This morning.
Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
New cycle hate measures in full effect.
Kevin Whitty writes:
“I’m no lawyer but it might have been amber…”
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Everything. As It Happens.
This morning.
Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
New cycle hate measures in full effect.
Kevin Whitty writes:
“I’m no lawyer but it might have been amber…”
sur how could she see where she was cycling with those bandages on her face.
Yea no need for cyclists to pay any heed to laws
This is where those helmet cams may come in handy, if you use ’em.
Exactly. I already got away from a ‘bullying’ tactics traffic stop because of camera. See my youtube channel search ‘dlb cycles’
I don’t think helmet cams will be much use in instances like this. Too much incriminating evidence on them, from all the traffic lights the broke, cycling against traffic flow, on footpaths & pedestrians almost run over, prior to being nicked.
You know all that happened?
Hello Officer!
Good. More of this please.
Yes! And for cars too! Drivers who don’t signal till they’re turning, who use mobile phones, who break red lights, who tailgate.
And to the pedestrian who walked into me 30 mins ago, while looking the other way on James’s St, I hope your screen smashed when it flew from your hands.
And time for the City council to put some ‘No Cycling symbols’ on footpaths around the city that are plagued by cyclists taking shortcuts.
Needs more than signs
Snipers maybe.
Yay, lets discourage cycling, more congestion please!
Nay, Let’s just encourage compliance and safety for all please.
But but but, look at him…. he was breaking the law too, you know. Why you gots to always pick on the cyclists?! It’s unfair… boo hoo…
‘Cycle hate’ aka having to enforce laws designed to protect Darwin Award nominees.
If only they would do the same with drivers, who are a bigger risk to everyone.
Yup, cycle hate, laws brought in to appease the George Hooks among us. The road safety impact of these laws are likely to be minimal, apart from encouraging more people to take to their cars, thereby decreasing road safety.
I reckon she got busted because of those weird slatted hipster glasses. How can you cycle safely wearing those!?
Is the summons or fixed charge penalty notice sent to your house on production of some sort of ID?
Fortunately she’ll have the option to do 10 hours community service cleaning the oceans of vitriolic drool dripping from George Hook’s radio mic.
She might want to bring gloves for that job.
Aslo, ewwwwwwwwwwwww
Firstly, I’m a regular motorist around Dublin and deal with ignorant cyclists all the time. BUT…….
If cyclists have to stop at every red light and that’s rigorously-enforced around the city, the numbers cycling will start to drop. Cycle journeys can be so short that waiting for 1 minute at a red light can be 20-25% of the entire journey time, whereas it’s a tiny fraction for a motorist. In addition, the cyclist has to move away from traffic lights amongst much faster-moving traffic, adding to the dangers all around them. Cyclists are safer when they’re ahead of vehicular traffic, not in the middle of or behind it.
So why not allow cyclists to interpret traffic signals differently? Allow them to treat red lights like stop signs, making sure they stop but not require them to stay there, aka the Idaho Stop which has worked well for over 30 years there and elsewhere in the world (red lights are treated like stop signs, stop signs are treated like yield signs). Allow cyclists to proceed with caution in the opposite direction of a one-way street, keeping left as proposed in Dublin recently and used elsewhere in Europe.
For all the satisfaction I get seeing a motorist caught in the bus lane, I see it as nothing but a waste of time to see a Garda take a cyclist to task over breaking a red light, putting no-one but herself in any danger, just like she would moving off from a stop sign.
Paris has also recently allowed cyclists to break red lights.
Oh, any link for that, thanks.
It depends on the type of junction and what direction you’re turning. Explained here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33773868
Cool, thanks
With what? a stick…
the problem with that would be cyclists who still plough through the lights when pedestrians are crossing. They are the real reason cycle hate exists.
Do you include yourself in the “terrible cyclists but the ones commenting here seem to understand the right of way”, You wrote in a another comment further down this post “…. cycling through a pedestrian crossing…..I do it sometimes but I slow down as much as possible”.
By your own words, you don’t understand right of way, as a red light means stop, no right of way!
Posted in the wrong place
Nah I cycle through red lights if there are no pedestrians. But I slow down to make sure there are no pedestrians and then i go through slowly. As in I am stopped first, see there are no pedestrians and then I make my way across. There are different levels of breaking the red light. I am as far from the running people over as you can get
Yeah its not in line with the law but the pedestrians absolutly always have the right of way.
and it is usually at lights where the cars are up to the pedestrian crossing and they dont leave room in front for cyclist so you need to pass by the padestrian crossing to get in front where cyclists are supposed to be.
if cars left room like they should I wouldnt have to.
If the roads were designed for safe cycling I wouldnt have to.
and if my aunty had a willy she would be me uncle.
But everyone else seems alright. Guess its just me. But I understand right of way. Right of way defines who gets to go first and I always let the pedestrians go first.
Or just get off the bike and walk across as a pedestrian to illustrate how ridiculous the entire thing is. Traffic lights were created for cars. Pedestrianised and cycling routes don’t have traffic lights because they are not needed when cars are not part of the equation.
Yup, learning to dismount quickly and getting on again… I’m seeing more people doing it, including myself on occasion, especially when Gardaí are around to show what a nonsense this rule is in comparison to not enforcing the same on motorists….
Lwr Bridge St / Oliver Bond junction anyone? At least four or five cars break road rules every time the lights change in rush hour. 3 common rule breaks at that junction – Crossing the white line on red, entering yellow box on red, also entering the yellow box with no exit, box is another 20feet or more PASSED the lights! …and not to forget… SPEEDING down the hill to beat the lights.
They could make a fortune there with a few days enforcement.
Cyclists are bound by the rules of the road, therefore You are considered as traffic and expected to abide by them, however inconvenient you feel they might be.
I agree to a large extent. There are more cyclists respecting red lights now and sometimes when the lights go green, it resembles an amateur Tour De France with cyclists going all over the place. It helps even the motorists when some cyclists push on.
Well, the motorists have the new rules they wanted penalising cyclists. It’d be only right for the cyclists to pile up in front of all the cars – there is a box provided for bikes at many junctions which allows a row of bikes to line up in front of traffic, and not down along by the path.
If all cyclists used this facility, it’s slow up all cars at every junction. Let’s stick to the rules stringently and watch cars move slower at every junction…. it’s the rules now.. init !
Sounds sensible to me. Where there’s no bike lanes, cars waiting at the lights behind a bike are going to have to wait for the bikes ahead of them to clear the junction.
whats all this ‘red lights are nonsense’ nonsense? you can’t leave decisions like that down to human interpretation. for all you know, you could be goin thru a red after seein nothin comin along, and then a child behind a bollard or a bin or somethin could see the green man and run out and bam, get milled by your bike. thats just off the top of my head, all sorts can happen when things are left to chance. just play by the rules of the road you obnoxious pr!ck$ .. only cyclists think theyre above the rules of the road,
Was that your 2 cents? Should we call you 13 cents now?
Great suggestions, as cyclists are always so careful when going through red lights, checking all around before proceeding. Ha !!! If it’s good for cyclists then it’s good for motorists, who, by your logic, could exercise the same due care and attention as cyclists at various junctions. Lets get rid of all traffic lights and replace them with “Stop Signs”, where everyone can proceed with “caution”. Pedestrians could do the same. A quick look left and right and they’d be grand. This way the cyclists would quickly find out what it’s like to have vehicles coming at them from the left and right at speed, when they have the right of way. I’ll bet the cyclists would obey the “STOP” then.
The motorists journey time is just as important as the cyclists. Poor unfortunate cyclists, having their journey time increased by silly traffic lights. Awwww.
By the way, when it comes to road traffic act, a bicycle is a vehicle, just like a car, a bus, a truck, and a motorbike.
maybe you should look at the stats for people killed by cars versus those killed by bicycles, so you can understand the difference.
What has that got to do with anything? The fact that cars kill and bikes don’t is not relevant. Bikes injure, which is reason enough for cyclists to obey the rules. There’s an article within these comments about a pedestrian being hit and injured by a cyclist ploughing through a pedestrian crossing. But it seems the incident wasn’t reported and therefore is not part of any of your statistics. Because it’s not a statistic it doesn’t matter and makes everything okay ??????
Of course it’s relevant, cars weigh half a ton and travel at speed. Therefore there is a massive risk difference which needs to be addressed accordingly.
Okay, now I understand. Because a cyclist hitting a person on a pedestrian crossing will only “injure” that person (as opposed to being “killed” by a car doing the same), the risk difference is such that it’s okay to injure the said pedestrian! Really cool !!!!
it’s not ok to injure anyone, but well done, you’re getting close to understanding why the laws for car drivers need to be tighter than less dangerous transport forms.
The laws you are referring to are not for “car drivers”. They’re for all vehicles, which includes bikes. I am however getting a really good insight into why most cyclists continuously break the rules. It would appear that there is a sense of complete “right-of-way” and lack of respect for other road (and footpath) users, regardless.
Sorry harry but I think you are missing the point. No one said Cyclists have a right of way. It is Pedestrians first after all. But there are rules in place and the rules should be followed. (I think we are all in agreement as far as there). however as a cyclist you realise how bad the rules actually are at protecting the cyclist. The rules need to be changed. The law class a cycle as a vehicle but it clearly isn’t.
I fear we are at an impasse. Some cyclist will continue to break the rules that should not be broken and put themselves and others in danger, and some will flout the rules that have no effect on anyone else at all.
and if a cyclist runs through a red light and almost hits you, throw his bike in the canal. He is giving everyone else a bad name and does not deserve it.
I’m not missing the point. The rules are there, cyclists should obey them. It’s really that simple. If they don’t, they can now be stopped fined by the gardai, which is what this entire debate and original article is about. Cyclists continuously take the right of way when they clearly don’t have it, with zero regard for anyone else.
The rules do need to be changed, but until then, please obey them as they are now!
None of this discussion has any bearing on protecting cyclists, other than many cyclists could protect themselves far better by obeying the rules of the road.
There are bad cyclists and bad motorists everywhere. This discussion is about the cyclists!
when I said you were missing the point I was only referring to when you say that (there is a sense of complete “right-of-way” and lack of respect for other road (and footpath) users, regardless.) There are terrible cyclists but the ones commenting here seem to understand the right of way and that you shouldn’t be on footpaths.
Everything else you say is perfectly correct. And I see below (or above, I dont know anymore) You mention those cyclist that do not realise who has right of way and they are idiots. I was taking a very closed look at just the people who were commenting here.
Do you include yourself in the “terrible cyclists but the ones commenting here seem to understand the right of way”, You wrote in a another comment further down this post “…. cycling through a pedestrian crossing…..I do it sometimes but I slow down as much as possible”.
By your own words, you don’t understand right of way, as a red light means stop, no right of way!
Funnily enough, turns out that’s not a bad idea… http://tinyurl.com/osf4u49
Car driver, motorcyclist and pedal cyclist here. I’d be in favour of allowing cyclists to treat red lights as stop signs, purely from a practical point of view if nothing else. Having 20-30 bikes piled up in an ASL box slows everything down when the lights do change. It would also stop the ridiculous situation where the cycle lane passes through the turn left lane, so cyclists stopping on a red are blocking motorists from turning on a green (Like at the Donnybrook bus garage crossroads towards RTE).
It’s true that bicycles are considered vehicles under the road traffic act but there’s a good argument for special rules for them – they’re unlikely to cause injury to others and are relatively easy to operate so no license or insurance needed. They’re low environmental impact so no compensatory motor tax. And some special rules are already effectively in place for them – mainly for the benefit of motorists. For example, cyclists must keep to the left as they are slow moving. If they are to be simply equated with “a car, a bus, a truck” should they not stay in the centre of the road at all times?
One thing I do think needs enforcement is cyclist interaction with pedestrians. Buzzing full speed through a packed crossing on a red light or down footpaths is not cool.
All vehicles have to stay to the left of their lane. Special, properly thought-out rules would be a good idea, but we don’t have them at present. As a fully paid up member of the motoring fraternity, I see both good and bat behaviour by cyclists every day. Unfortunately the majority of what I see is bad behaviour. Breaking lights, not using the cycle lane (when it’s a decent cycle lane), dodging left and right through the traffic lanes, ignoring pedestrians & lollipop ladies, not signalling when turning and, worst of all, going against the flow of traffic. I see this every morning and evening during my commute from Rathfarnham to Dundrum. A couple of years ago nobody paid much attention to this, as there weren’t that many cyclists. Now as numbers have increased greatly (a good thing) these bad habits have become a problem on the roads, hence the new fines and garda crack-down. Cyclists need to cop on and realise that they have to start obeying the rules. There are now too many for you not to.
“a fully paid up member of the motoring fraternity”
Do these guys have secret handshakes and membership cards?
Yea, we call it motor tax !
Wait, what? Rathfarnham to Dundrum as a car commute, seriously? It’s 3 kilometers!
I pay motor tax on two vehicles, I must have missed the club invite.
Well said. I have being saying this for years but you put it lucidly.
Spotted a Dublin Biker cycle past the lollipop lady on Haddington Road yesterday, within a few seconds a traffic corps car zoomed past a few cars to catch up with the cyclist at the red light just before Beggars Bush.
Once both the cyclist & the Garda were on the other side of the lights, he hopped out of the car to give her a ticking off & perhaps a ticket.
Spotted a Garda (on foot) monitoring the lollipop situation again this morning.
Serves them right.
I cycle to work and one of the things I hate to see is cyclists not respecting pedestrians crossing the road. You don’t belt through a red light and skim past a pedestrian. Slow down, let them cross and then go.
There’s a pecking order. Pedestrians, then cyclists, then anything with an engine.
Break red lights all you want. Just don’t put anyone else in danger.
I second that.
Gets my vote too.
No need for a vote. It’s the law.
1st pedestrians
2nd vehicles
Stay off the footpaths too…
Breaking red lights IS putting everyone else in danger.
Not necessarily. The danger comes from the possibility of two bodies meeting at speed while trying to occupy the same space. That can be easily avoided by slowing down and giving way. The onus should always be with the largest body (pedestrian -> bike -> motorcycle -> car, etc).
However, even if danger is avoided, another important issue is stress caused to elderly people, parent with kids and anyone else. The onus of looking after more fragile road users should be extended to not causing unnecessary stress.
Very simplistic ! Not everyone can judge speed and distance well. One speeds up while one slows down and crash! That’s why the lights are there.
Stopping at an amber / red light gives way to traffic and pedestrians travelling in another direction, across your path as it were. Are you saying that entering that traffic flow is not dangerous? Or are you simply re-writing the rules for your own convenience?
@Harry and Spaghetti – by your logic then, yield signs and stop signs at junctions shouldn’t work. But they do.
I think its become more dangerous for cyclists since that laws came in. Twice I have had cars push me into the kerb, forced onto a roundabout and pricks dicing with you or blowing the horn for simple infractions. They somehow think their farts don’t stink.
A hard wallop to the side of the car with your fist will have any gobshyte driver think twice before pushing you into a kerb.
Has worked for me on occasion.
An open handed slap can be more effective (louder). It works even with buses.
Great tip !
also never hit with your fists. Too many small delicate bones.
a boot to the wing mirror when all else fails, and a hefty sprint in the opposite direction.
Seen this happen with a motorbike courier on the N7 dual carriageway just a few weeks ago. A car tried to move into the bikers lane to the cars right hand side and he didn’t even notice the biker was there. Biker slams the brakes and the car slots in front of him, totally oblivious to the accident he had nearly caused, Further up the road where traffic slowed the biker came up the right hand side of the car, raised his boot and kicked the cars wing mirror clean off.
Use it or lose it when it comes to your wing mirror and bikers
I didn’t like the biker’s action until the ‘use it or lose it’ point. It is hard to disagree there.
This endless debate drives me crazy. There are no typical cyclists, drivers or pedestrians.
There are thoughtless holes everywhere. Some are in bikes, some are in cars, some are on foot.
There are decent considerate people everywhere. Some are in bikes, some are in cars, some are on foot.
End of debate.
Don’t be ridiculous. Where would the internet be without repetitive debate?!?
I wonder if the terrible inconsiderate cyclists will ever upgrade to terrible inconsiderate drivers.
There are plenty of inconsiderate drivers about. The big difference is how the law has treated them. if a car ploughed through a pedestrian crossing, nearly hitting someone, they would probably be prosecuted. Now the cyclists are getting a taste of this and they don’t like it. Tough !!!
and if a cyclist ploughed through a pedestrian crossing nearly hitting someone they would also be in the wrong. There is a happy medium between safely cycling through a pedestrian crossing ( with no pedestrians) and just ploughing through like your parents were related.
I do it sometimes but I slow down as much as possible, wait and if there is clearly no one coming I slowly proceed through. I suppose the same way a car treats a flashing amber and there aren’t piles of accidents at those every day.
The only times I have issues at pedestrian crossings is where the pedestrians don’t cross between the designated lines and instead do it 10 yards up and appear out from behind a car.
What a load of self righteous twaddle! How kind of you to slow down at a pedestrian crossing. If you really think it’s okay for you as a cyclist to go through a red light at a pedestrian crossing, then please explain why it’s not okay for a motorist to do the same? What’s the difference?
The difference is anarchy would prevail ! Get real !!!
Harry it’s down to damage/risk potential.
Please elaborate …….. including what the different risks are between a car going through an empty pedestrian crossing and a cyclist doing the same, and at what point either should start to ignore the rules!
As I said I treat it as car would treat a flashing amber
and there is a massive difference between a car and a cyclist. a car is massive heavy machine with loads of blind spots and if for some reason it got stuck in the crossing it would block everything. It would also take forever to roll through, or it would be too fast to stop if there was an issue.
A cyclist is smaller, no blind spots and can stop easily if it needs to. and as I said I only cross when it is safe to do so. I don’t have near misses. I treat it like an flashing amber when I am driving and I don’t have near misses there either
also I am much safer when I get ahead of the traffic instead of being run over with busses and lorries.
So the cyclist can chose when to ignore the rules, but not the motorist? Interesting perspective on society? Anything else you can chose to ignore when it suits you?
Irish Water?
There we’ll agree !!!!
I despair! Perhaps I’m one of the unusual ones, but I’m a cyclist who obeys every red light, pedestrian light, one way street and have done for as long as I’ve been cycling. I regularly get the fingers or worse from other cyclists who still break all these laws. I get blasted out of it by motorists illegally using the bus lanes and just this morning I got the two fingers from a motorcyclist riding in the cycle lane. I’ve been knocked off my bike four times, twice by pedestrians walking out in front of me, and twice by people getting out of the passenger side of a car when stopped in traffic. I’m very capable of obeying the rules of the road, why can’t everyone else. As for the gardai, well I’ve yet to see them enforce these new laws. Sometimes I count the number of offenders on the way home, one evening at the junction of leeson street and stephens green, 17 cyclists went through the pedestrian lights. What a cash cow this would be if only someone had been there to enforce the new laws.
NERD!!
Only joking. I was much the same. I don’t cycle anymore after some gobdaw didn’t look when turning left and ran over my foot. He mashed it up good n proper. My cycle to work scheme bike is gathering rust outside as I haven’t had the heart to cycle again since.
Dublin is full of deluded cretins driving their 4 miles in their SUVs, I love nothing more these days than sitting right bang in the middle of the cyclists box at red traffic lights and slowly start when green, taking my sweet time, followiing the rules, howyalike them apples fatso?
Do they not know that it’s an €80 to park in that cyclists box??? Never seen that one enforced either!
Yeah, go you! Do these tiny victories add up to one big victory and you like get a prize at Christmas or something?
Why would you get a prize for obeying the rules? Its like you complain why cyclists break the rules and then complain when they obey them. Strange.
Well said. Like a slow protest. I’ve done the same…. hell I even got off my bike once to pretend to look for a problem, and then slowly got on, and only moved just as the amber light lit up. Car was stuck at the lights.
Last time that beeeatch ever speeds up and attempts to swerve around a cyclist on approaching a corner with a light turning red…. gimpy was her nameo.
Such a legend
The laws have definitely slowed traffic flow. Instead of one cyclist at the kerb at a red light, I tend to see four or five now (spreading out, and stopping cars moving off promptly). Idaho Stop rule sounds like a sensible idea
But you’ll always get pricks on all sides regardless of the legislation…
Yes I like to wait in the centre of the lane on my push bicycle at red lights.
The I leisurely sit up on the saddle when the light goes green, and begin the slow process of building momentum.
I think its good for the drivers behind me to be constantly reminded of the very different manner in which we accelerate.
I think they appreciate it
Heh.
I doubt they do, but fair play! :)
“cycle hate measures”? aw the poor cyclists have to abide by the rules of the roads they cycle on. they need a Rosa Parks to stand up for them, put an end to this injustice. . . jerks. literally every day i see them breaking the law. im thrilled the laws are in.
You lucky sod.
If only my own thrills were as easily won.
I have to risk life and limb winding up drivers on my two-wheeler for my thrills
The laws themselves are terrible. Cyclists shouldn’t follow the same rules as Cars. Cycling and driving is not the same. Neither should they follow the same rules as pedestrians because they are not the same. There should be laws specifically for cyclists that are there to protect them but also make the roads more efficient.
Also a question. If you have one foot on the pedal (right foot left pedal) and are scooting along are you a cyclist or a pedestrian?
…more likely to be a pensioner more than anything else.
ah but if you need to get somewhere and instead of cycling miles around you walk the bike a shortcut on the path. There is a slight hill and no one around. Is it breaking the law to stick a foot on the pedal and just free wheel?
the behaviour of a shnakey pensioner for sure
Pedestrian because the initial momentum comes from pushing your feet off the ground and not from pedalling the wheels. It’s just a more efficient way of pushing your bike, plus you can switch fluidly between scooting and walking whereas it’s a different motion to scramble astride. Scoot anywhere you like as long as you’re considerate of fellow pedestrians.
Finally. Have seen two people knocked into by red-light-breaking bikes at Central Bank pedestrian crossing in the past month. Why do cyclists think they can free-wheel blithely through pedestrians?
*some
Ever cycle down the quays in the evening? The pedestrians at O’Connell bridge are the worst. They just keep crossing until you are in the middle of them. and I hate when they run a third of the way across the road and saunter the rest. I have seen roadkill with more sense than them.
Progress!
Light-running cyclists are just stressing everyone out.
Debate the rules of the road all you like but until they are changed they are there to be obeyed, motorists and cyclists alike.
Put the Garda on bikes I say …like those sexy Norwegians
The au pairs?
“They’re not Norwegians, they’re Swedes MaCready!”
http://metro.co.uk/2015/07/05/norwegian-policemen-in-really-tight-outfits-arent-all-that-they-seem-to-be-5281506/
Gas :)
There are gardas on bikes…..
sexy ones ?
As a cyclist a few things:
1) No cyclist is above the law. Good show that the guards are enforcing the laws. Bad cyclists who break the law give a bad name to the good ones who don’t. Not only is it unsafe for the cyclist but also for everyone else around them.
2) There are instances where a cyclist should be allowed to break a red light. Turning left is a prime one IF and only IF they treat pedestrians with due care and attention. Dangerous cycling in such instances should be treated as harshly as law breaking.
3) I hope the Guards are going to target those who park in cycle lanes, drive dangerously around cyclists and do not give them enough room. The rules of the road are for everyone. Cyclists are particularly vulnerable and should be protected,
the red light thing kills me.. and goin down the wrong side of the road .. but the red lights, the amount of times i or some other people ive seen, have had to stop mid-cross, to let bikes skittle through. it totally wrecks my head. and then you read them bleating on about how they”re somehow above red lights and shouldnt have to obey them. one day i had to turn back halfway across the road coz i forgot somethin and a bike walloped in to me, i was winded and hunched over, and he was mumbling and tutting at me like it was my fault, and off he went, i was sure to remeber his face and if i see him again ill pull his head off. if people obeyed the red lights, that wouldnt have happened, and he wont one day get kicked off his bike when he’s not expectin it.
But no one is suggesting that Cyclist completely ignore red lights altogether. They should be allowed approach with due care and move slowly through if it is safe to do so. that guy was an ass.
You only see the cyclists who are a danger. You never see the safe ones who cycle right.
Ya, and same goes for motorists, and referees, and haircuts.
That’s profound man, I’m gonna do some deep thinkin’ on that tonight
this is why we have laws .. if you said in the law, “approach with due care and move slowly through if it is safe to do so” you’d still have accidents, and the bike at fault would say “i approached with caution” .. you cant leave laws up to people.. some people are idiots, you have to say ‘no, you all have to stop’ coz people will interpret approach with caution differently.
+1
The one that always gets me is cycling on pavements. Especially grown men and women. If you don’t feel (relatively) safe cycling on the road, then don’t don’t cycle.
Yup those people are definitely in the wrong. I used to do that a long time ago before cycle lanes were really anywhere. All that hopping off cerbs can be really bad for your wheels.
Pleads guilty . Was recently pulled over by a Garda coming out of the local chipper as I wobbled along the path. Let me off though, when I pointed out that eating on the job was probably not part of his job description.
I’m a little disapointed. There was a time when a cycling based post on BS could rack up over 100 comments in an hour.
… and there we go ; )
Few.
That’d ‘phew’ …it’s 145 now
In the UK cyclists can filter through to the white line at lights and vehicles must stop about nine feet back from the line at their own line, leaving a green space for cyclists at the front of the queue. Vehicles are then obliged to let the cyclists go first (or run them over, whichever’s handiest, though that bit might not be technically allowed).
https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/collaboration/cycling/images/SafeAndSecure/road-design/AdvancedStopLine.jpg
They have those here too, not many mind are marked with a dead cyclists bike
I totally agree that many of the dublin free bikers are just breaking lights cos they don’t know any better, but as a long term safe cyclist there are definitely circumstances around poorly planned Dublin where there are very dangerous junctions to be stuck in heavy traffic with before the light goes green. Try sitting beside the trucks on the quays when they take off inches from you and you’ll know all about it. Also there are left turn lights that go before straight lights at many junctions (Ranelagh Road is one) that are just lethal if you want to go straight, as you are stuck in the middle of a two lane junction. Sorry but safety just has to come first above the snorts of a 4×4 driver sitting in his armored tank taking up two lanes.
If they were really worried about cyclists safety they should be freeing up the cycle lanes as they are being used as car parks these days. And they should be extended to include Saturdays as well.
“very dangerous junctions” – down hill towards Brazen Head
Cyclists going the wrong way on one way streets is really dangerous. Pedestrians and motorists crossing or entering the street will not look both ways and see an oncoming cyclist……. on their fashion bike which is so heavy it’s pointless outside of the Netherlands.
You had me up until fashion bike.
You know what I hate as a cyclist?
When you are waiting in the bike queue at the lights and another cyclist on a Dublin bike or a fashion bike cycles past everyone to the front and then takes forever to get going. It is dangerous for the cyclists who have to pass them out.
and then you barely make it to the next lights and they go to the front again….
I know when I am commuting I go to the front and I am away as soon as I see the green.. I dont get passed after the lights. When I am on the dublin bike I stay at the back. You cannot get any speed on them at all. and if someone does pass me I stay behind them at the next lights.
It should be an unwritten rule
Agreed. Its just plan politeness. And it is ALWAYS people who go slow who do this.
* plain politeness – as in not pushing to the front all the time.
Yeah, the North quays are especially bad for that.
Oh yes…That’s my major peeve too.
Hear, hear!
Thought it was just a peeve of my own making :)
Or the racer types trying to clip the pedals to their shoes. Douches.
when that happens I overtake them very close, usually creates a bit of nervousness with everyone bunched so tightly, but a worthy revenge.
‘Looks like you’re guilty of….
….driving without my phone number. oh yeah etc.’
Its because of Austeriteeee. If there was no Austeriteeee we would all be in chauffeur-driven Bentleys and there would be no need for de Bicyclin’. Don’t get me started on Working class access to a decent Pinot Grigio!
141 posts? My word. Nothing stirs the broadsheet readership like it. Outstanding folks
I’m number 150. Blow me Clampers.
I think the rules could possibly prohibit cyclists from proceeding through an amber light (illuminated red light vs lit red light – or if you set off when it is amber)…not that it solves the problem of the last couple of cars breaking the red light every time.
http://irishcycle.com/2015/07/19/cycling-fines-what-you-need-to-know-from-august-1/
I am a deaf person…I find it very dangerous + annoying that CYCLISTS using foothpathes DO NOT THINK of people with deafness + blindness…The cycle rule allowing them to use pathways NEEDS TO BE NOT ALLOWED…We fought for cycle lanes + got them so use them.
theres a manoeuvre called a “clothesline” that you can use in this situation to great effect
A cyclist suffering Hate
May well think it’s Great
To sow dissension
And gain such attention
Get on your bike mate.
Street Salmon, Street Salmon, Street Salmon, Street Salmon, Street Salmon, Street Salmon, Street Salmon,Street Salmon.. swim gracefully through the bipedal plebs.