Dublin Bus driver, "I'll run you over".

DaithiMC wrote: »

Indeed, but you use the word "perhaps" which recognises you know you are speculating, and it is a valid point of view, but not one, like any of the others we have on this thread so far, that we can confirm. My only point, consistently, is that by backing off and not undertaking, this cyclist could have averted the whole situation and the worrying part for me for anyone who firmly takes the cyclist's side in this is that they might feel it is ok to undertake like this when it is arguably within the top five stupid things one can do when cycling in traffic.

Perhaps indeed as only the bus driver could answer it for sure..

Though it's not easy driving a 40 foot bus along narrow lanes with one bicyclist racing you on your right, another in front and another at the rear left side of your bus..

Our hero should have reacted first to protect his safety, i.e. slow down.

biomed32 wrote: »

I actually went to look at some of his videos on his youtube account and he seems to make a huge deal out of nothing most of the time. Cars pass close all the time. To be honest if you decide to strap a camera to either your bike helmet or your motorcycle helmet your going to catch something every time.

That's not a huge deal out of nothing, that's entirely the problem.

with the availability of GoPro cameras and the likes you are getting more and more of these head cases feeling that they are taking up the fight for the down trodden. In reality .. he just wants YouTube exposure and his videos going viral .. he likes the sound of his own voice too.

I find that in 99% of cases where someone makes a mistake on the road (be it Cyclist, Drive or Pedestrian) they will be apologetic unless the 'victim' takes the high horse with either a full on aggressive or passive aggressive retaliation. Case in point .. with this attention seeking head case his aggressive / passive aggressive reactions encourage the drivers to tell him to piss off or worse.

I'm not excusing their actions .. but with all these near misses he seems to be the lowest common denominator !!

Tombo2001 wrote: »

I'm referring to the wider response rather than any one individual.

There is a lot of sympathy for the bus driver because he's driving a long vehicle that is difficult to manouevre with cyclists on either side of him. Apparently this is is more important in shaping people's 'feelings' on the subject than the fact that he blatantly broke the law.

The cyclist is absolutely getting the blame here:

He is responsible because he didnt back down when the bus veered into the cycle lane....

.....and he is a crank and a troll out looking to 'create' situations that he can post on youtube.

According to the majority of posts here.

Despite the fact that he did absolutely nothing wrong, according to the rules of the road.

Actually, I don't think anyone so far has blamed the cyclist solely, most people are saying both of them rode/drove poorly.

I think people are mostly criticizing him for making the situation worse than it was for both of them when he really didn't need to.

cycleoin86 wrote: »

But for the purposes of apportioning blame that's total ****e.

Ah well. At least if you die in a situation you like this, you can pass on in the knowledge that you were right and he was wrong.

Both cyclist & driver in error however only one of them said "I'll run ye over, no problem" (26s - 30s)

100% unacceptable behaviour by a "professional" driver regardless of who did what, where & when.

circular flexing wrote: »

Ah well. At least if you die in a situation you like this, you can pass on in the knowledge that you were right and he was wrong.

I'm not saying people (myself included) should put themselves in danger to prove a point. I'm saying some comments are to the effect that the cyclist was wrong in this situation, which he clearly wasn't. Would I have cycled up the inside to have a go at the driver? Probably would have jumped onto the path, if it was clear, to get out of danger. Having an out doesn't mean that being put in that situation is right. The driver is a dangerous driver pure and simple.

Fair play for the smart comment though, adds something really valuable to the debate.

I just watched that video now and it’s not as clearcut to me as I expected having read some of the discussion in this thread before viewing it. To my mind the (camera) cyclist was already alongside the bus before it was really obvious that the bus was pulling in on top of him. The bus did move a little closer to the cycle lane before the cyclist pulled alongside but there was no reason at that stage to believe it was going to veer sharply into the lane itself.

When you watch what happens next it might seem like the bus veering in was inevitable, but it really wasn’t. The driver turned on his left indicator as the cyclist passed the front door of the bus, it wasn’t even as if the cyclist had the warning of an indicator before the bus pulled in (and the bus was pulling in to stop, I don't believe he was swerving in to avoid the cyclist that had overtaken him to his right, as suggested by a few people - that cyclist is already in the right-most lane and well away from the bus by the time the video picks him up again). It happens me on a regular basis (both when cycling and driving) that a vehicle to my right (or left) changes line a little but it is very rare that it subsequently pulls right in on top of me - vehicles moving left and right a little within their own lane is pretty normal in my experience, if everyone in neighbouring lanes were to simply stop at the first sight of that ahead of them then no traffic would make any progress.

As for the cyclist accelerating past the bus when it was obvious the bus was pulling in on top of him, how anyone would react in that situation is hard to predict. If it were me I’d want to be well away from the bus at that point - stopping dead with it beside me would not be ideal so getting ahead of it might well seem like the safest bet at that moment in time. It’s easy to look at the video and criticise the cyclist for that decision, but things typically look very different when you are under pressure and the flight reflex kicks in.

Then there is the threat, or not, from the driver. Was the driver threatening the cyclist when he said he’d run him over? From his tone I’d interpret it as him saying that this was an inevitable consequence rather than it being a threat, but he followed up “I’ll run ya over” with what sounds like “no problem” which definitely makes it sound like a threat. The driver had an opportunity to tone down his language, but didn’t take it, so whether he meant it at a threat or not when he said it, he was happy to leave it hanging there as implied which amounts to the same thing as directly threatening someone as far as I am concerned.

The cyclist is being criticised a lot here, but personally I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with what he did, he even remained calm each time he approached the driver. I have no interest in watching his other videos, I have no desire to infer anything about him based on him having videos of other incidents, for me this incident is a simple case of dangerous driving by the bus driver who subsequently dealt with it very badly too. I do find the editing of the video a bit overly dramatic, but for me that doesn’t detract from the severity of the bus driver’s actions.

Basic point is, arguing who is right and who is wrong according to the law is all well and good, in a court of law presided over by a judge with your solicitor present..

But.. What most people are saying on here is that out "on the street" the best action would have been for the bicyclist to slow down, let the bus pull in, and continue on his journey down the quays...

cycleoin86 wrote: »

Fair point... But the flip side of that is that cyclists should never be put in these situations. Bus should slow down until traffic to his left is clear and then pull in.

I don't think anyone is arguing against that point, but in the real world, traffic doesn't behave as it should a lot of the time and cyclists (as vulnerable road users) should take care not to put themselves in such situations.

circular flexing wrote: »

I don't think anyone is arguing against that point, but in the real world, traffic doesn't behave as it should a lot of the time and cyclists (as vulnerable road users) should take care not to put themselves in such situations.

Of course! I absolutely agree. However, my point is that the cyclist in this video didn't put himself in the dangerous situation, he was put there by the bus driver!!

Tenzor07 wrote: »

I never said the bus driver was in the right, what I was saying is that with a 40ftx8ft bus coming closer in-towards me, I would have hit the brakes, and then argued the fact of the drivers actions, not by pulling up at the side window of the bus threatening to post the video on youtube, but by boarding the bus to "discuss" his driving directly...

Hitting the brakes with the bus beside you would still leave you with that big lump of metal still pulling in on top of you, you are left hoping that the back of the bus gets past you before it occupies your part of the road. That wouldn't appeal to me personally - sure, if it was the only option then I'd have to go with it, but it wasn't the only option in this case, proven by the fact that the cyclist got past the bus without getting squashed.

You might well disagree with the cyclist making that choice but the tone of some of the comments here suggests it was a suicidal choice, which it demonstrably wasn't.

If you look in the background when the cyclist is talking to the driver, a bus stop (with waiting passenger) is in the background. He'd have to cross the cycle lane to reach the footpath. It's the crazy system where the lightest and heaviest vehicles on the road share the same space - but it's not obvious how it could be done better.