#StopKillingCyclists - Kildare Street Tuesday 21st 5.30

Jawgap

1bryan wrote: »

really? That wasn't my experience. I was aware they could return recommendations, but I thought the possible verdicts were finite.

they can add a narrative to the verdict - it doesn't apportion blame or liability but it can be a recommendation/observation. You usually see them attached to medical mis-adventure verdicts, but I don't see why they couldn't be attached in a death resulting from an RTC.

1bryan

Jawgap wrote: »

they can add a narrative to the verdict - it doesn't apportion blame or liability but it can be a recommendation/observation. You usually see them attached to medical mis-adventure verdicts, but I don't see why they couldn't be attached in a death resulting from an RTC.

they are. Or, at least they were in my own family's case. But, as one might expect, absolutely nothing was ever done about the particular recommendation that was made.

doozerie

1bryan wrote:

I don't mean to have a go but I noticed the lack of an alternative suggestion.

I have no more insight into a possible solution to this problem than anyone else, and probably a lot less insight than many. For example, as per a subsequent post of mine above I think that the initiative some time ago that described cyclists as brothers/sisters/etc. was a very good one, and I wouldn’t have thought have that.

But, seeing as you are asking, fundamentally I think we pander to peoples’ selfishness generally and that we need to tackle that as it is a big part of the problem. So we have motorists who act as if they have a greater right to the roads than cyclists, simply because they are in car. And we have cyclists who make up their own rules as they go along, as if by being on a bicycle they are not bound by the same rules as all other road users. Similarly for pedestrians.

As examples of our screwy attitudes, tell someone that you stop at red traffic lights while cycling in the middle of the night on a “quiet road” and see whether they scoff at such “ridiculous behaviour”. Or tell someone that as a pedestrian you never jay walk and always wait for pedestrian lights, and wait for what seems like the inevitable comparison with Germany and “the German obsession with rules”. Curiously though, tell someone that you always obey the traffic lights, speed limits, etc., while driving and they’ll have no issue with that, even if they routinely break such rules themselves.

So what do I think we should do? Challenge those people we see who ignore the rules. Doesn’t matter whether they are motorists, cyclists, or pedestrians. Point out to them that our behaviour sets an example for others, we reap what we sow pretty much. Challenging the behaviour of others (and ourselves) is not something everyone is willing to do though, so it’s a suggestion that many people won’t welcome.

Also, we need to rein in the hyperbole, as an example:

1bryan wrote:

I really don't know about you but I feel like a sitting duck.

…no, I don’t feel like a sitting duck while cycling. Sure, I’m conscious of big lumps of metal around me but I don’t feel that their drivers are out to get me. If I truly felt that I’d never ride my bike because if motorists really want to kill me then it’s going to happen. Guaranteed. In that scenario I’ve brought my bicycle to a car fight, there is only ever going to be one outcome.

Such language reinforces the flawed idea that the roads are a battlefield, with motorists waging war against cyclists. That’s nonsense, every day I see people in cars and on bicycles trying to negotiate a safe coexistence and mostly succeeding. And this success despite the appalling behaviour of people from both groups that seem determined to alienate everyone.

Motorists are not the enemy of cyclists, we are all in the same boat of trying to do our best in sometimes ****e circumstances (rubbish road design, etc.). We need to focus on our commonality as far as I am concerned, as one way to promoting empathy between the groups.

doozerie

Moflojo wrote:

It is totally ludicrous that people on bikes should be sharing space with 1.5 tonne hunks of metal travelling at high speed.

Whenever I hear people call for complete segregation of cyclists and motorists I think of my 11km commute route into city centre Dublin. Given the narrowness of some of the roads, my commute route couldn’t accommodate such segregation without either entirely excluding motorists from certain stretches (in one or both directions) or, more likely, excluding cyclists from certain sections. To me that would be ludicrous.

And commute aside, how do you propose to implement such segregation to, and at, a more rural location like Sallygap for example?

As far as I am concerned, complete segregation is a nonsense, it’s trotted out much like the ads for cars that show roads with nothing on them but the car being touted. Lovely idea I’m sure, but no basis in reality.

doozerie

Ideleater wrote:

Dublin Bus parked a bus in Trinity some time last summer (???) and you could sit in it and see what the driver could and couldn't see.

I had a good chat with them at the time about how this education should really be a two way thing - as I really only realised what the visibility was from the drivers seat when I sat there - previous to this I could only guess how little they could see. Interestingly, you can see more from a Dublin bus than a London bus due to the mirror design apparently.

I’ve seen several Dublin buses in recent weeks with cameras attached to the left front wing, pointing towards the back of the bus.

I assume it’s to allow the driver to see anything moving up on the inside of the bus. And given the prevalence of cyclists going up the inside of buses with their left indicator on (almost a daily occurrence on my commute route), I imagine they prove useful quite often.

1bryan

doozerie wrote: »

Such language reinforces the flawed idea that the roads are a battlefield, with motorists waging war against cyclists. That’s nonsense, every day I see people in cars and on bicycles trying to negotiate a safe coexistence and mostly succeeding. And this success despite the appalling behaviour of people from both groups that seem determined to alienate everyone.

'mostly succeeding'.

Sorry, but that isn't good enough.

ford2600

With any transport form death and injury is unavoidable, at least to some degree.

If you examine the evolution of driverless cars that can be clearly seen, the current stumbling block is ethical rather than technical; what do you program the car to do when there is only bad outcomes? Drive over the buggy on road, veer left and take out both parents or veer right into oncoming traffic? (you won't sell many cars if programmed to kill driver). Given any engineer's role is fundamentally to arrive at order from a position of chaos, picking the least chaotic option must be quite confusing

The rate now, per km travelled in developed economies, is lower than it has ever been.

The year my uncle died 640 people died on Irish roads; a time when many houses had no car and where travelling a lot was very unusual, culturally and for cost reasons. I'm not sure on cyclist deaths in 1972, but they were around 45 in the late 1980's, so probably a lot higher than current levels.

We have improved a lot, as regards road safety over the last 20 years, we can of course get a lot better.

The current discussion/debate on any topic is almost always reduced to entrenched positions, especially on social media including this forum. It'll get you thanks,likes and all that bollox but it'll change nobody's mind from an opposite viewpoint.

Getting more people on bikes and calmly explaining the vulnerable position of cyclist would probably do more than winning online arguments or project like this

GreeBo

So then the question is, whats an acceptable number of cyclist deaths per year for a country of our size and our current cycling population?

doozerie

1bryan wrote: »

'mostly succeeding'.

Sorry, but that isn't good enough.

Nobody said it is good enough. But it demonstrates that motorists are not actively out to kill cyclists.

07Lapierre

bucketybuck wrote: »

Thats exactly the sort of definitive, finger pointing statement that just antagonises people. Its "motorists killing people", when in fact the very article you cited earlier states clearly that:



37% of fatalities are actually caused by the cyclists. Of course motorists may cause more, nobody will deny that at all but 37% is a significant percentage no matter what the discussion. "Motorists kill people", but so did 370 cyclists.

If the idea of these demonstrations is to raise awareness and drive change then there are far better ways of doing so than antagonising through statements such as "stop killing us" or "Motorists are killing people" when its clearly a far more nuanced situation than that.

Thats fair enough...point taken. Cyclists misbehave and cause accidents too, i accept that.

AndrewJRenko

GreeBo wrote: »

If cyclists are dying either way, does it really matter?

The point is that people keep dying and we seem unable to prevent it.

We are unwilling to prevent, largely because as a society, we are unwilling to enforce traffic law.

GreeBo wrote: »

So then the question is, whats an acceptable number of cyclist deaths per year for a country of our size and our current cycling population?

Here's one way of looking at it - what is the acceptable number of deaths of people in your close family each year due to other people not taking responsibility for the large equipment they are supposed to be controlling?

Zero would be my answer - what's yours?

ED E

I think its very important to note that deaths, while tragic and the most important metric, are not the only metric.

The majority of fatalities happen on rural/regional roads. Rathfarnham has caught a few but it is unusual. There are plenty of RTCs involving cyclists in cities though, just with lower speeds and far greater proximity to emergency services the chance of survival is far greater.

The near miss report by Pinch the other day highlights this, car "shunting" a DB out of lane. That will rarely become part of a statistic but is part of the road hostility commuters especially see every day. In my experience its increased.

The driver that HNR a cyclist losing his mirror in the process this week doesn't count as a fatality luckily, but he was this close to it. Without real tracking we dont know if its 15 deaths and 500 collisions or 15 deaths and 50,000 collisions.


Would love to see CI collate an open database for us to work on, but they cant even get club memberships promptly so....

Jawgap

1bryan wrote: »

'mostly succeeding'.

Sorry, but that isn't good enough.

Nearly always succeeding would be my view.

I think some of the rhetoric around cycling at them moment suggests the 'mean streets' are like......



.....when the streets are actually like

doozerie

ford2600 wrote: »

If you examine the evolution of driverless cars that can be clearly seen, the current stumbling block is ethical rather than technical; what do you program the car to do when there is only bad outcomes?

Driverless cars raise some very interesting questions, that's for sure. Someone mentioned to me recently that he had read that the software struggles with cyclists in particular.

Apparently cyclists are a problem because in terms of size they are closer to a pedestrian but in terms of speed they are closer to a car but they are deemed less predictable than a car. I'm not sure on what basis they are deemed less predictable, but it's a description that fits with my own anecdotal experience.

Idleater

doozerie wrote: »

I assume it’s to allow the driver to see anything moving up on the inside of the bus.

yeah, on the LHS of the bus you are invisible to the driver from roughly between the rear axle and the front door. The cone extends out something like 1.5m at the rear axle. The example they used was pedestrians running for the bus along the roadside edge of the footpath and the driver "just pulling away - surely he seen me - I was right beside him" but no.

As for the clowns going up the inside of any left indicating vehicle :rolleyes:. I normally see them popping back onto the road from the footpad in front of the bus.

AndrewJRenko

ED E wrote: »

Would love to see CI collate an open database for us to work on, but they cant even get club memberships promptly so....

Have you seen this database?

https://www.dublininquirer.com/2015/10/20/bicycle-collision-tracker/

ford2600

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Here's one way of looking at it - what is the acceptable number of deaths of people in your close family each year due to other people not taking responsibility for the large equipment they are supposed to be controlling?

Zero would be my answer - what's yours?

That's largely been achieved with regard to construction deaths on large sites; pharma and the like. Smaller sites and farming continue to be a mess

There was a time when death was much more acceptable on work sites. I briefly in or about 2005/2006 did work for a man who was losing a man a year on his sites in the 70's & 80's.

It is much harder to bring numbers that low with regard to transport; it a much bigger environment and you have next to no control over individual drivers or over their continous training.

Add in the typical stressed/anxious state of drivers in a busy commuter area and you have a harder job still.

With regard to cycling, the best thing you can probably do is improve your roadcraft. Irrespective of the actions of others that makes you safer. As a motorist I regularly stop, drive in grass margin etc when some muppet is oncoming partially on my side of the road reading his facebook feed or whatever. Just like roadcraft that's a necessary skill to avoid the chaos of a collision

AndrewJRenko

ford2600 wrote: »

It is much harder to bring numbers that low with regard to transport; it a much bigger environment and you have next to no control over individual drivers or over their continous training.

Our lack of control over individual drivers and continuous training are policy choices. We absolutely could take control over both of these, with improved enforcement through speed cameras, red light cameras, ANPR tracking, maybe even GPS monitoring of each vehicle if we chose to do so. We could also implement requirements for ongoing training and periodic retesting of drivers.

ford2600 wrote: »

With regard to cycling, the best thing you can probably do is improve your roadcraft. Irrespective of the actions of others that makes you safer. As a motorist I regularly stop, drive in grass margin etc when some muppet is oncoming partially on my side of the road reading his facebook feed or whatever. Just like roadcraft that's a necessary skill to avoid the chaos of a collision

Roadcraft is great, but the best thing you can do is create a culture of zero acceptable deaths.

CramCycle

doozerie wrote: »

I have no more insight into a possible solution to this problem than anyone else, and probably a lot less insight than many. For example, as per a subsequent post of mine above I think that the initiative some time ago that described cyclists as brothers/sisters/etc. was a very good one, and I wouldn’t have thought have that.

It was for motor cyclists but I found it very good.

The other good one, by a motorcyclists mother was the one where she allowed his helmetcam footage to be used after he had passed away. The motor cyclist was speeding but the coroner had stated he should have been seen regardless. The footage is where he T boned a car that pulled out in front of him, it was pretty awful when you realised that he was not moving and that he was dead.

As examples of our screwy attitudes, tell someone that you stop at red traffic lights while cycling in the middle of the night on a “quiet road” and see whether they scoff at such “ridiculous behaviour”.

+1 in my youth I never did it unless it was dangerous to cross, nowadays I always stop, even when quiet, often I have cars drive past me as if I am mental.

magicbastarder

CramCycle wrote: »

The footage is where he T boned a car that pulled out in front of him, it was pretty awful when you realised that he was not moving and that he was dead.

that's a tough one to watch - his yells as he realises he's about to crash are pretty grim to hear.

Doctor Bob

ford2600 wrote: »

If you examine the evolution of driverless cars that can be clearly seen, the current stumbling block is ethical rather than technical; what do you program the car to do when there is only bad outcomes? Drive over the buggy on road, veer left and take out both parents or veer right into oncoming traffic? (you won't sell many cars if programmed to kill driver). Given any engineer's role is fundamentally to arrive at order from a position of chaos, picking the least chaotic option must be quite confusing

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2017/jan/21/stephen-collins-on-driverless-cars-cartoon

bucketybuck

CramCycle wrote: »

That is in another country, with far different levels of fatalities etc. in relation to cycling, in no way does it serve a purpose to bring it in here. It is much like people bring in the other paper from the UK showing kids being at fault. It is not relevant to us, In Ireland, when other vehicles are involved with the cyclist, and the cyclist passes away, the motorist is typically at fault (or at least in every case i have seen in recent years). When it is the cyclist singular, it is nearly always 100% the cyclist fault.

I didn't bring those figures in here, the person I quoted and responded to did, I simply made use of them. Though I would note that it is a little myopic to think that Irelands statistics are going to be very different to those presented.

Regardless, the whole point of my response was simply highlighting that when an issue suffers the serious problem of very antagonistic relations between the main stakeholders, one of the worst things anybody can do is adopt policies that further increases that antagonism. Such as, for example, labeling one "side" as murderers.

Corca Baiscinn

bucketybuck wrote: »

Regardless, the whole point of my response was simply highlighting that when an issue suffers the serious problem of very antagonistic relations between the main stakeholders, one of the worst things anybody can do is adopt policies that further increases that antagonism. Such as, for example, labeling one "side" as murderers.

Nobody is labelling motorists murderers since nobody thinks they set out to intentionally kill anyone and in fact as far I can tell; while campaigners sometimes use SM to target individual drivers who have blocked a cycle lane, grossly exceeded the speed limit or overtaken dangerously; the Stop Killing Cyclists campaign is aimed firmly at Government inaction, hence Leinster House as the venue .

I recognise that it's divisive but similar action seems to have transformed the situation in Amsterdam way back and has led more recently to improvements more recently.

There is always tension between the risk of "dangerising" cycling and trying to create the conditions where anyone from 8 to 80 can think bike by highlighting why they dont at present.

ED E

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Have you seen this database?

https://www.dublininquirer.com/2015/10/20/bicycle-collision-tracker/

Thats a great asset already, but its the where not the why.

1bryan

Jawgap wrote: »

Nearly always succeeding would be my view.

I think some of the rhetoric around cycling at them moment suggests the 'mean streets' are like......



.....when the streets are actually like

they're not really though. On my commute there are cycle lanes on roads that don't leave enough room for cars without them encroaching, other roads without cycle paths where there should be cycle paths, and other stretches that have signs for cycle paths where there are no cycle paths. It's easy to pull a stock photo where everything is grand but it's not the reality. I mean, stretches of my commute are certainly like that. Other more closely resemble the mad max photo (ie: Rathmines road).

1bryan

doozerie wrote: »

Nobody said it is good enough. But it demonstrates that motorists are not actively out to kill cyclists.

I doubt anyone, anywhere, takes it that literally.

Though I did see a tweet from one of the cycle safety campaign twitter feeds where they posted a screenshot of some facebook comments where 'motorists' were discussing how they think there should be a points system whereby they accrue points for each cyclist they hit.

That demonstrates that motorists are actively out to kill cyclists.

Though I won't take that literally either. Rather, it's simply the mumblings of an idiot.

https://twitter.com/IsMiseNessy/status/933332132642074625

tomasrojo

1bryan wrote: »

Though I did see a tweet from one of the cycle safety campaign twitter feeds where they posted a screenshot of some facebook comments where 'motorists' were discussing how they think there should be a points system whereby they accrue points for each cyclist they hit.

That demonstrates that motorists are actively out to kill cyclists.

Though I won't take that literally either.

Well, exactly. It's horrible, and they're truly awful people, but they're not planning to kill people (maybe a very rare individual among them).

Very few drivers are setting out to kill cyclists. Quite a few are criminally negligent though (or would be found criminally negligent if judges and juries didn't empathise with drivers so much).

AndrewJRenko

tomasrojo wrote: »

Well, exactly. It's horrible, and they're truly awful people, but they're not planning to kill people (maybe a very rare individual among them).

Very few drivers are setting out to kill cyclists. Quite a few are criminally negligent though (or would be found criminally negligent if judges and juries didn't empathise with drivers so much).

It does create a culture of hate, same as any hate speech against religion or race or whatever. There was a recent case in Australia of a guy (a butcher iirc, ironically) who had posted online hate against cyclists and went on to kill a cyclist using his motorbike.

tomasrojo

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

It does create a culture of hate, same as any hate speech against religion or race or whatever. There was a recent case in Australia of a guy (a butcher iirc, ironically) who had posted online hate against cyclists and went on to kill a cyclist using his motorbike.

Yeah, it's not a trivial issue, but it's not a sign of a widespread plan or serious desire to kill cyclists.

I don't mean to downplay it.

Jawgap

1bryan wrote: »

they're not really though. On my commute there are cycle lanes on roads that don't leave enough room for cars without them encroaching, other roads without cycle paths where there should be cycle paths, and other stretches that have signs for cycle paths where there are no cycle paths. It's easy to pull a stock photo where everything is grand but it's not the reality. I mean, stretches of my commute are certainly like that. Other more closely resemble the mad max photo (ie: Rathmines road).

the point of the photos wasn't to illustrate cycling infrastructure - it was to demonstrate the gap between perception and reality.

Listening to some of the rhetoric out there you'd think cycling in Dublin is dangerous - it's not. A bit of cop on, a decent set of lights and a respectful (but appropriately assertive) attitude towards other road users will see anyone right.

....could it be better? Abso-feckin-lutely.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a nice city for cycling around. And the vast majority of motorists, the vast majority of the time are grand - but you do get the odd idiotic cyclist, driver or pedestrian.

in summary, if we want safer roads for cyclists in urban areas we need to emphasise the positives and be truthful about the negatives - not over-playing them.