Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

🧐 there's always a reason for an accident too though.

Not defending it, just don't see that a 'collision' apportions any blame over an 'accident'?

Indeed - you can't, can you? At least not at the time.

Of course, I may just be conditioned 🙅‍♂️

For me it's the double standards - if there's an incident where a car/ driver causes damage, it's immediately spoken of in hushed tones as an accident, with the unsaid but underlying element of compassion for the driver in a "there but for the grace of god" kind of sense. Which in many ways is fine… many of us will be involved or even at fault for some kind of tip/ collission in a car, most of us aren't maniacs and its not a particularly nice experience.

BUT…

It's accompanied by a steadfast refusal by almost all 'stakeholders' to do anything about the underlying causes - driver behaviour and vehicle design.

AND…

An unending torrent of bile spews forth (or at the very least, the condescending tut tut of disapproval) whenever there is a report of walker/ cyclist/ eScooter user being involved in an "accident", where the conversation immediately turns to pondering whether they were wearing a helmet, hi viz. Followed by anecdotal talk of how anyway they're impossible to see, always dressed in black, appear out of nowhere, break red lights, use the footpath and nearly knocked down everyone's granny.

So while in many ways I've no problem with using the term 'accident', I do have an issue insofar as it perpetuates the cognitive dissonance that seems to be affecting half of society when it comes to our relationship with The Car.

Construction safety is a huge thing for us at work - you don't get considered for the largest contracts if you don't have an exemplary safety record. Part of the safety culture is the sharing of reports on any injuries and near-misses, including an explanation of the causes, contributing factors and the actions that need to be shared across all our sites to avoid a repetition. As everything has a root cause and it's not acceptable to just shrug and say" I dunno, it's a balls, innit?" these are always referred to as "incidents" rather than "accidents". Even where site vehicles may be involved, it is still an incident.

The term "accident" just means that either people are being careless with terminology (and that is a significant issue in itself) or they just haven't looked for the cause hard enough.

It seems high alright. She doesn't say whether she's living in Waterford city or where she's commuting to (I'm guessing if she can do it on bike she's not going to Dungarvan every day), but sort of comparing like with like as I'm in Waterford as well, a quick back of the beermat calculation shows me that if I drove to/from work fuel would be €2.80ish per day, about €630pa based on the average days worked, add about €500 for maintenance,€600 insurance, we'll ignore tolls as she'd only incur those if going round Waterford. Depreciation? Maybe €1-1.5k on our cars - if you drive a newish BMW this will go up but depreciation on new cars is just funny money anyway.

Add all that up and you're still a long way shy of €5k though nonetheless gives a compelling reason to ditch the car if you can. I'd dearly love to ditch at least one and am not far off the point where kids don't need that much ferrying around but I'm unfortunately not really recognising this "decent bus and intercity rail service" she speaks of.

Sadbh O'Neill, lives in Waterford (Lecturer part-time & researcher TUD), sold her car six months ago.. Just said same on Newstalk at 08:52. So a Waterford-Dublin commute

"and other costs"

5k would be cheap for annual cost of car ownership. The car could easily be costing her €6k plus.

Tax and insurance: €1k

Fuel for 20k: €2040 @6L/100km at €1.7/L

Preventative maintenance: €500

Tyres €200 ( half wear at €100/tyre for 4 tyres)

Depreciation: €3k

Really hard to get depreciation under 3K per year if you have any kind of decent car and you don't want huge fuel/maintenance/motor tax costs.

While second hand values are really good the cost to change is still mental

Inspired by Sadbh O'Neill, coming up on Newstalk after 12 "could you go carless" buses and bicycles

No! 😁