Near misses - mod warning 22/04 - see OP/post 822

WAPAIC

RobertFoster wrote: »

Does actual contact with another vehicle count as a "near miss"?

Report it, I'll pay the fine if you get a FCPN.

Got knocked down by a bus a few months ago doing a similar thing, regret not reporting it to be honest.

If we don't report the near misses, the serious injuries and deaths look like anomalies.

tomasrojo

A Dublin Bus took a sideswipe at me in Fairview years ago, because I was at the edge of the on-road cycle track, even though I actually was still in it. This was before the new cycle track SI, but I've assumed since then that Fairview has a similar problem as on the N11 with bus drivers "teaching lessons", and, as in the case of the N11, I worked out routes to avoid Fairview.

Of course, teaching lessons using the weight and speed of a bus is completely disproportionate, not remotely within the duties or competencies of the driver, and, unless something is very wrong with the statute books, breaking far more serious laws than mandatory-use instruments.

HivemindXX

That bus driver and those guards are a disgrace. If there was any justice they would all lose their jobs.

Using a bus to bully a cyclist off the road is a serious offence. If that driver had misjudged things or the cyclist had hit a pot hole the cyclist could easily have been killed and it would have been manslaughter, although I have no doubt that the driver would lie about what he was doing and the video would be mysteriously out of action and nobody would ever be charged. The same thing happened to me on the N11 some years ago and neither Dublin Bus nor the guards gave a damn.

Moflojo

If I'm understanding the Gardaí's attitude to these matters correctly, I can beat the absolute sh1t out of any vehicles that park in a cycle lane - smash windows, slash tyres, key the paint work - and the Gardaí will then issue FCNs to the drivers of those vehicles because they shouldn't have been parked there in the first place, and I will get off scot-free?

Nice one.

AndrewJRenko

WAPAIC wrote: »

Report it, I'll pay the fine if you get a FCPN.

I'll split it with you.

CramCycle

HivemindXX wrote: »

That bus driver and those guards are a disgrace. If there was any justice they would all lose their jobs.

Using a bus to bully a cyclist off the road is a serious offence. If that driver had misjudged things or the cyclist had hit a pot hole the cyclist could easily have been killed and it would have been manslaughter, although I have no doubt that the driver would lie about what he was doing and the video would be mysteriously out of action and nobody would ever be charged. The same thing happened to me on the N11 some years ago and neither Dublin Bus nor the guards gave a damn.

Same here, I actually looked at the footage of my incident again (had a helmet cam). First of all, when I get the sh1t scared out of me, I sound very British which is unusual but it is so clear. BE lost the footage, AGS who I followed up with a few times, just lost interest. I had it on camera. He admitted it was on purpose. I was calm, I did not shout at him. I gave him my name and details after he claimed there was no way to prove who I was. Never put it on youtube, followed all the rules, nothing happened. Got bored with due process this morning and sent BE and traffic watch his pic via twitter but I expect just to be blocked.

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

I'll split it with you.

Me three

dermabrasion

TrafficWatch is open to bus drivers too in order to report cyclists for not adhering to the ROTR. Garda should be advocating drivers follow that route to act on alleged offences, as as opposed to condoning summary traffic justice.
ISIS see large vehicles as effective weapons against vulnerable people. AGS should take threatening behaviour more seriously.
But in all of the recent sorrow, the Minister for Transport is silent. He is as much use as a fart in a spacesuit.

magicbastarder

would be interesting, for future reference, to understand how many bus lanes are *not* also cycle lanes.

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

would be interesting, for future reference, to understand how many bus lanes are *not* also cycle lanes.

None, as I understand it. By definition, isn't a bus lane also a cycle lane?

It's time for cyclists to start using helmetcams as the norm. They're not dear, and they may save lives.

Pinch Flat

magicbastarder wrote: »

would be interesting, for future reference, to understand how many bus lanes are *not* also cycle lanes.

I used to cycle from City West to Dublin 15 - got onto the dual carriageway at the N7 / Grange castle and followed this to Lucan. This bus lane is buses only - found this out the hard way when I was side swiped and blared at a few times. There is a cycle lane adjacenct to this road.

https://goo.gl/maps/Z9t7cE8Ueq22

Roland27

Thats a crazy incident, RobertFoster. I've had near misses like this with Dublin Bus's before, and I agree with others in this thread that its about time cyclists take action against incidents like this and report them as much as they can.

Surely the guards cannot tell someone that they must use bike lanes? I know the law of bike lanes being mandatory is unclear at the moment given recent comments, but I'm still under the impression they are not all mandatory?

tomasrojo

Yeah, I think all bus lanes that aren't contraflow implicitly include the option of use by bicycle. The standard bus lane sign has a bicycle symbol on it. The councils did occasionally put a blue patch over the bicycle in the past to make a "bus only" sign, but, of course, the design wasn't in the statutes, and so was nonsense. @monument got quite a few of them removed, I think.

And anyway, the mandatory use was rescinded, which is part of the reason standard bus sign was not revised when they regularised "shared space" signs and other hitherto non-standard signange in common use. I have no doubt in my mind that as the statute stands, you don't have to use cycle tracks that are not in contraflow bus lanes or in pedestrian zones. If Ross ever gets it together to write a new statute, that will almost certainly change, but ...

CramCycle

Chuchote wrote: »

It's time for cyclists to start using helmetcams as the norm. They're not dear, and they may save lives.

Isn't it such a shame that people feel that way, it is a damning review of our society that the fear of going out in public and getting harmed is so accepted by some that a camera to record your every action is seen as a necessity rather than a novelty.

A favourite quote of mine, not directly related, but I like it, so that is that.

What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.

tomasrojo

Pinch Flat wrote: »

I used to cycle from City West to Dublin 15 - got onto the dual carriageway at the N7 / Grange castle and followed this to Lucan. This bus lane is buses only - found this out the hard way when I was side swiped and blared at a few times. There is a cycle lane adjacenct to this road.

https://goo.gl/maps/Z9t7cE8Ueq22

That looks like one of the "blued-over" signs of yesteryear.

There are a few bus lanes on dual carriage ways that are narrow and very high-speed, so they maybe should be bus-only, if they're not.

CramCycle

Roland27 wrote: »

Surely the guards cannot tell someone that they must use bike lanes? I know the law of bike lanes being mandatory is unclear at the moment given recent comments, but I'm still under the impression they are not all mandatory?

A far more important point, that many overlook, is the lack of decency. Forget the laws, the rules and the regulations. Let us say this driver was correct and the cyclists was not legally allowed in the bus lane.

WHO ****ING CARES? Since when did we as a people condone attempted murder as an acceptable retribution from a vigilante. The only time this is acceptable is in a Superhero comic, and even then, only if the cyclist has a weapon that will blow up half the city. A commuter on the N11 and Supermans latest family friend from his long dead planet have little in common I imagine, but to some, they may as well be one and the same.

Pinch Flat

tomasrojo wrote: »

That looks like one of the "blued-over" signs of yesteryear.

There are a few bus lanes on dual carriage ways that are narrow and very high-speed, so they maybe should be bus-only, if they're not.

Be interested to know. It's a 80 km/hr limit along this road ,not that it's observed in any way.

CramCycle

Pinch Flat wrote: »

I used to cycle from City West to Dublin 15 - got onto the dual carriageway at the N7 / Grange castle and followed this to Lucan. This bus lane is buses only - found this out the hard way when I was side swiped and blared at a few times. There is a cycle lane adjacenct to this road.

You could argue it is not a bus lane due to lack of signage but it would be a hard sell.

Tombo2001

Cycled from town to Ratoath at the weekend.

There is a huge network of bike lanes, off road up around the Ballycooling industrial estate. Would love to know how much use they get.

Particularly -

-The quality of the bike lanes is appalling compared to the road surface for cars. To be fair, its not that evident to the naked eye unless you are on the bike path, but I actually began to feel seasick from all the undulations.
- There are a large number of roundabouts in this area, but the bike lanes only give you the opportunity to turn left; you cant event get off the bike lane and carry the bike across the road because of the rails, so you end up turning around, cycling back to the next pedestrian crossing.

I very much had the Marty Morrissey radio show from Friday on my mind; and all the texts he read out about cyclists having perfectly good bike lanes but using the bus lane instead.

Having said that, there are so many beautiful country roads with zero traffic once you get past Hollystown.

tomasrojo

CramCycle wrote: »

Isn't it such a shame that people feel that way, it is a damning review of our society that the fear of going out in public and getting harmed is so accepted by some that a camera to record your every action is seen as a necessity rather than a novelty.

If things got to the stage that I thought this was a necessary strategy, I'd probably give up cycling, or certainly carry on with a very heavy heart. A low-cost, low-barrier, convenient form of transport slides into a routine more akin to being a Securicor courier.

tomasrojo

CramCycle wrote: »

WHO ****ING CARES? Since when did we as a people condone attempted murder as an acceptable retribution from a vigilante.

The analogy that occurred to me was somebody waiting in line to buy a lump hammer in Woodie's, when someone cuts in front of them, so they swing the hammer just past their head to teach them a lesson, and everyone in the queue starts talking about how awful people who cut in line are.

Tombo2001

tomasrojo wrote: »

If things got to the stage that I thought this was a necessary strategy, I'd probably give up cycling, or certainly carry on with a very heavy heart. A low-cost, low-barrier, convenient form of transport slides into a routine more akin to being a Securicor courier.

I'm getting to this point.

I cycled along Richmond road this morning; a number of cars did the dangerous overtake into oncoming traffic manouevre. Its particularly dangerous where there is a bend left on the road.

On one of the occasions, I had to pull off the road quickly onto the path. As it happens, on this occasion the van was overtaking me as a garda car was coming the other way. The van left about a foot and a half as he was completing the overtake.

What annoyed me was
- the van driver was completely unconcerned about completing this dangerous manouvre despite it being in full view of a garda car.
- no reaction from the gardai. Meanwhile I'm up on the footpath after yet another near miss.

Roland27

CramCycle wrote: »

A far more important point, that many overlook, is the lack of decency. Forget the laws, the rules and the regulations. Let us say this driver was correct and the cyclists was not legally allowed in the bus lane.

WHO ****ING CARES? Since when did we as a people condone attempted murder as an acceptable retribution from a vigilante. The only time this is acceptable is in a Superhero comic, and even then, only if the cyclist has a weapon that will blow up half the city. A commuter on the N11 and Supermans latest family friend from his long dead planet have little in common I imagine, but to some, they may as well be one and the same.

Of course, its a joke, and what the guards and the bus drivers don't realise (or just don't want to know) is just how close incidents like this can result in death. If the cyclist in question had unfortunately gone down under the wheel of that bus, would the guard have had the same "sure you're to blame" attitude then? Its a crazy situation.

But people still need to know where they stand, as in being able to say to a guard "no, cycle lanes are not mandatory", but the moment its very unclear and not of help to anyone.

D3PO

decided to cycle into work for the first time this morning. A$$hole bus driver of a 46A did his utmost to kill me passing me while beeping and shutting the door on me to the point my pedal clipped the bus. I could easily have been dragged under the wheels.

I'm not exaggerating saying I could be dead right now and when I caught up with him a few km up the road and challenged him on it he responded with I should cycle in the bike lane. I'm going to have to use my camera on the bike I wish I had done so today because this muppet should be fired and I wish I had the incident on camera.

This was on the N11 btw. which by the last few pages of this thread seems that I'm not the only one to experience problems with busses on this route.

ThisRegard

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Cycled from town to Ratoath at the weekend.

There is a huge network of bike lanes, off road up around the Ballycooling industrial estate. Would love to know how much use they get.

Particularly -

-The quality of the bike lanes is appalling compared to the road surface for cars. To be fair, its not that evident to the naked eye unless you are on the bike path, but I actually began to feel seasick from all the undulations.
- There are a large number of roundabouts in this area, but the bike lanes only give you the opportunity to turn left; you cant event get off the bike lane and carry the bike across the road because of the rails, so you end up turning around, cycling back to the next pedestrian crossing.

I very much had the Marty Morrissey radio show from Friday on my mind; and all the texts he read out about cyclists having perfectly good bike lanes but using the bus lane instead.

Having said that, there are so many beautiful country roads with zero traffic once you get past Hollystown.

"Would love to know how much use they get." - Very little !

I'm very regularly around that area, and up until before Christmas used to run around there almost daily. There was a debate on the Athletics forum about how dangerous it was to run on those off Cycling lanes or something, so as an experiment I counted the number of cyclists I met at a long lunch time run around there.

I think I met about 4 or 5 cyclists, all on the road. There was one cyclist off road, and he was actually cycling on the pedestrian section, and I met about 4 or 5 other runners, all on the cycle lane section. (it's not much different in the evenings, you might get a couple of more kids on bikes and walkers, but cyclists tend to stay on the road).

As you said, if you wanted to cycle in a loop they're fine, but with the way there's no cohesion with the cycle lane from getting from one side of the road to the other, you're better off on the road. If you want to go straight at one of the many many roundabouts when on the cycle lane, you actually can't.

I cycled on the other side of the corporate park a couple of times, where the new pharma plant is going, and stopped soon after. There's a handful of entrances, many not actually used, along them. But the problem is that none of the path is graduated, so you have to come to pretty much a stop unless you're on an MTB or in the mood for bunny hops, to get from one side to the other. And that's if there's no taxi or van parked up blocking you, which they very often do. So it was the road for me from then on.

Tombo2001

ThisRegard wrote: »

"Would love to know how much use they get." - Very little !

I'm very regularly around that area, and up until before Christmas used to run around there almost daily. There was a debate on the Athletics forum about how dangerous it was to run on those off Cycling lanes or something, so as an experiment I counted the number of cyclists I met at a long lunch time run around there.

I think I met about 4 or 5 cyclists, all on the road. There was one cyclist off road, and he was actually cycling on the pedestrian section, and I met about 4 or 5 other runners, all on the cycle lane section. (it's not much different in the evenings, you might get a couple of more kids on bikes and walkers, but cyclists tend to stay on the road).

As you said, if you wanted to cycle in a loop they're fine, but with the way there's no cohesion with the cycle lane from getting from one side of the road to the other, you're better off on the road. If you want to go straight at one of the many many roundabouts when on the cycle lane, you actually can't.

its true, the concrete for pedestrians was a much better surface than the cycle path.

The reason it annoyed me is that you'll hear these statistics about how many kms there are of offroad cycle paths in Dublin; and they do exist - but in daft places with daft layouts and really poorly made.

mr spuckler

CramCycle wrote: »

Isn't it such a shame that people feel that way, it is a damning review of our society that the fear of going out in public and getting harmed is so accepted by some that a camera to record your every action is seen as a necessity rather than a novelty.

yep, i wouldn't say it's a necessity but yet i've still started rocking both front and rear cameras on my commute. my view on this is that if something bad does happen i sure as hell won't be the cause of it and don't want the other party lying their way out of it.

thankfully i've never had reason to bring any footage to the gardaí and in 14+ years of commuting by bike in Dublin i've never had a collision.

a pedestrian once spoke to me at traffic lights and asked why the camera (was a larger helmet mounted version then) and following my answer he said...."oh, kinda like an insurance policy then?" and i think that sums up how i view it. i insure my house but i certainly didn't buy a house that i expect to be broken in to!

Wishbone Ash

tomasrojo wrote: »

..There are a few bus lanes on dual carriage ways that are narrow and very high-speed, so they maybe should be bus-only, if they're not.

A bus with a double deck or a bus with standing passengers is legally limited to 65km/h which is below the speed many cyclists would experience close passes on ordinary roads.

Liam28

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Cycled from town to Ratoath at the weekend.

There is a huge network of bike lanes, off road up around the Ballycoolin industrial estate. Would love to know how much use they get.

Particularly -

-The quality of the bike lanes is appalling compared to the road surface for cars. To be fair, its not that evident to the naked eye unless you are on the bike path, but I actually began to feel seasick from all the undulations.
- There are a large number of roundabouts in this area, but the bike lanes only give you the opportunity to turn left; you cant event get off the bike lane and carry the bike across the road because of the rails, so you end up turning around, cycling back to the next pedestrian crossing.

I very much had the Marty Morrissey radio show from Friday on my mind; and all the texts he read out about cyclists having perfectly good bike lanes but using the bus lane instead.

Having said that, there are so many beautiful country roads with zero traffic once you get past Hollystown.

I cycle to work in this Ballycoolin / Blanchardstown / Damastown area, and agree the bike lanes are unusable. The lane surface is poor, loads of broken glass, interrupted every 100 yds by entrances and two inch kerbs, and no continuity through the many roundabouts. Totally unsuitable for road bikes, designed for cyclists by non-cyclists.

tomasrojo

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

A bus with a double deck or a bus with standing passengers is legally limited to 65km/h which is below the speed many cyclists would experience close passes on ordinary roads.

Very good point. I presume the airport-bound coaches and so on don't have that restriction?

Wishbone Ash

tomasrojo wrote: »

Very good point. I presume the airport-bound coaches and so on don't have that restriction?

Ordinary single deck coaches were limited to 50mph - 80km/h for years when I drove them but AFAIK that was increased to 90 or 100km/h a few years back hence the reason you see them horsing along motorways now.

(The route from Dublin to the airport and vice versa is restricted to 80km/h at a maximum regardless of whether R132 or M1 is used but I've yet to see the Gardai pull over a coach for exceeding that.)