General chat thread... Links,pictures, banter etc v2

Those are by far the best I've tried.

Now branded as Honeywell. Available cheap in bulk on Amazon.

I hear there's a new film out called Pillion 😉

In the IT letters page today, some pushback against the morons

Debating safety and cyclists

Sir, – Mary O’Sullivan (Letters, January 21st) and Alison Fergusson (Letters, January 23rd) call for the mandatory donning of high-vis by vulnerable road users.

I wholeheartedly disagree with their position. Scolding individuals for how they dress will do very little to improve their safety. The evidence just does not support such a measure.

The biggest killer on our roads is excessive speed and distracted driving. There is inadequate enforcement of the existing rules of the road in this country. Sensible measures that would have reduced fatalities such as a 30kmh speed limit in urban areas and the introduction of static red light cameras, were rolled back in the past few months. It seems that any measure to improve road safety but which may inconvenience drivers cannot be considered.

We will not see a reduction in deaths until we accept that every road death is preventable and start enforcing our existing legislation and improve our inadequate public transport and active travel networks. – Yours, etc,

Dr JOHN LEGGE,

Sandycove,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – It seems that mandatory hi-vis clothing for pedestrians, cyclists and, even more bizarrely, motorcyclists is now firmly established as the latest road safety panacea on The Irish Times Letters page.

No doubt its popularity is at least partly because it imposes no responsibility or inconvenience whatsoever on car drivers.

If one does not look, one does not see. I frequently encounter this despite my motorcycle being as well lit up as any car, day or night. – Yours, etc,

EOIN KIRWAN,

Dublin 22.

Sir, – The call from Alison Fergusson (Letters, January 23rd) for mandatory high-visibility clothing for cyclists, pedestrians and e-scooters reflects a regrettable but all too familiar pattern in our public discourse on road safety, namely the displacement of responsibility from those operating high-powered vehicles to those who are most vulnerable on our roads.

The notion that ever more garish clothing will compensate for distracted driving is a convenient fiction. No amount of fluorescent fabric can counteract the motorist scrolling on their phone or the driver travelling too fast.

What is required is not legislation mandating luminous attire, but a credible commitment to roads policing. Only last year the Crowe Report found members of An Garda Síochána openly acknowledged that roads policing had not been treated with sufficient seriousness within the organisation.

Without systematic enforcement of existing laws on speeding, dangerous overtaking, drink driving and mobile phone use, no additional burden placed on vulnerable road users will achieve meaningful safety gains.

Perhaps a compulsory module placing learner drivers on a stationary bicycle while a van passes at 50kmh would communicate, far more effectively than any pamphlet, the acute vulnerability experienced daily by those who travel without the protection of a steel shell. – Yours, etc,

SOPHIE McDERMOTT,

Dalkey,

Co Dublin.

Well it seems AGS already have immunity for getting family and friends off speeding tickets. Apparently because this is the 'culture' of the force, it wouldn't be 'fair' to convict them. What a country.