30k speed limits for all urban areas on the way

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198363#Comment_121198363

My last trip to Amsterdam did not show up what you claim any trip would show up.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198406#Comment_121198406

We need to set up an Amsterdam forum then :)

EBikes generally need to be controlled better.

One could reasonably argue that the type of people using Ebikes or Escooters are not always the same type of folks you might deem to be a cyclist.

Although they do tend to show a penchant for tracksuits, ironically.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198420#Comment_121198420

Methinks that you are looking at all kinds of non-pedal-powered bikes and calling them ebikes which is a big mistake if you're discussing the regulation of ebikes!

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198363#Comment_121198363

I didnt say cars were not dangerous. I said Bikes can pose an issue also, especially EBikes.

ah now, to be fair, you didn't originally say 'bikes can pose an issue also', you said bikes were 'the real danger' there. perhaps that was not a turn of phrase you intended?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198571#Comment_121198571

It's an understandable mistake - after all, road safety in the Netherlands is similar to Ireland, (i.e. deaths etc being extremely rare) so it's not unsurprising that a visitor might not feel threatened by motorists, especially when they're on the road and the pedestrian is on the footpath.

As to cyclists, if the Dutch are anything like their Irish counterparts, then it's entirely understandable that a pedestrian might feel much more threatened by them.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198565#Comment_121198565

Any powered bike. They are the ones that seem to cause more of the problems.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198571#Comment_121198571

I said bikes were a real danger for pedestrians when walking around the city. There are other dangers, which are not bikes, including cars.

But we were discussing bikes.

Sorry I didn't feel the need to list all other forms of danger a pedestrian may encounter whilst out and about in Amsterdam.

I belive they call it context. :)

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121199137#Comment_121199137

What you seem to be referring to when describing the tracksuited users are not ebikes nor regular bikes but motorbikes as they wont be pedal powered. There is an important distinction!

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121198724#Comment_121198724

Funny how you never use the same calculations that lead you to conclude that Irish drivers are just so overwhelmingly safe to assess the safety of cyclists.

Drivers get calculations. Cyclists get anecdotes.

I wonder if the families of the three people killed by drivers in the last 24 hours will be reassured by your claims.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121199189#Comment_121199189

Very true!

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121199607#Comment_121199607

Funny how the only way you can defend all the lawbreaking by cyclists is with "look over there." BTW my anecdotes also apply to motorists - as a pedestrian I am treated with respect by motorists as a rule. Indeed, if genuinely dangerous behaviour by drivers were common, I would probably have seen it commonly. And I'm not the only pedestrian who has noticed Irish cyclists penchant for lawbreaking.

Your side does use calculations and data, just usually irrelevant or out-of-context claims, like your false claims that "drivers" or "motorists" a.k.a a cohort of 2.8 million people kill whatever number of people you're claiming this time. Or the propaganda piece in one of DaCor's recent posts, the "Top tip" of which is totally irrelevant to about 99.9% of Irish drivers.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121183174#Comment_121183174

As to your question of whether or not any of this would provide reassurance to the families of those who've lost their lives recently, I don't know, perhaps you could ask them.

And while you're at it, perhaps you could also ask them which of Ireland's 2.8 million drivers they blame for their losses, since you have so much difficulty putting a number on the "drivers" you are accusing.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121202981#Comment_121202981

Why don't you apply the same calculation that you apply to motorists to cyclists?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121203882#Comment_121203882

Well, this may come as a surprise, but this thread is about 30kph regulations which (like most) will only apply to motorists. So it's important to get the facts right when making regulations, especially when they will affect 2.8 million people, no?

Cyclists are only relevant to this in so far as they shriek about how everyone else needs to be regulated more and have iron-fist enforcement, which would be credible if they themselves never ran red lights or played zoom-zoom on the footpaths. (Warning, sarcasm ahead) But hey, maybe I shouldn't tar all cyclists with the same brush, after all, I'm sure there are legions of them that have never gone through a red light or cycled on a footpath.

And FWIW as a pedestrian I hold both motorists and cyclists to the same standard: stay off the footpath, and at least observe traffic controls. Motorists seem to be generally OK with that. Cyclists? Not so much.

Flinty997

And from Wales...

https://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news/enforcement/worlds-first-study-into-20mph-limits-on-rural-roads-shows-positive-results.html

magicbastarder

This *is* kinda funny

https://twitter.com/Pedalperspectiv/status/1711136674581803083

TheChizler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121212053#Comment_121212053

Walking home last night I had to jump out of the way of a land cruiser driver who decided driving quite fast on the footpath outside a busy takeaway was a reasonable course of action, rather than wait a few moments for oncoming traffic to clear. Your last statement on motorists is comically false.

Duckjob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121212053#Comment_121212053

Just for giggles, I decided to take to google maps (I picked Swords just because its local to me), but I knew I could pick anywhere.

I wanted to test exactly how long it would take me to demonstrate how full of b****x your claim of "stay off the footpath ........ Motorists seem to be generally ok with that" was . Turns out it took all of 25 seconds.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.461152,-6.2186246,3a,75y,169.37h,91.13t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sY-cSKXOVXxr-dcMtt8JRaQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Duckjob

And here's Malahide. I'll admit this one took me longer about 2:20

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4513579,-6.1699024,3a,75y,293.46h,69.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxMje5gR3c9VANuGsWeP6bg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Duckjob

And finally for now, Portmarnock. about 30 seconds

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4212795,-6.1389503,3a,75y,4.57h,88.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s74ePsvXcIXFUVAI0MvTNkg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121212497#Comment_121212497

video slightly amended now...

https://twitter.com/Pedalperspectiv/status/1711339028631437595

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121212053#Comment_121212053

More side swerves there than the Irish rugby team, anything to avoid facing up to the obvious hypocrisy of using a particular calculation to 'prove' to yourself that Irish drivers are the safest in the world, while using an anecdote or two (and NOT the same calculation) to confirm that cyclists are "lawbreaking scum menacing pedestrians on the footpath".

When you say 'observe traffic controls', you're not referring to fundamentals like speed limits, presumably, given how often you've told that it doesn't really matter that most drivers break speed limits most of the time?

magicbastarder

it's also a little bemusing to continue to compare ireland and NL based purely on total deaths per capita, and draw the conclusion we're roughly the same in terms of road safety. because it's abundantly clear that the actual usage of the roads is very different in each country.

in 2022, more cyclists died on dutch roads than car occupants and pedestrians combined. cyclists accounted for 40% of fatalities - and more than half of those cyclist fatalities were of people 75 years old or older.

in ireland, in 2022, cyclists accounted for 4.5% of fatalities.

can you imagine the death toll in ireland if people headed out on to the roads in similar numbers to NL, on their bikes?

magicbastarder

Staying in vilamoura at the moment for a family get together. Paying attention to the speed limits is a pain in the ass because they go up and down like a yo-yo. I've seen limits of 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, 90 and 100 I think.

Banzai600

i was on my 300cc scooter the other day, doing my 50 kmh in a 50 zone, just wafting along....Some pr!ck on an elec scooter flies up the inside of me and a few cars. I got into the bus lane an sped up after him to see how hard he was going, and guess what - i was reading a steady 72 kms on my speedo, as i sat a bit behind him for a few seconds at same pace- now i reckon allowing for the usual off reading by speedo's be was probably more like 67/68 kmh - no tax, no insurance, sweet fcuk all if he hits anyone or damages a car etc.

and dont get all high and mighty about me speeding up either, before its mentioned. it was a safe scientific experiment and conditions allowed.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121227995#Comment_121227995

But that is just down to a complete lack of enforcement of the road traffic laws - nothing new in that. Look around you - red light breaking, drivers on phones, endemic speeding, etc. We've allowed it to get to where it is at. Any attempt to remove what many now see as a normal entitlement is met with anger and obstruction.

Flinty997

I guess they need to include them in the uninsured drivers compensation.

Seth Brundle

I guess that I don't really need to say anything about this...

https://twitter.com/SafeCyclingEire/status/1712489635018936555

SeanW

@Duckjob those vehicles are all stationary ... one does not generally need the survival skills of a special forces operative to evade a parked car.

@AndrewJRenko I have no idea what you're talking about as I have always been very clear. I regard lawbreaking by cyclists as universal. Full stop. We get it, you have some kind of hard-on about speed, but it's a bit rich for an Irish cyclist to whom the entire concept of obeying laws it completely alien to complain about a driver going over 18MPH on a straight wide road at 6AM.

Of course, you still haven't given any reason for collectively accusing the entire cohort of Irish "motorists" in Ireland of "killing X or Y people every week" nor have you qualified that statement in any way to enumerate which subset of the 2.5/2.8 million you were accusing.

I never claimed that Irish drivers were the safest in the world, I clearly said AMONG the safest in the world. There are a small number of countries where there are proportionally fewer fatalities, like the UK and Norway, but that's about it. And if dangerous driving is what causes death, then we can say with certainty that genuinely dangerous driving by Irish motorists is rare - both in relative and absolute terms. The data behind these conclusions are clear.

As to "observe traffic controls" I mean the basics like stop for me at zebra crossings, at least observe red lights and don't play zoom-zoom on the footpath. Which motorists generally don't have a problem with. Within reason, I don't give a flying fiddlers what speed a car is going at, as long as I'm on the footpath, they're on the road, and they yield to me when the law requires.

@magicbastarder weren't you the one who claimed in a number of threads that Ireland was a dangerous place for pedestrians on the basis of the pedestrian percentage of total fatalities? I seems to recall it was you who claimed that Ireland was (paraphrasing here) only better than two Eastern European countries that have dramatically worse safety records overall on the basis of these percentages within those overall records.

By your own logic thusly, the Netherlands is a dangerous hellscape for cyclists and Ireland is really safe for them.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121229642#Comment_121229642

Right, so 'observe traffic controls' excludes obeying speed limits in your book, despite the fact that speeding is recognised all over the world as one of the top four causes of road deaths. But hey, we wouldn't want to 'punish' the poor downtrodden drivers of Ireland by requiring them to actually obey traffic law.

Your position would make a classic case study of cognitive dissonance.

This one's specially for you, as you push the position that three or four people being killed each week is just the inevitable consequence of the 'freedom' of being able to drive and the freedom to break speed limits.

https://x.com/CyclingInKK/status/1702323151949136236?s=20

SeanW

Wearing my pedestrian hat, I want motorists and cyclists not to play zoom-zoom on the footpath, and yield to me when the law requires. Motorists generally do, cyclists ... not so much. Within reason, I have no reason to care about anything else.

As to your point about whatever number of people losing their lives each week, the fact remains that 99+% of Irish drivers have nothing to do with it. As to your propaganda video, hard cases make bad law.

For your own reasons, you blame all Irish drivers collectively for these incidents. And you obviously do not believe that ever increasing rules on motorists should be bounded by reason or evidence. That's on you and your ilk.