Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

NCT as it's being "operated" at the moment is a joke. If you try to book the car way ahead of time to make sure you get in in time you're told that it'll only be valid from 1/2 years from the date of test regardless. Try to book it a reasonable time ahead of due date - the closest date is 3 or 4 months beyond and it'll still be due for next test 1/2 years after the due date. While I'm entirely in favour of cars being roadworthy and have no desire to go back to the 80s/90s when often as not cars were being held together by baler twine, I'd hope given the farcical state of affairs that exists, guards would exercise some judgement until NCTS get their act together.

Insurance and tax on the other hand, a system of notification when a car falls out of insurance or tax linked to ANPR would help reduce that rather than have guards standing in the middle of the road looking at windscreens - though of course the banditery that is the insurance cartel in this country needs sorted out as well.

(seriously, I haven't been off lurking in the motoring board - swear 😄)

NCT changed completely the type of cars that are on our roads. They are cnuts but I'll give them that.

Suspension springs typical just fail by cracking with any wear prior to that difficult to spot.

Most other components show obvious wear be they bushings, brakes, shock absorbers etc.

How did you know to bring car to garage or was it just a regular service?

True again. And the Gardai don't seem to give a f**k. In fact I was on the N11 near Ashford the other week doing 100kmph on cruise control and a car passed me doing about 110kmph with a marked Garda car more or less tailgating him. No blue lights etc. The car pulled in in front of me and the Garda car just ploughed on. They seem to have completely given up even pretending to care about enforcing the law when it comes to motoring.

Possibly true, I don't know, but I don't think we should all be the judges of our own speeds. There's a limit. There are road signs. And we have pretty much uniform speedometers in all our cars. We have the perfect, in-built ability to make all of our speeds on the roads more or less uniform. People making up their own speed limits as they feel like it is what causes half of the chaos on our roads - even just the whole speed up > brake > change lane > speed up > change lane again > brake > speed up is a big part of the problem with tailbacks.

Anyway, the point was more the mindset of the Garda that day - aware that he and the car were doing 110 according to their speedo, but decided that was fine. And it's not an infrequent occurrence either. It - and the whole 'sure my speedo is wrong' mindset - just encourages a sense of everyone for themselves once behind the wheel.

Sure no wonder the roads are a nightmare to drive on. F**k all speed enforcement and we can all be the judges of what speed we reckon we're going at. It's wild west farcical. No wonder you get lads sitting on your rear bumper if the attitude is "well, the speed limit is 100, which means I can do 110 on my speedo, and they'll always allow you a few kmph over the limit before actually ticketing you, so I'll stick it to 114kmph... and there's a car in front of me I need to pass, I'm allowed to speed up to overtake so 117kmph is fine."

I get your point, but my point was not about scientific proof of speed, it was about attitudes to driving and specifically enforcement. 100 is a limit, not a target. Here you have a Garda who thinks its fine to overrule your vehicles speedo indicator and a motorist with such scant regard for speeding that even when a Garda is sitting behind him he just carries on. It all just means that you have people in one lane doing 90kmph on their speedo because they couldn't be bothered dealing with the arseholes in the other lane who hammer away at 110 on theirs.

And we wonder why there are so many speed-related deaths on our roads?

Anyway, as I say, I get your point and I'm not looking for an argument so I'll stop derailing the thread with my rants!

It is certainly law in the UK that speedometers can't underreport speed, but they can over report(10% plus 10km/h I think).

Typically in the last few cars I've had when compared against a GPS device, 127km/h on speedometer is about 120km/h on GPS.

A Garda with a speed gun recording a motorist at 125km/h (on my car showing circa 132km/h) is unlikely to pull the driver over; he will have a margin of error on his own device and that's before you get into calibration controls etc etc.

I've no problem with the approach per se, and 100% agree with you that it would be gamed. It's the execution or lack of that pisses me off. Assuming somebody with 2 brain cells to rub together put together the service level agreement - not a given with the Irish governments track record in this type of thing - there isn't a hope in hell that NCTS are even ball park with this charade.

In between my message 2 days ago and now they've sent me an NCT notice for our second car due an NCT in 3 weeks time. I click on the link to make an appointment. End of September! The only thing they can offer me elsewhere is Cahir in August - a 130km round trip. Now they know when NCTs are due, I'd hope they know the length of their queues, why don't they allocate a space and offer that in time instead of pointlessly sending out an "oh by the way, your NCT is due in 3 weeks" notice.

Anyway, rant off and back to 2 wheels!

Yeah, not a great article, and poorly edited.

I don't know if it's possible to actually engage with the question other than to say 'it depends", though.

Much as I like cycling (I keep a bicycle in my classroom so I can cycle to the shops at lunchtime instead of driving in) we have two cars in our home, and the reality is that they're both necessary.

Regarding public transport, I often think that there should be two discussions running, PT for commuting to and from work, and PT for 'leisure' travel, for want of a better word.

We didn't have it properly though (do we ever in this country).

My commute is not possible without a car. It's that simple. Even though my wife takes the train to Dublin for work, getting to the train station without her car isn't feasible.

Outside that, though, we'll make journeys using bicycle, train, Luas, and less recently bus and Dart.

So while I'll make use of PT as much as I can, talk of living without a car can seem like a very urban-centric idea to people living either rurally, or in places ill served by public transport.