It makes sense for me to break the rules of the road on my bike... but OTHER cyclists are a real menace
AS a motorist, I am very sympathetic to cyclists. As a pedestrian, I will cut them some slack. But as a cyclist, God, how I hate them. I don’t hate cyclists, in other words: I hate OTHER cyclists.
Most motorists detest bicycles, but not me. All right, sometimes they run red lights, cycle on pavements, weave between cars. But getting around a city without proper cycle lanes literally means they’re taking their lives in their hands every time they go out. They’re not burning fossil fuels or adding to road congestion, they’re not lazy, sedentary slobs who take out the car for every tiny journey.
Like the rest of us, they’re just trying to get to their desks or their homes in one piece. They’re out there being buffeted by the wind and rain while I’m snug and comfortable in my car. They’re trusting their lives to the flimsiest of contraptions while all around them tons of metal thunder past their ears at speed.
As a lone motorist, sitting inside a cocoon of air bags, shatterproof glass and high-tech safety features, you’ve a bit of a cheek blowing your horn at a lone cyclist wobbling by on a couple of inches of rubber tyre and wire spokes. Our so-called ‘cycle lanes’ are just painted lines on the road, and not the kerbed passageways you find in other continental cities. And even then, they’re of little use where, say, a cyclist needs to leave their meagre safety to turn right. And if rain makes it difficult for a cyclist to gauge the depths of the water-filled potholes in our patched and pitted gutters, they have no option but to swerve and weave. And sometimes you can’t blame them for crossing against a red light, rather than risk being run off the road by a driver turning left without bothering to check their mirrors.
So, no, when I’m in the car I don’t hate cyclists. But, when I’m on my cycle it’s another story entirely. To a cyclist, other cyclists are a nightmare. I cycle as much as I can and, after more than 30 years navigating Dublin’s streets I’m in no doubt about this – the biggest danger to a cyclist is almost always another cyclist. The level of threat may not be the same as posed by a truck. But on a day-to-day basis, your greatest risk of being knocked from your bike, forced into a pot-hole, clipped or jostled or thrown off balance always comes from another cycle. And yet, in recent Garda statistics about cycling penalties, the greatest emphasis was on breaking red lights and cycling on pavements – not almost killing other cyclists on the road.
Last February, Transport Minister Shane Ross promised a Minimum Passing Distance Law would be introduced within a matter of weeks. It now looks as though he did so simply to thwart a Fianna Fáil amendment to the same effect in the new Road Traffic Bill as it’s not going to happen after all. Over the weekend his Cabinet colleague Regina Doherty, a long-time campaigner for cyclists’ safety, admitted it was ‘hard not to be cynical’ about Mr Ross’s pledge. In a decidedly Trumpian stunt he made the ‘promise’, it seems, without bothering to find out if it was workable, and the Attorney General has since advised it is not. There are ‘constitutional rights and practical court issues’ that make it impossible to fix and police a minimum passing distance of between one and 1.5 metres, which should have been obvious from the start.
Scourge
What’s most disappointing about this latest bout of back-pedalling from Mr Ross is that a transport minister who genuinely cared about cycling safety would have put a little more thought into those proposals rather than simply chasing headlines. Cyclists are the most vulnerable road users of all – 15 died here last year, and an average of four are hospitalised every day – and a law that specifically targets overtaking practices, and concentrates the minds of those impatient folk who can’t pause for a split second to facilitate another road user without hooting, speeding up or swerving past, would have been most welcome.
But just in case a future minister for transport revisits it, can I make this request – please, please, extend the ‘dangerous overtaking’ sanction to other cyclists too? They’re an absolute scourge, those cyclists who whizz past you in narrow cycling lanes, without calling out a warning or ringing a bell. They fly past with millimetres to spare, leaving you dreading to think what would have happened if you’d had to dodge a pot hole or a stray pedestrian at the last minute.
Just days ago, I narrowly avoided a collision with a muppet who attempted to overtake on the inside of a cycle lane in the middle of Dublin without making a sound and tried to blame me for not having seen him approaching – in complete silence from behind on my left. Bells should be compulsory, they’re fitted on all the Dublin Bikes and cost a couple of euros, and yet hardly anyone uses them. But if you’re overtaking another cyclist, you have to warn them with a bell: It’s not just a courtesy, it’s a necessity. There’s a great YouTube video of a cyclist who uses a car-horn to get the attention of dozy pedestrians or dawdling bikes in cycle lanes, and it works like a charm. If you know where I can get my hands on one of those, do let me know.
There’s been a serious Garda crackdown on errant cyclists, recently, and most people will probably consider that a good thing. Some 1,429 cyclists were hit with fines last year, compared with 631 the previous year, almost half being penalised for breaking red lights, while others were caught for cycling in pedestrianised areas. It seems to me, though, they’re picking on the wrong cyclists. These statistics look like ‘people-pleasing’ measures, rather than genuine safety efforts. They’re more about appeasing those cycle-hating motorists and pedestrians than ensuring the equal welfare of all road users.
If you want safer roads then punish bad behaviour, not technical breaches. I’ve yet to see a cyclist penalised for dangerous overtaking in a cycle lane, but I’ve often seen them pulled over for trundling slowly along a pavement, or crossing a junction with a ‘green man’ pedestrian light. And yet youngsters cycling to school through busy rush-hour traffic, for example, are much safer on the pavements than on the roads, so long as they’re careful. And sometimes, breaking a red light is the safest thing to do. As a woman on a bike after dark, you’re a sitting duck for harassment if you’re stuck at a red light. And the slightest wobble, as you take off from lights, could land you under the wheels of a car or a truck racing away, or turning left when you’re going straight ahead. In other countries, where cyclists’ safety is a genuine concern for transport mandarins, advanced green lights allow them to get ahead of cars at junctions. Here, you sit on your lightweight bike, in a narrow lane alongside a 16-wheeler juggernaut gunning its engine, and you take your chances.
Most worrying of all, though, Garda campaigns against ‘rogue’ cyclists tend to fuel the ‘four wheels good, two wheels bad’ brigade. The message is we’re a pestilence and must be kept from delaying the progress of drivers or pedestrians. Yet pretty much every road accident is a consequence of impatience, inattention or plain, old-fashioned selfishness.
If motorists got the message that cyclists are just as entitled to use the country’s roads as they are; that, being so vulnerable, they’re entitled to use their judgment to keep themselves safe, even if that means bending the odd rule; and that touching your brake, for a second or two, to allow a cyclist past won’t actually cause the sky to fall in, then the roads might be safer for everyone.