Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

Ms Bacik writes to IT:

RSA collisions map, including cyclists, since 2016 🤓 https://www.rsa.ie/road-safety/statistics/collisions

I'm shocked by this yep.

In my experience TII had a strong car culture until at least very recently. It would be lovely if this was the sign of a cultural shift. If even half of their own staff read this study we could see better future road designs. Some of the stuff TII have allowed to progress near me (sometimes fought to progress, even!) has been incredibly dangerous, and dealing with their "experts" has been terrifying at times, some of them not having any awareness of cycle design guidelines at all, while actively designing cycle infrastructure.

I'm never sure about the boundaries between TII and the NTA, but I've always got the feeling that the NTA and RSA are more roads and car focussed, while TII has a much broader overview and consequently is more balanced.

I have no evidence in support of this, just vibes. 😁

TII are renamed from NRA (not the National Rifle Association but damn close!) and inherited some dinosaurs. I visualise the boundaries as: NTA for strategy/policy (and adherence to same) TII for technical design and implementation. RSA are just a lost cause in general, they're just ads and vehicle testing, they're best ignored.

In terms of "car first" mentality, NTA will generally try and balance all traffic modes. TII will tend to focus on one over-riding technical problem per project, and tend to prioritise the highest traffic, which is unfortunately motorised traffic.

TII commissioned design teams try regularly to find loopholes, water down or evade the standards, with stuff like deviations below acceptable minimums, or direct deviations from standard. In practice I've NEVER seen a deviation to standard formally approved nor have I ever seen a design issue resolved during project lifecycle without outside (NTA, politicial) intervention. You can point out inadherence to the standard and they'll tie themselves up in knots trying to justify it, only for them to relent when NTA simply writes "you will adhere to the standard".

I'm not saying NTA doesn't have dinosaurs too, just that TII have been responsible for some serious technical clangers near me.

Michéal Martin commits to routes safe routes very safe routes

investment in cycling is a good thing. It is healthy, and it has implications for less congestion and so on, but we need to provide very safe routes. A lot of that has happened over the past number of years. We will continue our investment in active travel, cycling, pedestrian walkways and so forth. Dáil

Liveline - some avid cyclist in Dublin on about the amount of high powered ebikes and collisions

Ha, some of them are crazy. Was driving last Fri evening at 60km/h and there were two youths (with the customary balaclavas) keeping pace on ebikes for about 5km before I turned off. There's also a regular commuter early morning through the Phoenix Park that does 50km/h but in fairness to him he's usually out on the road since he occasionally overtakes regular traffic.

Man oh man, an ironic car-crash of an interview.

It's like the motorist who can't see further than the end of the bonnet in front of him. He appropriated the headline at face value, "Everyone needs to wear high viz" and didn't look or delve a fraction deeper, or a micron further beyond it, or its implications, or its enforcement or its practicality.

It's top notch public representation, it really is.

Like he basically came on the radio saying "Jeez lads, I nearly ran over a fella last week! Something should be done about him."