Cycling Fines - What Monitoring Is There ???

beauf · 11-08-2015 2:13pm

Tarabuses wrote: »

I think the point being missed here is that cyclists running red lights, travelling the wrong way on one way streets or on the wrong side of the road are putting themselves in danger not just pedestrians.

There are many cyclist injuries each year. How many are caused by ignoring the rules of the road?

Why don't you find some stats. Heres some for London 2012.

http://smellslikeglue.com/2012/12/28/infographics-cycling-through-red-lights/

glue-red-lights-infographics.jpg?w=1112

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study

"The main cause of crashes seems to be 'failed to look properly', whereas very few cyclists are injured or killed acting illegally, such as failing to use lights at night or disobeying traffic signals," said Chris Peck, from the lobby group.

http://www.autotrade.ie/index.php/pedestrians-angry-at-motorists-for-breaking-red-lights/19160

cdebru · 11-08-2015 2:24pm

Tarabuses wrote: »

I think the point being missed here is that cyclists running red lights, travelling the wrong way on one way streets or on the wrong side of the road are putting themselves in danger not just pedestrians.

There are many cyclist injuries each year. How many are caused by ignoring the rules of the road?

People keep saying it but I have never seen any of them hit anyone or being hit by anyone, sometimes you wonder how the **** did he just get through there but like I said I have never seen one involved in any incident.

I have however seen all kinds of motorised vehicles involved in accidents from jumping or going late through lights or just not seeing them, mostly I guess it is road position, size and agility that makes the difference.

Any cyclists I have seen being knocked from a bike especially in the city centre is pedestrians stepping out in front of them and second is vehicles turning left on top of them.

beauf · 11-08-2015 2:29pm

I'm sure it does happen. Just a lot less than is reported.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33446899

Graham · 11-08-2015 4:22pm

lxflyer wrote: »

There needs to be a significant culture change across all of the road users in this country, and people picking one over the other are really looking at it with rose tinted glasses.

+1

I see pillocks on 2 and 4 wheels every day of the week. A few months of really heavy enforcement of the existing laws for all varieties of road users could work wonders.

Carawaystick · 11-08-2015 5:31pm

I saw a dublin corpo van parked outside a dublin corpo office this morning on a mandatory cycle lane, painted by dublin corpo. What monitoring is there?

roverrules · 11-08-2015 11:49pm

Carawaystick wrote: »

I saw a dublin corpo van parked outside a dublin corpo office this morning on a mandatory cycle lane, painted by dublin corpo. What monitoring is there?

Was he maintaining the lane, there are some exceptions to council vehicles by statute?

Carawaystick · 12-08-2015 12:18pm

roverrules wrote: »

Was he maintaining the lane, there are some exceptions to council vehicles by statute?

No. the vehicle was parked, and there was no one about.

I can't say with 100% knowledge, but I'd say the driver was gone into the office for something, and couldn't be bothered to park/drive legally.

cdebru · 12-08-2015 12:24pm

roverrules wrote: »

Was he maintaining the lane, there are some exceptions to council vehicles by statute?

Haha good one.

the groutch · 05-10-2015 1:06pm

three months in, and less than 3 fines per day

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cyclists-receiving-fines-at-rate-of-about-100-a-month-1.2378737

Macy0161 · 05-10-2015 1:50pm

the groutch wrote: »

three months in, and less than 3 fines per day

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cyclists-receiving-fines-at-rate-of-about-100-a-month-1.2378737

Pretty much in line with every road offence in the state then!

HivemindXX · 05-10-2015 7:58pm

the groutch wrote: »

three months in, and less than 3 fines per day

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cyclists-receiving-fines-at-rate-of-about-100-a-month-1.2378737

Alternatively:- "On track to issue nearly 1000 fines in the first year".

desertcircus · 07-10-2015 1:00pm

A few observations:

1. By and large, road and traffic planning in relation to cyclists in Ireland is abysmal, which feeds into cyclist behaviour. A cyclist heading off Stephen's Green onto Earlsfort Terrace, stopping at a junction that was rebuilt in the last year, cannot legally cross the road unless a car is present - when upgrading, the designers put in a system that gives a green light only if a car is waiting to drive straight on. That's a major junction, in the middle of the city, in the last twelve months - this is the level of utterly idiotic planning cyclists in Ireland have to deal with. Most of the worst stuff simply isn't visible to motorists, but it impacts heavily on how cyclists behave. Why should a cyclist trust the assessment of a road engineering corps who are so fundamentally illiterate regarding bike usage?

2. Hand on heart, I've had a cyclist go dangerously through a red in front of me once. I've lost count of the number of times I've had a pedestrian step out without looking, or failing to realise the speed I was doing. Less than a week ago I had about a dozen pedestrians start to cross the road against the lights on Dame Street when I was going full tilt on an open road with a green light - I had to pull the brakes, weave the best path I could see, and yell at the pedestrians to warn them. I suspect that quite a few of the people I yelled at think I was breaking a red and behaving like a typical reckless cyclist. Dangerous behaviour is spread pretty equally between all road users.

3. Fulminating about cyclists breaking the Rules is futile to a large extent. Because a cyclists can switch between being a vehicle user and a pedestrian at will, there are options available that have to be taken into account and planned around. Going the wrong way down one-way streets is an obvious example - you can moan about it all you want, but unless you station a Garda at every one-way street in Dublin (which would be an obscene misuse of Garda time and resources) it's still going to happen. Far better to recognise that and put contraflow lanes in place to make it safe and controlled.

Bray Head · 07-10-2015 2:24pm

desertcircus wrote: »

A few observations:

1. By and large, road and traffic planning in relation to cyclists in Ireland is abysmal, which feeds into cyclist behaviour. A cyclist heading off Stephen's Green onto Earlsfort Terrace, stopping at a junction that was rebuilt in the last year, cannot legally cross the road unless a car is present - when upgrading, the designers put in a system that gives a green light only if a car is waiting to drive straight on. That's a major junction, in the middle of the city, in the last twelve months - this is the level of utterly idiotic planning cyclists in Ireland have to deal with. Most of the worst stuff simply isn't visible to motorists, but it impacts heavily on how cyclists behave. Why should a cyclist trust the assessment of a road engineering corps who are so fundamentally illiterate regarding bike usage?

This junction is appalling, although it is a slight improvement on the previous situation. Back then buses had a left green filter but cyclists (legally in the bus lane) and wanting to go straight on had to wait for a full green.

I regularly got beeped at by bus drivers trying to get me to break the lights so that they could turn left.

Back OT, the imposition of fines is probably a good thing. But I am not convinced it will be much of a deterrent to bad cyclist behaviour given how rare they are.

cython · 07-10-2015 5:25pm

Bray Head wrote: »

This junction is appalling, although it is a slight improvement on the previous situation. Back then buses had a left green filter but cyclists (legally in the bus lane) and wanting to go straight on had to wait for a full green.

I regularly got beeped at by bus drivers trying to get me to break the lights so that they could turn left.

Back OT, the imposition of fines is probably a good thing. But I am not convinced it will be much of a deterrent to bad cyclist behaviour given how rare they are.

In terms of the usability for cyclists, I wouldn't necessarily agree that it is an improvement. Before the redesign, there was only one lane for buses going both left and straight through, so the lights would go green to go both left and straight through the junction pretty much every time. Simple means to avoid being beeped at that I always availed of was to position myself on the right of the lane (or even just a little past that) when waiting to proceed straight. Admittedly a lot of cyclists I observed at the time didn't have the wherewithal to do this, and got beeped, but simply putting in the right-aligned cycle lane with the old alignment would have been preferable for cyclists.

There were admittedly questions over the safety of the old layout (cyclists waiting on the left hand side of buses turning left), but that was as much due to a lack of thought on the cyclists' part as to how to negotiate the junction. And to put it in context I go through this junction pretty much every day as part of my commute to work. However I now have to frequently either break a red light to do so, or wait indefinitely for larger vehicles going the same way, or dismount and walk. These are all degradations on the previous design.

Nichard Dixon · 07-10-2015 9:59pm

HivemindXX wrote: »

Alternatively:- "On track to issue nearly 1000 fines in the first year".

Either way, a feeble and inadequate response to the extent of law breaking out there. The usual Irish tokenism; small fines, few of which are issued and even fewer of which are collected.

LXFlyer · 08-10-2015 10:22am

desertcircus wrote: »

A few observations:

1. By and large, road and traffic planning in relation to cyclists in Ireland is abysmal, which feeds into cyclist behaviour. A cyclist heading off Stephen's Green onto Earlsfort Terrace, stopping at a junction that was rebuilt in the last year, cannot legally cross the road unless a car is present - when upgrading, the designers put in a system that gives a green light only if a car is waiting to drive straight on. That's a major junction, in the middle of the city, in the last twelve months - this is the level of utterly idiotic planning cyclists in Ireland have to deal with. Most of the worst stuff simply isn't visible to motorists, but it impacts heavily on how cyclists behave. Why should a cyclist trust the assessment of a road engineering corps who are so fundamentally illiterate regarding bike usage?

I think you mean a bus - a car at that junction would be breaking the law as both sides of that junction are contra-flow bus lanes.

Bray Head wrote: »

This junction is appalling, although it is a slight improvement on the previous situation. Back then buses had a left green filter but cyclists (legally in the bus lane) and wanting to go straight on had to wait for a full green.

I regularly got beeped at by bus drivers trying to get me to break the lights so that they could turn left.

Back OT, the imposition of fines is probably a good thing. But I am not convinced it will be much of a deterrent to bad cyclist behaviour given how rare they are.

cython wrote: »

In terms of the usability for cyclists, I wouldn't necessarily agree that it is an improvement. Before the redesign, there was only one lane for buses going both left and straight through, so the lights would go green to go both left and straight through the junction pretty much every time. Simple means to avoid being beeped at that I always availed of was to position myself on the right of the lane (or even just a little past that) when waiting to proceed straight. Admittedly a lot of cyclists I observed at the time didn't have the wherewithal to do this, and got beeped, but simply putting in the right-aligned cycle lane with the old alignment would have been preferable for cyclists.

There were admittedly questions over the safety of the old layout (cyclists waiting on the left hand side of buses turning left), but that was as much due to a lack of thought on the cyclists' part as to how to negotiate the junction. And to put it in context I go through this junction pretty much every day as part of my commute to work. However I now have to frequently either break a red light to do so, or wait indefinitely for larger vehicles going the same way, or dismount and walk. These are all degradations on the previous design.

To be fair that junction was designed to facilitate a much larger flow of buses from St Stephen's Green East to Earlsfort Terrace and vice versa, so the situation that you describe would not happen that often were those buses still in situ.

However, with the LUAS works in full swing, routes 14, 15, 15a, 15b, 140 and 142 have all been diverted to operate via Camden Street, leaving only two buses an hour in each direction on routes 44 and 61 using the straight ahead lane.

Have any of you been in touch with the DCC traffic department to raise the issue of the on-road sensors not recognising that bicycles are waiting at the lights? They could be able to make an adjustment to make that an automatic sequence.

From a bus perspective (and let's be honest that's for whom contra flow bus lanes are primarily designed for) the junction is a huge improvement and was long overdue. Buses going onto Leeson Street were frequently delayed unnecessarily by buses travelling onto Earlsfort Terrace that were held up at the lights.

cython · 08-10-2015 12:49pm

lxflyer wrote: »

I think you mean a bus - a car at that junction would be breaking the law as both sides of that junction are contra-flow bus lanes.

Tell that to the various car drivers that I have (thankfully in light of this issue!) seen stopped waiting to cross from both the north and south sides of the junction.

lxflyer wrote: »

To be fair that junction was designed to facilitate a much larger flow of buses from St Stephen's Green East to Earlsfort Terrace and vice versa, so the situation that you describe would not happen that often were those buses still in situ.

However, with the LUAS works in full swing, routes 14, 15, 15a, 15b, 140 and 142 have all been diverted to operate via Camden Street, leaving only two buses an hour in each direction on routes 44 and 61 using the straight ahead lane.

Have any of you been in touch with the DCC traffic department to raise the issue of the on-road sensors not recognising that bicycles are waiting at the lights? They could be able to make an adjustment to make that an automatic sequence.

If they actually gave a damn like that then why would they have ever ceased it being an automatic straight arrow on each iteration of the sequence?

lxflyer wrote: »

From a bus perspective (and let's be honest that's for whom contra flow bus lanes are primarily designed for) the junction is a huge improvement and was long overdue. Buses going onto Leeson Street were frequently delayed unnecessarily by buses travelling onto Earlsfort Terrace that were held up at the lights.

Given that there was an explicit lane provided for cyclists proceeding straight through it should not be too much to expect that they would design that properly, and monitor for cyclists in that small area. Unfortunately in Dublin it appears that it is, and instead we get token highly visible attempts to apparently accommodate cyclists, while in reality they are being deprioritised and basically just being shunted out of the way of the buses.

LXFlyer · 08-10-2015 1:28pm

cython wrote: »

Tell that to the various car drivers that I have (thankfully in light of this issue!) seen stopped waiting to cross from both the north and south sides of the junction.

If they actually gave a damn like that then why would they have ever ceased it being an automatic straight arrow on each iteration of the sequence?

Given that there was an explicit lane provided for cyclists proceeding straight through it should not be too much to expect that they would design that properly, and monitor for cyclists in that small area. Unfortunately in Dublin it appears that it is, and instead we get token highly visible attempts to apparently accommodate cyclists, while in reality they are being deprioritised and basically just being shunted out of the way of the buses.

Well rather than moaning about it online, why not drop them a line and ask them to see if they could change it?

I generally find that a well worded letter/email does generally get recognised and you might get the sequence changed.

As for the cars - well they're breaking the law.

Cycling Fines - What Monitoring Is There ???

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