Near Misses Thread Volume 2 (So close you can feel it)

Steoller wrote: »

I'm going to have to take issue with your assertion there. Even with the current licensing regulations, too many people who are dangerously unqualified to drive are being certified to get behind the wheel. Asking for those regulations to be beefed up, is not equivalent to asking for an unnecessary license on a mode of transport that is no more dangerous than walking.

On what basis is your assertion about dangerously unqualified drivers being licenced made?

robinph

cletus wrote: »

On what basis is your assertion about dangerously unqualified drivers being licenced made?

Car drivers claiming that cyclists put them at risk and are a danger on the road would be a good indicator that they need more awareness on the road and of other road users.

This feels very like a discussion we had here before about roads being more dangerous. Without rehashing it all again, the empirical data doesn't support this.

07Lapierre wrote: »

That’s also a good point. IMO Our roads are not THAT dangerous. But then again, how do you judge a safe road? I cycle along roads which I feel are safe, but others who are not as experienced/confident on a bike as I am think the roads I cycle on are lethal!

If you take the footage that started this discussion, would everyone be happy to send a 12yearold child cycling on that road?

Edit: I had a discussion online about a certain road and how safe it was and I was told it’s perfectly safe as “there’s no record of any fatalities on that road”
This is true, but is that the best way to determine if a road is safe?

At any point in time, given a set of circumstances any road or section of road can be lethal, insofar as somebody could die on it. You can't base any macro understanding of anything at all, not just road safety, on anecdotes, one off incidences, personal histories, or anything else that's not aggregated data that has been collected and compiled, preferably over a number of years, so that there are sets of data to compare with. Otherwise it's the old "my grandmother smoked till she was 93, and she never got cancer" routine.

My initial question here was mostly rhetorical, because I don't believe the poster I asked it of actually has any data to back up the assertion that there are large numbers of dangerously unqualified drivers are being given licences

robinph wrote: »

Car drivers claiming that cyclists put them at risk and are a danger on the road would be a good indicator that they need more awareness on the road and of other road users.

That is not the same as, quote "...too many people who are dangerously unqualified to drive are being certified to get behind the wheel"end quite

hesker

07Lapierre wrote: »

That’s also a good point. IMO Our roads are not THAT dangerous. But then again, how do you judge a safe road? I cycle along roads which I feel are safe, but others who are not as experienced/confident on a bike as I am think the roads I cycle on are lethal!

If you take the footage that started this discussion, would everyone be happy to send a 12yearold child cycling on that road?

Edit: I had a discussion online about a certain road and how safe it was and I was told it’s perfectly safe as “there’s no record of any fatalities on that road”
This is true, but is that the best way to determine if a road is safe?

I know the road in question extremely well. It’s not particularly dangerous. It depends on the 12 year old and their level of road craft.
That particular merge point would be seen the length and breadth of the country

Steoller wrote: »

Admittedly, personal experience, from the boss who ran his van over a row of ducks and didn't realise it despite two passengers telling him to watch out, or the neighbour who drove well into his nineties despite not being able to make out road-signs, and several others.

But besides that, the existence and extent of drink driving, hit and runs, and single car collisions suggests to me that there is a large cohort people out there driving vehicles they cannot be in control of.

Not to mention the drivers out there on their Amnesty driving licenses.

OK, the Amnesty thing is a red herring. It happened in 1979, 42 years ago, and at the time it accounted for 45,000 people. At this juncture there would likely be much fewer of them on the road.

You have given two examples of poor driving, and alluded to others. You have made no comment about how many examples of good driving you might see on any given day. The last time I cycled to work, I had a ridiculously close pass by a bus driver. It stands out to me because of how bad it was. I did not extrapolate this out to all bus drivers, or all drivers around Naas, or any other subset.

With regards to fatalities etc. the last time this was discussed, I showed data that demonstrated that driving in Ireland was certainly no worse than many other EU countries, and better than many.

So, again, is there any actual data that supports your contention that there is largenumbers of dangerously unqualified drivers being issued licences in this country.

This is not to say there isn't poor driving, but we need to be careful with the language we use and how we present our arguments.

hesker

I’ve looked at it several times there now again to see if my view has changed. The rearward view gives a better perspective I think. His arm doesn’t go out until the car has passed and he almost immediately is crossing the dotted line. From when his arm goes out to when the van draws level with him is about 2-3 secs.

robinph

That the van has the time to make the move to the left in retribution for him daring to merge means there was plenty of space and that the van knew they were there.

hesker

I’m done arguing. The Gardai found fault with both road users. It’s easy to spin the argument that the cyclist is being victimised but the video won’t support his appeal in my opinion in this instance. But you never know how these things will play out

magicbastarder

waiting to do a U-turn at a set of lights earlier, taxi in front of me. we got a general green, and the taxi driver (who was taking a right) pulled away from the lights and then had to stand on his brakes in the middle of the junction, because he only saw the cyclist coming the other direction at the last second. i completed my u-turn, and as i passed the cyclist passed some comment about him being invisible. 'huh?' 'that taxi driver who just nearly drove into you'
'what taxi driver?'

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Not to be too controversial about it, but if this cycle path was in Dun Laoghaire, it would be very well known.

Yeah, but if it was in Sandymount it'd be the subject of a court order! :pac:

Coincidentally, Dunsink Observatory tweeted this earlier...

https://twitter.com/RaesideRose/status/1367478016889266178

https://twitter.com/clazbae/status/1368175481460305926

VonLuck wrote: »

Not to be flippant, but that woman who replied has pretty much doxed herself. There might be 2 or 3 houses within 700m of the observatory!

I had to include either her response or the one the observatory was responding to in order to embed the tweet. I chose hers simply because it was below the one I wanted to show.

magicbastarder

i've met a chap a few times who grew up in the observatory itself. he's an ex-colleague of a friend of mine.

silverharp

MojoMaker

That is pi$$ poor alright. Would it have killed them to go up 20-30m more if they absolutely *had* to park there?

Breezer

They were driving the wrong way down a one way street beside the Grand Canal cycle track in Portobello earlier. Here.

No blue lights, sirens, or anything else. They were going slowly, but if someone had swung in it could have been messy.

5uspect

A stupid, impatient overtake today while I was mid sentence complaining about a motorist tailgating a cyclist going the other way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g00IMGbM4ME

360 version:
https://youtu.be/g00IMGbM4ME

Was great to see so many cyclists out today, almost outnumbering motorists.

stoneill wrote: »

This is a near miss the other way, I don't have video but there was a cyclist on the M4, on the actual motorway this morning who nearly got creamed about 4 times coming up to junction 6. What short-cut could possibly be worth putting your life at risk?

Well it's very hard to answer that without knowing which direction he was coming from.

I used to drive the M50 (J7-J14) and back every day for years.
I would have reported a number of cyclists and pedestrians (and drivers) on the road to garda Trafficwatch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2mnvyjMyDE

07Lapierre wrote: »

?? A cyclist on a motorway? Not good in any direction no?

That wasn't the question.

5uspect

Here's another one from yesterday. Tesco van driver couldn't have picked a worse time to overtake.

360 version.
https://youtu.be/q2mnvyjMyDE

https://twitter.com/magnatom/status/1369644952452542465

Interesting, in the UK, it appears that a cyclist who was reprimanded for swearing whilst being assaulted is having his five complaints against the police upheld (including that the police did not punish the driver) - I've included the original video below...

Cycling UK member David Brennan was assaulted while cycling to work. The driver was not prosecuted and shockingly, David himself was given a police warning for swearing. Now he’s teaming up with Cycling UK to call for significant changes in the way vulnerable road users are treated in Scotland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYp2BBEVO28

Duckjob

fat bloke wrote: »

That's an over reaction from the cyclist imo

Edit, whoops! By which I mean the man on the bicycle!

I don't think it's such an over reaction TBH, a car driver speeding up and moving in swiftly in on top on you for no good reason, other than to threaten.

And WTF is wrong with that driver ? I mean, you're in a bit long line of traffic, you're going nowhere fast anyway. Why the need to be an aggressive dick because someone on a bike filters past and goes in front of you ?