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

Deleted User wrote: »

Mentioned it to them when I saw them there one night, they'd want to be blind not to see them there on the way in, and I got at best a shrug at worst a smirk :mad:

Policing? That would be a law enforcement matter ....:D

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

Size of the Garda Traffic Corps has fallen from 1,200 to 700 over past few years.

Even prior to the drop the level of enforcement wasn't great.

Being realistic, it'll be years before it's fixed. The ongoing scandals regarding the leadership, a gangland war, and a tight public purse mean that enforcing road traffic offences is way down the list of priorities.

Just had a thought on this on the bike this morning. Surely be much easier and quicker to bring back traffic wardens and increase their powers to be more like a low level traffic police. They'd be employed by local councils and have powers to issue on the spot fines using an electronic device that registered the offense immediately so no way for people to get out of paying.

Although they couldn't have helped this morning with the construction van who nearly took out 4 oncoming cars on a blind bend doing at least 80KPH in a 50KPH zone. Luckily there was a farmers gate to my left and I nipped in there to avoid what I was sure was going to be a head on collision on the wet roads .

Chuchote wrote: »

Or rather a legal percentage of income. It's not fair if someone earning €300 pays the same fine as someone earning €10,000.

The Finns are backing that concept off, its a costly endeavour for the police to have to verify income with the tax system before processing a ticket.

had a bad one this morning.

i filtered to the top of the line of traffic at a red light, a Nissan X-Trail was stopped in the advance stop box. when the light went green i pushed on fairly quickly to create a bit of a gap as the next 150m or so of road is fairly sketchy, goes downhill, has cars joining at an angle from the left and then narrows between parked cars to the point where 2 cars can barely pass against each other.

what i now know to be called Main St, Raheny.

anyway, i hear the X-Trail spinning its wheels as he guns it away from the lights and i sense we could have a problem. i take the lane as i always do here, have been squeezed far too many times. he overtakes me with a few inches to spare and races ahead to the next red light. when i pull alongside i gesture to him that he needs to give me more space, he gestures back to fvck off. so i pull ahead of him at the red light (to his left) rather than try to reason with someone who clearly wasn't the type for reason and i hear him shouting out the now open window that i should have moved in off the middle of the road.
light goes green, we both turn left and i know there's another pinch point almost straight away here where the cars are parked on the left. sure enough he overtakes me straight away and veers in so he's nearly clipping those parked cars. i'd anticipated something like that so had eased off and hence wasn't hit / forced into emergency stop.

worst incident i've experienced in an awful long time. pretty sure he had a child in the back seat too.
hoping my cameras have done their job here, will check the footage when i get home and will report if it looks half as bad as it felt.

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Something I've noticed quite a bit recently is that dangerous driving doesn't necessarily occur because of speed, but because of acceleration. A lot of roads in Dublin have a 50k limit......if the road is empty and someone is coming along at 50k from a distance that's fine. They can see you, you can see them.

Its the guy who is crawling along.....sees his 'opportunity' to overtake when their maybe isn't one.

And then there is the big rev movement and sudden burst of speed, lurch out to the right, lurch back in again....

Its all split second stuff, and between the swerving and the accelerating - I feel a lot of overtakes are done in an uncontrolled fashion - without necessarily breaking a speed limit.

Completely agree with this, can never understand it either. When I'm overtaking a bike I always do it slowly - also this means you don't need to give quite so much space (even though I do) so no need for the amateur dramatics! And when you're being passed by someone who does do it nice and slowly it makes such a big difference, they always get a wave & a smile from me.

Annie get your Run wrote: »

Completely agree with this, can never understand it either. When I'm overtaking a bike I always do it slowly - also this means you don't need to give quite so much space (even though I do) so no need for the amateur dramatics! And when you're being passed by someone who does do it nice and slowly it makes such a big difference, they always get a wave & a smile from me.

Same for me!

mr spuckler wrote: »

had a bad one this morning.

i filtered to the top of the line of traffic at a red light, a Nissan X-Trail was stopped in the advance stop box. when the light went green i pushed on fairly quickly to create a bit of a gap as the next 150m or so of road is fairly sketchy, goes downhill, has cars joining at an angle from the left and then narrows between parked cars to the point where 2 cars can barely pass against each other.

what i now know to be called Main St, Raheny.

anyway, i hear the X-Trail spinning its wheels as he guns it away from the lights and i sense we could have a problem. i take the lane as i always do here, have been squeezed far too many times. he overtakes me with a few inches to spare and races ahead to the next red light. when i pull alongside i gesture to him that he needs to give me more space, he gestures back to fvck off. so i pull ahead of him at the red light (to his left) rather than try to reason with someone who clearly wasn't the type for reason and i hear him shouting out the now open window that i should have moved in off the middle of the road.
light goes green, we both turn left and i know there's another pinch point almost straight away here where the cars are parked on the left. sure enough he overtakes me straight away and veers in so he's nearly clipping those parked cars. i'd anticipated something like that so had eased off and hence wasn't hit / forced into emergency stop.

worst incident i've experienced in an awful long time. pretty sure he had a child in the back seat too.
hoping my cameras have done their job here, will check the footage when i get home and will report if it looks half as bad as it felt.

Awful but not unusual - if you do report it, expect Garda to take a dim view of any shouty stuff between driver and cyclist.

magicbastarder wrote: »

i once had a car lifted by the council. it was obviously abandoned, and i rang the gardai - they said as long as it was in a legal parking spot and there was no other indication of crime, it was not going to be on their radar. so i rang the council and the conversation went something along the lines of:
'if there are plates on the car, there's not much we can do'
'ok, so do i have any other options?'
'well, if the car had no plates we could lift it as it would be considered abandoned'
'well, is there any other way i could get it classed as abandoned?'
'IF THERE ARE NO PLATES ON THE CAR WE CAN LIFT IT FOR YOU'
*sound of penny dropping*

I thought they would remove it after a certain number of days (28?) regardless of plates - see SDCC's list of cars due for removal.

mr spuckler wrote: »

i pulled alongside him while he was stopped at the red to point out that he should have given me more space. at that stage i'm by his passenger window.

i could tell then by his demeanour that he wasn't for polite reasoning and most likely for shouting abuse so i had 3 options. sit there and take it / shout back, push back to behind him or filter ahead of him.

as the light went green i remembered the pinch point.

in return i have to ask..
- he's just had a cyclist point out to him that he overtook dangerously and politely requested that he give more space
- he's got a child in his car
- why does he then deliberately swerve his much heavier vehicle towards me in a dangerous manner?

I think the point being made to you is that there is no point being in the right but in the hospital or morgue. Let him win, arrive home alive.

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Really - I'd have said that the golden rule of the overtake is to have plenty of time to do it.

How can doing it quickly make it safer?

I suppose there's probably more than one golden rule :cool:

But minimising the time spent on the wrong side of the road is always advisable. This isn't just applicable for overtaking cyclists, it applies to most overtaking.