Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

Think the answer to both is some nuance rather than abroad statement….

• high viz - I'm sure there's some threshold that can be met, same as I'm sure there's specific laws with regards to lights on cars
• ebikes - some of the newer ones with the big chunky wheels are closer to motorbike than bicycles. Again, I'm sure there's some specific horespower threshold that would count for this legislation

Does this mean I'd have to wear high vis on my decathlon pedal assist bike? not that I ever would anyway

but are they saying helmets will be required on your kind of e-bike (i've the same kind) or just the already illegal ones or what? no f*cking way am i wearing a helmet on mine anyway.

so they're doing all this because little scumbags fly around on scramblers and stolen motorbikes? where's the logic ffs?

Insanity, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it given the country's hatred for cyclists, we're still quite the minority and most would probably love for it to be more hassle for us to cycle. I'm not putting a helmet on to cycle to lidl that's about 500 meters away ffs.

It's the classic Maggie Thatcher inspired divide and conquer strategy. Instead of motorists and cyclists alike calling for better resources from the government they get us to blame and fight with each other. While we're distracted and arguing about the little things they legislate for what they want

Tend to agree, and "fixing" the cycling problem means finding simple ways to reduce the numbers, in this case.

Just look at the state of half the country the last couple of weeks with heavier than average rainfall. And the kneejerk reactions, hollow promises and finger pointing. Where nothing was done for the last 25 years when this has been a growing issue. And nothing will be done when the rain stops in a week or two, Paddy's day rolls around, lambs are jumping in the fields and something else gets the headlines.

We get who we f***ing vote for unfortunately. "Oh, look, climate change on the horizon… lets do nothing, ostracize those trying to raise the issue, vote out the only party attempting to care and turn the whole circus into a culture war issue".

My sympathy is in very short supply these days.

Drivers keep killing pedestrians and thereby reducing the demand for hi-viz from the RSA's supplier, so they have to do something to keep profits up!

It's like they want a situation where everybody on the road (not in a vehicle) to wear hi-viz when all they really need to do is enforce the current law of having front and rear lights

But then enforcing the existing laws doesn't create an us v us situation

I imagine it helps when you can take your bike on the metro and the city buses.

Also helps when the cycling infrastructure is well planned

A half decent bike light - €40/ €50 range? - can be seen well over a km away. The amount of times I've presumed the light ahead was a motorbike only to see a cyclist breeze past… Worth their weight in gold. And if they're not the cheap Chinese ones they won't blind oncoming traffic either.

If the Govt. was in ANY way serious in caring about the safety of cyclists they'd introduce regs akin to the German ones and inform the public of their importance. Could scrap the fortune spent on builders vests and even have a subsidised new lights scheme.

Yeah, they're one of the reasons why I'd welcome a German style set of laws here. The options and price ranges for lights are crazy, and plenty of people will reference gazillions of lumens for some €30 set of Chinese lights (possibly perfect for MTBing) which can be curse for other road users.