Luas On The Offensive

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Concerned Pedestrian writes:

find it strange that the Luas are targeting cyclists with their near misses video  when less than 2 weeks ago a female pedestrian died after being hit by Luas tram.

Rather than make the Luas lines safer for cyclists by implementing a non slip track coating, or innovative technology such as Saferails  they go on the offensive.

Luas (Facebook)

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44 thoughts on “Luas On The Offensive

  1. b

    what’s the point here, Luas shouldn’t be telling cyclists to be safe?

    or maybe lets criticize them for not implementing solutions that haven’t been tested anywhere yet

    1. Paps

      I think the point is that no cyclists have actually been hit or injured due to the luas (despite the close misses shown) but rather due to the dangers provided by the infrastructure.
      Whereas almost a dozen pedestrians have actually been hit by a luas, with one of them being killed.
      Makes sense to buy sponsored facebook ads targeting pedestrians awareness right?

  2. Scundered

    It is staggering though, the amount of cyclists and pedestrians totally unaware of the danger they put themselves in, becoming more isolated with the over-ear headphones and screens in their faces.

    1. Kolmo

      Earphones = pure stupid. I’m on a motorbike in town most days – some cyclists just drift into moving traffic, without a glance, and they can’t hear the traffic…comically reckless, then they shout at me for startling them..common sense isn’t that common for some

      1. postmanpat

        So you would ban deaf cyclists? Are cyclists supposed to waive their right of way because a noisy motorbike engine behind them is getting louder? If a cyclist “drifts” out into the road for whatever reason (turning right at the next junction being one obvious example) what you should do is slow down and let them do whatever it is they are doing . They where in front of you to begin with, so that gives them the right of way. You hit them, its your fault. Earphones are irrelevant. Anyway the decibel level on the roads is greater than most portable audio players. The cyclist can hear you anyway. Cyclist do glance behind them all the time , they see cars coming up behind them and even allow for the 10 to 20 mph over the speed limit that all car drivers break. Motorbikes are a problem because they are smaller and tend disobey the speed limits by double the correct speed limit. But of course it all the cyclists fault.

        1. Kolmo

          Read again – ‘some’ cyclists – not all.
          just this morning, Thomas St. – clown on bike, adjusting whatever he was listening to at the lights – completely unaware that the lights were green, or that the bus was beeping him, or the traffic wating for him to pay any type of attention to his surroundings…

  3. Paul

    to be fair, those cyclists are behaving stupidly. I’d prefer more campaigns like this one.

    Drive safely, don’t be an idiot.
    Do not litter, don’t be an utter scumbag.
    Be safe on your bicycle, stop behaving like a twit in traffic.

    etc.

  4. Daisy Chainsaw

    What innovative technology will stop cyclists trying to jump the lights, or make them pay more attention to their surroundings? This isn’t a failure of technology, this is failure of people, specifically those on bikes, to adhere to basic rules of the road.

      1. Bandy

        Henry Street is a pedestrian street – good enough for them if cyclists can’t go down it.

        1. Vote Rep #1

          They meant get to, not go down.

          Only way to get to it on a bike if you are avoiding luas lines is down one side of the quays and up the others till you get to Jervis St, if you are coming from the south side or around Connolly station.

  5. Bruncvik

    Most days, I jog to work and back, including across the city centre. I have seen lots of stupid things, but one thing I’ve never seen was a Luas train breaking a red light. As far as I’m concerned, of all the traffic participants in Dublin, Luas is the safest and most predictable. I have no problem with them pointing out the suicidal tendencies of others.

  6. pedeyw

    I fell once from cycling along the luas line. I don’t cycle on the Luas line anymore.

    1. Joe Small

      I wedged my Dublin Bike in the tracks outside Jervis Shopping Centre on a Saturday and went over the handlebars. I was mortified at the crowd gathering around me and limped away as quick as I could. Stupid, stupid boy!

      1. postmanpat

        Happens “to the best ” of us. Did the same myself years ago on the same track at the O’Connell street junction. Went over the handle bars and landed on my back. Thank god I was drunk , otherwise I would have broke my neck. I grabbed the bike and cycled off quick smart before making myself an easy bust for the street Garda.

      1. Paps

        Has happened me on Harcourt street years ago, I’ve also seen it happen to people outside Trinity College and on O’Connell st recently

  7. Jody

    The poor cyclists! It’s always everyone else’s fault! May e they should stop breaking red lights and cycling on footpaths if they are so worried for their safety.

    1. postmanpat

      Breaking (certain) lights and cycling on paths is quite safe , I do it all the time.

  8. Specific Gravity

    How would a non-slip rail affect performance of the trams? Likely to impact on noise levels, additional power to overcome friction, effects on tram wheel durability, braking etc…

    As for filling the slot, wouldn’t the high frequency of the tram wheels pressing down on it just cause it to break up under fatigue? Would it also block the internal drainage of the rails? Would it have to be glued in so it doesn’t pop up after the tram and cause a trip hazard? Would the tram need more power to overcome the added friction? Could it increase the risk of the tram wheels coming out of the slot and derailing?

    Best of luck to them, but the physics of the problem suggest there are several good reasons why this nut has not been cracked anywhere yet.

  9. Owen

    I often think of putting a dash-cam on the car. The amount of retarded cyclists I see on a daily basis is staggering.

    In the last month I have seen 4 near misses. And I don’t mean a little wobble, I mean if the car had not hammered on the cyclist was going to A&E. But then on a daily basis I see easily 5 go through red lights, and another perhaps 10 go up on the pavement to avoid lights.

    Its staggering the disregard cyclists have for other road users, and pedestrians, and equally staggering how much they rant about the opposite.

    1. edalicious

      Put it this way, if I cycle around adhering completely to all rules of the road, at least once every single week I have “hammer on”, as you put it, to avoid being completely taken out by a car turning without indicating or checking their mirrors, or by a car breaking the lights, or by a car trying to overtake me on a road where there isn’t enough space. Every single week, without fail. Can you understand how scary that is and why we would rant about it? While I agree that there is a lot of cyclists out there that disregard other road users, there’s an equal amount of eedjits out there driving around in cars, you just don’t notice them as much when you’re in a car.

      1. Paul

        yes of course, the cars are behaving badly so the cyclists should be able to do so as well. Enjoy being a red smear on the road.

        context, I am a pedestrian and a bus-user so I hate both motorists and cyclists. I’ve almost lost my own life on the roads as well as friends and family due to morons. Cannot understand the difficulty people have with red meaning stop and green meaning go.

        1. edalicious

          Did you reply to me by mistake? Or do you just need to work on your reading comprehension? I don’t see how anything you said had any relevance to what I said.

          1. Vote Rep #1

            I can’t understand why pedestrians cannot wait for the green man to appear instead of acting like a suicidal lemming and just stepping out into traffic. Stop being an idiot and stay on the footpath where you are meant to be.

          2. edalicious

            So it was your reading comprehension. I didn’t “blame” motorists, I was just pointing out that it isn’t as black and white as “all cyclists break the law so why are they giving out about motorists”. If you’d actually bothered your hole reading to the end of my post, you’d see that I said that there were as many eedjits in cars as on bikes. If everyone tried to be a bit more empathetic and mannerly on the road, instead of blaming each other, we’d all be much better off. It’s not cars vs bike vs peds out there (or it certainly shouldn’t be), we’re all just trying to get where we’re going and if we all just tried to work together instead of constantly being ignorant c-bags to each other, we’ve all got a much better chance of getting there in one piece.

  10. Optimus Grime

    As an avid cyclist who commutes into Dublin on the train as I walk through the city centre cyclists and pedestrians seem to want to outdo each other in the stupidity stakes some days!

    1. Dhaughton99

      I have hit 2 pedestrians while cycling over the past 2 weeks. One on Dame st, she was deciding to cross on red while looking at her phone. The other on the quays, she ran out looking the wrong way on a one way road, also on red.

  11. Eamonn Clancy

    The female pedestrian who died was hit on the luas tracks between Rialto and Fatima late at night.

  12. Vote Rep #1

    Normally, as a fellow cyclist, I will defend cyclists but lately my fellow cyclists are wreaking my head with regards red lights and green men. So many do it, and do it dangerously. Hypocritically, I have, and probably will do sometime in the future, gone through a red light but only when it is clear and safe to do. In a car or on foot, I don’t mind when it done either. Its the idiots who barely brake while flying through a red light full of pedestrians. The gardai seem to barely care either. Until they start doing something, people will keep doing it. And there seems to be more and more doing it.

    In the above piece, no idea what Concerned Pedestrian is complaining about. They have done it a few times for cars breaking the lights. What has that girl got to do with cyclists being idiots?

  13. wearnicehats

    I always thought it was illegal to cycle on the Luas tracks – if so why should the surfaces be cycle friendly?

    1. Duh

      Because cars and cyclists frequently have to cross them, and bicycle wheels skid across or get stuck in them.

  14. Jack ascinine

    The point of this video is to highlight the significant amount of sillybottoms that pay no attention to what they are doing. LUAS aren’t “targeting” cyclists. The cyclists are making themselves targets.

    1. Sam

      ^this. I commute to work every day by bike, and I’d have little sympathy for the dimwits who can’t be bottomed making themselves aware of large moving objects nearby.

  15. Gay Tea Shop

    Video scrubbed of all Dublin Bikes references to avoid embarrassing the local politicians- in fact Dublin Bikes riders are amongst the worst abusers of rules of the road. But hey tech workers and tourists are money.

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