myself obsessing about every day, and becoming angry about every day is the fact that I spend a lot of time cycling about 2 feet from a double-decker bus, speeding cars and 5 and 6 axle lorries.
Red lights and helmets are brought up every time there is suggestions of segregated cycle ways.
Its a silly distraction. But it seems an effective one.
And you ask me if I’m a politician.
Wearing a helmet while riding a bike is not irrelevant
I took part and it was funny to see a couple of taxi drivers and a bus driver drive aggressively right behind some participants while blaring the horn, I hope someone had it caught on camera and reported them, tailgating bikes like that is incredibly dangerous.
Well done all who came out.
Nobody likes a tell-tale or snitch.
True, google Garda Whistleblower…
Are you:
(a) Taxi Driver
(b) Bus Driver
(c) Poo stirrer
(d) You can only select one of the above.
Driving behind the participants taking up all of the bus lane and making it incredibly slow you mean?
Tailgating is covered under Sec 51(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1961 (driving with reasonable consideration) which carries a fixed charge of €80 and 2 penalty points. You’d do well to argue that tailgating was justified by the speed of the cyclists.
I went looking for an exact wording of this and according to the 1961 road traffic act:
51.—(1) A person shall not, in a public place—
(a) drive or attempt to drive, or be in charge of, an animal drawn vehicle,
while he is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or a drug to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the vehicle or cycle.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1961/act/24/section/51/enacted/en/html
Have you got a link to the correct section?
My mistake, Section 51A, not 51(a) as previously quoted.
http://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/1961/act/24/section/51A/revised/en/html
I got the original quote from the garda website where they were talking about tailgating to avoid tolls on the M50: http://garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=7050
No doubt solicitors could get people off the hook on such a technicality.
No, I don’t mean that at all. I meant it as stated.
This reads as, cyclists get pleasure from causing delay to other legitimate road users out trying to earn a living. No wonder people think cyclists are self entitled mongos.
Looks like someone forgot to include the music when exporting out the final version..
Cyclists are a nuisance. Ban the lot of them from the public roads.
hahahahahahahahahaha, excellent stuff Topsy.
More of this.
Brilliant.
100% agree. Ban them from public roads….. by developing the infrastructure to support their safe use, separated from cars and buses.
I think you are actually asking for the same thing as all those in this video
Cars, trucks and buses should be banned from the city centre on security grounds. Have we learned nothing from the Westminister Bridge, Nice and Berlin tragedies? Terrorists using fixies as weapons is unheard of.
Bravo. On the day a nutter caries a bag of explosives and shrapnel onto a train..
pay some tax if you want to use the roads goddammit!
#nixon2020
Some US figures on this:
A typical motorist who drives 12,000 annual miles imposes $840 in roadway costs, pays $516 in roadway user fees and $224 in general taxes spent on roadways.
Non-drivers tend to travel less, people who rely primarily on bicycling for transportation typically ride 3 to 6 miles per day or 1,000 to 2,000 annually. If their costs are an order of magnitude smaller than automobile travel (0.7¢ per mile), a typical cyclist imposes $7 to $14 in roadway costs, and pays $224 in general taxes toward roadways, a significant overpayment.
Sick burn, dude.
Road rash, even.
bicycles were on the roads before cars, and don’t destroy them like cars do, so if you break it, you can pay for it.
There are a lot of bad drivers out there but they have the bonus of being in a metal car, cyclists here need to learn how to drive defensively and carefully.
Do Travellers cycle?
No, their cloven hooves slip off the pedals, their horns won’t fit under the helmets and the demonic hellfire flickering around them melts the tyres and obscures the road with smoke.
Jaykers. No wonder they don’t!
I’m all for cycling being promoted and better infrastructure being developed. There is a lot of work to do in Ireland on the issue, and I’m all for it.
But I am sick to death of the double standard of cyclists in Ireland. I cycle. I stop at lights. I don’t go through them or hop the curb to avoid them. If you want to be respected on the roads, respect the laws of the roads.
What double standards?
Why are people so intent on raising these absolute nonsense arguments?
Its utterly bizarre.
What has anything you refer to got to do with segregated cycle lanes on the Liffey?
I can give you a hint – F…..A…
“The double standard of cyclists” a) has nothing whatsoever to do with the need for safe infrastructure, and b) since you’re talking about cyclists going through red lights, would be virtually wiped out by safe infrastructure in which cyclists were physically separated from motor vehicles.
Pretty sure drivers in cars break disproportionately more road laws than cyclists but that didn’t stop anyone building them a bunch of motorways.
Geeze lads, we’re all cyclist here. The post is about better infrastructure, promoting safer cycling. Cyclists also need to burden the mission themselves. Obey the laws of the road, not only being safer, but gaining more respect for the argument presented.
Nigel. Your post is exactly my double standard point. 12% of lights broken are by cyclists, 88% by cars. There are 300,000 cars in Dublin and 15,000 commute by bike. Therefore, only 4% of commuters are by bike, but manage to record 12% of all broken lights. That is staggering.
88% of lights broken are by motorists but let’s keep focusing on how cyclists are the problem and don’t deserve safe infrastructure.
I’m also not sure how cyclists are being held to double standard since literally every post about them will include an endless litany of complaints of this sort while, eg, Hot Wheels posts are curiously free of them. Drivers are being held to no standards whatsoever by comparison.
I think you missed my point.
That’s okay I was mostly making a different but related point of my own.
You have no point.
Besides the idea that if cyclists wear helmets and less of them break red lights, then a segregated cycle way on the Liffey would have a better chance of proceeding because the public would respect them more.
Just bizarre stuff.