Are decisions like this making public transport impossible in Ireland?

monument wrote: »

Turning your head often to look behind you is a basic skill for cycling. It's a key part of the cycling training for the UK and is highly likely the Irish standard will have the same when they get around to setting it.

Driving cars is not comparable to cycling in this respect for a number of reasons including the size and make up of a car, the blinds posts, the average speeds etc.

It just shows you don't have a clue what you're talking about when it comes to cycling..

By splitting up the argument into small pieces and dissecting it, you think that you are refuting it. This is a fallacy. An argument depends on the completeness of the discrete elements. Taking a point made out of its context and arguing against that small point e.g. cyclists can turn their heads, well so can badgers, cats and foxes, doesn't stop them running out in front of cars and getting killed.

You are attempting to defend the practice of iPods worn by cyclists on the basis that cyclists turning their heads is equivalent to mirrors in cars. Well, you mightn't have noticed but motorists have the same anatomical ability to turn their heads as cyclists but don't have to.

The overall point is that motorists have a greater ability than cyclists to visually monitor their environment because of mirrors. Both have the same ability to use their heads we would hope. Motorists need the increased level of visual awareness because of the sound-insulating properties of cars (ambient noise etc.) which means their aural awareness is low.

Cyclists, by using earphones to listen to iPods reduce their aural awareness below that of motorists at a time when their visual awareness is also below that of motorists. It is pure common sense to see that this is a dangerous practice in almost all circumstances - cycling along the cycle path in the Phoenix Park where you are segregated from both pedestrians and motorists is one place where the practice might be less dangerous and within acceptable parameters.

Anyone who cannot agree and needs to wait for research (usually by lobby groups on one side or another) has their head in the sand like a camel.

monument wrote: »

Every post you write seems to be arguing with something that has not been said -- and here's more of your shadow boxing!

You argue against any and all perceived slight of cycling regardless of merit.

I merely point out the various flaws in motorists, pedestrians and cyclists as I see them.

monument wrote: »

And you being wrong is becoming a bit of a theme now.

Be careful now. I take it you mean that you disagree with my arguments and the assumptions that underlie them. Other than in mathematics (and even then not always), there are no universal truths or universal wrongs.

To state that a person is constantly wrong in a debate that has many aspects and many perspectives is not respectful of debate or of others validly-held opinions.

monument wrote: »

Not according to your research which puts cyclist law breaking lower or at best about on par with motorists.


Please do quote examples as you were already asked to do so.

I used one newspaper article. If I was bothered, I could find research that would back up my statement completely. It is out there - most research nowadays in this field is conducted by lobby groups or groups with a pre-determined agenda and isn't worth the paper it is written on. Short-term limited conclusions are extrapolated to create long-term and wider policy decisions for which the rationale is dubious to say the least. Because of the shallowness of the research - by both cyclist lobby groups and motorist lobby groups, there is little point in basing a debate on it.

paddyland wrote: »

What's with all the multi quotes? It's like every single solitary word of implied or imagined criticism has to be singled out and refuted forensically, word by word, lest one single word gets through that is critical of anything to do with cycling. It just looks neurotic. Could we not have one single quote, followed by two or three paragraphs of an argument? It would be far more readable, and less extremist-seeming.

You know, it's the extremists on one side that turn people on the other side into extremists, too. I'd love to see a forum of people from all walks of public life come together to rethink our whole outlook on roads, transport, and the environment in general. Including cyclists. But I wouldn't have someone who perpetually bangs a pro-cycling drum to the exclusion of everything else, and constantly shouts everyone else down, coming out with all the statistics that proves his point, and refuting and bawling about every statistic that doesn't. What is moderate about that?

The thread title is 'Are decisions like this making public transport impossible in Ireland?' I would suggest that one of the things making debate impossible are the same old faces coming out, banging the Lambeg Drums, every time someone says boo about a cyclist. It's okay to be critical about a cyclist, or an aspect of cycling. I myself raised two issues that I think are valid. Cyclists speeding, and cyclists travelling in packs. That doesn't mean I hate cyclists. I share the road with thousands of them every day. The vast majority cause me no problem or delay, even the ones breaking red lights, unless it causes me to have to brake unduly. My problem is with the ones who are deliberately obstructive, and I reserve the right to criticise them repeatedly, without being refuted with entirely irrelevant statistics that motorists kill people. They do. But that is nothing to do with me criticising deliberately reckless cyclists. And I am singling out the deliberately reckless. The ones who know damn well they are being obstructive. You should acknowledge them. Because they are the ones undermining your whole thesis about the logic of increasing cycling numbers.

As a pedestrian, I don't want to share my space with more and more cyclists, unless I am getting some kind of guarantee that reckless cyclists will be acknowledged, and stopped. The same goes for when I am motoring. I welcome more cyclists. But if it is only going to be more of the militant, I-own-the-road cyclists, well then no, I don't want more of that, thank you.

I understand the sentiments you express about this forum. There are too many who can only see one side of the debate.

I don't agree with all of the arguments you make however. For example, twenty years ago, if you were out driving and met a group of cyclists on a country road, you would be waved through by the cyclists once they could see the road ahead was clear. That courtesy has disappeared and that is the problem, not the cyclists cycling in a group.

It is a truth that Irish society has become less courteous, the attitude of the extremists on either side of the debate on this thread is an example.

monument wrote: »

...you call cyclists being able to turn their heads a “small point”, when such a skill is highlighted in cycling training as a key skill.

For all of your talk of absoluteness, you can't even back down when you're told over and over that looking behind you is a key cycling skill...

I couldn't be bothered answering all this multi, multi dissection of posts into reams of minutae - it borders on something, which I have no intention of going into.

I'll just highlight this, and leave it at that. The 'skill' of looking behind you, is something highlighted in cycle training. Ah come on now, just how many cyclists in this country have undergone cycling 'training?' What - have they done cpcs in advanced cycling competence, or something? Give us a statistic. What 'percentage' of cyclists on Dublin streets have done this cycle 'training' where among other things, the 'skill' of looking behind you has been highlighted?

Funny, I thought looking behind you was simple commonsense, I didn't realise it was something you had to be 'trained' to do. Maybe that is where all the problems lie...

EDIT: But then, I suppose if you've no intention of giving way to anything, then it makes no difference whether you look behind, or at all.