Stop pedalling outrage... Gardaí are right this time

THERE haven’t been many times in the recent past when this column has felt the urge to stick up for Garda management, but this is one of them.

I’m finding it very difficult to get worked up about the confected outrage over a Garda Twitter poll asking whether cyclists breaking red lights or motorists parking in bike lanes were more dangerous.

It was ‘extremely unhelpful in a climate where cyclist deaths have climbed’, according to a Dublin Cycling Campaign spokesman, who also said: ‘These types of polls only help to embitter and divide people.’ Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? True, it is worth noting that junior minister Ciarán Cannon made the perfectly reasonable point that the police are ‘not there to stir up debate or juxtapose two illegal activities against each other’. He added the poll was ‘badly thought out and irresponsible’ and that he hopes gardaí will ‘realise the error of their ways and stick to tweeting information about road safety’. I’d normally agree with him on something like that. But speaking as both a pedestrian and resident of urban Dublin, nothing can dissuade me that there needs to be as much public debate on this issue as possible. No-one disputes that there is any number of motorists out there who need to have manners put on them.

But the shocking and often outrageous carry-on of many members of the pedalling community – particularly cycle couriers, I’ve found – needs to be addressed urgently. And if the gardaí have overstepped the mark by appearing to hint at that, I’m not going to argue with them.