Cyclist assaulted

tomasrojo

Chuchote wrote: »

Which should, logically, mean that it's also illegal to impose a higher health insurance cost on older people. The ageist peegs.

Community rating is an attempt to overcome this, isn't it?

I think more directly relevant is that insurers are allowed to impose higher premiums on younger drivers, which is similar to discrimination on gender. I mean, young men are strongly associated with serious road collisions, but you can't assume that any one young man is likely to be involved in one.

ted1

endagibson wrote: »

Does the large lorry with the huge blindspots have to deliver right to the shop door? Deliver to a depot outside of town, put it into vans and make the final delivery in a vehicle that's not so hazardous to share a street with.
I realise that it'll cost more, but I'd rather pay that small fee than accept that occasionally my goods might have been driven over someone's head on the way.

I've seen several large Dhl/ ups trucks pull up to places with small parcels that would fit in a cargo bike.
If the Gardai didn't allow the delivery vans to block cycling lanes , you might just find that they do abandon the larger vans for smaller deliveries

tomasrojo

Speaking of using big vehicles to make small deliveries, there's a guy who drives up the cycle track outside Royal Sun Alliance in Dundrum most mornings (at least he did when I walked that route every morning), parks in a pedestrian area, and takes a few loaves of bread out of the back, then gets back in, drives over a pedestrian area, down a pedestrian ramp at a pedestrian crossing, and then drives past a dedicated docking area where he could have parked in the first place.

magicbastarder

endagibson wrote: »

Deliver to a depot outside of town, put it into vans and make the final delivery in a vehicle that's not so hazardous to share a street with.
I realise that it'll cost more, but I'd rather pay that small fee than accept that occasionally my goods might have been driven over someone's head on the way.

or else people realise that it's cheaper to drive to the 'depot' and buy their goods there, and stuff the smaller shops in the town centres. that's the way things are going.

tomasrojo

The redistribution depots aren't retail outlets.

magicbastarder

my point being is why would a retailer operate both a depot and a shop, and not just combine the two into one unit on the outskirts of the town?
because that seems to be the model anyway.

to be fair, i'm really just giving out about planning law practice here.

eeeee

The depots are a good idea on one hand, on the other hand getting the land got these depots and the cost of it may be prohibitive.

You're also putting maybe 4 vehicles at least on the road where one was before, with its associated harm to the environment. You're also paying extra tax, insurance and fuel for many vehicles where one did before, and multiplying wages by 4 too (the last part is no bad thing!).

Or instead you could watch out for the blind spots in HGV's....

There are also currently restrictions on the time certain types of HGV can be in the city, and there's a site where you can check if they have a permit to be there or not beyond that I think, or maybe that was London.

Anecdotally, as a member of the statistically most affected group by HGV's, I don't have issues with then at all. I'm aware of the blins spots, they're the biggest, slowest and often the loudest vehicles on the road so I never fail to see/hear them coming/up ahead of me and cycle accordingly. There are bad eggs in every mode of transport. I've had innumerable issues with coaches, taxis, buses, private cars etc but none with HGV's in the city centre. Reducing the total traffic would appear a better aim for cyclist safety in the city centre imo.

tomasrojo

Yeah, I'd be interested if anyone with knowledge of how these redistribution depots function chipped in.

I don't see people driving to the outskirts of town to buy everything. The current model of doing big shops in parks on the outskirts of town might ultimately be threatened by ending the mispricing of car journeys anyway. Not that that's imminent.

tomasrojo

nee wrote: »

Anecdotally, as a member of the statistically most affected group by HGV's, I don't have issues with then at all. I'm aware of the blins spots, they're the biggest, slowest and often the loudest vehicles on the road so I never fail to see/hear them coming/up ahead of me and cycle accordingly. There are bad eggs in every mode of transport. I've had innumerable issues with coaches, taxis, buses, private cars etc but none with HGV's in the city centre.

I was once on the NCR in the right-hand lane waiting to go into the Phoenix Park, when a huge HGV, Argos, I think it was, came hurtling down the road (and I mean really hurtling), heading to turn down Infirmary Road, swinging wide right. I was right in his trajectory. I had to wave frantically (wrist lights) and he braked hard and managed to avoid me.

I'm amazed he could even do that turn at speed, but he was certainly going to give it a shot.

I don't know. I'm not sure that the 70% of cyclist road deaths in urban areas are all because of cyclists making mistakes around HGVs. There fundamentally is a mismatch between city streets and HGVs.

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

I don't see people driving to the outskirts of town to buy everything. The current model of doing big shops in parks on the outskirts of town might ultimately be threatened by ending the mispricing of car journeys anyway. Not that that's imminent.

i think the most extreme example i saw was in the UK - we were staying in shepton mallet last year. the town centre was gutted - probably only a couple of cafes and a couple of charity shops on main street, most properties closed up.
the shopping centre about half a mile was doing fine - tesco/aldi/jd sports etc.

2RockMountain

magicbastarder wrote: »

my point being is why would a retailer operate both a depot and a shop, and not just combine the two into one unit on the outskirts of the town?
because that seems to be the model anyway.

to be fair, i'm really just giving out about planning law practice here.

There are a range a possible solutions here, Gotenburg have done some good work in this area;

http://www.civitas.eu/node/39952

http://www.civitas.eu/sites/default/files/c-2-c-goods_april_2010_0.pdf

tomasrojo

England has an awful lot of post-industrial towns where not even a Poundland will survive in the high street. It's more of a function of complete economic collapse locally. If there were people residing near the high street who had decent amounts of money, shops would do ok there.

I mean, Dublin is ringed by inexpensive large retail outlets, but the city centre hasn't been boarded up.

tomasrojo

2RockMountain wrote: »

There are a range a possible solutions here, Gotenburg have done some good work in this area;

http://www.civitas.eu/node/39952

http://www.civitas.eu/sites/default/files/c-2-c-goods_april_2010_0.pdf

Thanks! Must read around this a bit more. I'm interested in this, but I'm not all that well informed.

Chuchote

tomasrojo wrote: »

I think more directly relevant is that insurers are allowed to impose higher premiums on younger drivers, which is similar to discrimination on gender.

My objection is to the idea that charging men more than women should be illegal because 'unequal', but charging the old more than the young isn't seen as similarly 'unequal'.

nee wrote: »

There are also currently restrictions on the time certain types of HGV can be in the city, and there's a site where you can check if they have a permit to be there or not beyond that I think, or maybe that was London.

There's supposed to be an app coming:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/dubliners-may-get-phone-app-to-check-truck-legitimacy-1.2710115

Dubliners may get phone app to check truck legitimacy
App would enable monitoring of whether vehicles have permits to be in a city area

Personally, I'm so terrified of HGVs that if a truck comes up behind me I get to the pavement and dismount till it's gone well ahead. They shouldn't be in cities.

tomasrojo

Chuchote wrote: »

My objection is to the idea that charging men more than women should be illegal because 'unequal', but charging the old more than the young isn't seen as similarly 'unequal'.

Yes, but in the other context (motor insurance) the young automatically get charged more than the old. Not all young drivers are risky drivers, in the same way that not all male drivers are risky drivers.

(I don't pay motor insurance, so it's only an academic argument to me.)

I'm not sure if there is a philosophical framework to judge when simple risk factoring turns into unacceptable discrimination.

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

England has an awful lot of post-industrial towns where not even a Poundland will survive in the high street. It's more of a function of complete economic collapse locally. If there were people residing near the high street who had decent amounts of money, shops would do ok there.

the shopping complex outside the town was doing just fine. i suspect it was acting as a magnet for people for miles around doing their shopping, so the surrounding towns were probably completely turned into ghost towns.

tomasrojo

Yes, but (hypotheticals ahoy) the shopping complex, as you say, was probably getting shoppers from several towns, some of which were perhaps not derelict. If you stayed in one of those towns, you would conclude that the out-of-town retail had not mortally damaged the town.

I don't doubt that out-of-town retail takes business from city-centre retail. But in and of itself to make the town a ghost town is unlikely.

tomasrojo

By the way (question to the floor), are the redistribution depots owned by the retailers in Germany, Sweden, etc? Or are they owned by the municipality, or some other body?

prinzeugen

tomasrojo wrote: »

England has an awful lot of post-industrial towns where not even a Poundland will survive in the high street. It's more of a function of complete economic collapse locally. If there were people residing near the high street who had decent amounts of money, shops would do ok there.

I mean, Dublin is ringed by inexpensive large retail outlets, but the city centre hasn't been boarded up.

Its nothing to do with economic collapse but more to do with how people live/shop. The high street in the UK started to die when they lifted planning restrictions on the size of supermarkets. Even smaller supermarkets in towns could not compete with the "superstore" outside town.

Also with more woman working, the traditional, stay at home wife that could visit the Butchers, bakers etc disappeared and it was quicker to get everything under one roof.

tomasrojo wrote: »

Yeah, I'd be interested if anyone with knowledge of how these redistribution depots function chipped in.

Basically all the producers send products to a Central depot and its is then sent out to stores as each store needs the stuff.

Other products locally produced are usually sent direct to the store/shop.

Where I worked we had around 6 deliveries a week from the distribution depot in the UK per week and 20+ from smaller suppliers in Ireland.

The 40ft trucks that came from the UK contained all the pallets for the Irish stores the company had at the time. Each one was packed with exactly the stock that the store was running short on. One pallet could contain 40-50 different products for many departments. A shop would not be send a pallet of baked beans or a pallet of tomato sauce. there would be a few trays of each mixed in with the other stuff.

If distribution depots were to open to the public not all stock would be available and it would be like a super Argos..

Most peoples idea of hell.

endagibson

prinzeugen wrote: »

Its nothing to do with economic collapse but more to do with how people live/shop. The high street in the UK started to die when they lifted planning restrictions on the size of supermarkets. Even smaller supermarkets in towns could not compete with the "superstore" outside town.

I think there's more to it than that. Most regular shops now cannot afford high street rents and rates. Therefore the high street ends up filled with banks, building societies and bookies.

eeeee

tomasrojo wrote: »

I was once on the NCR in the right-hand lane waiting to go into the Phoenix Park, when a huge HGV, Argos, I think it was, came hurtling down the road (and I mean really hurtling), heading to turn down Infirmary Road, swinging wide right. I was right in his trajectory. I had to wave frantically (wrist lights) and he braked hard and managed to avoid me.

I'm amazed he could even do that turn at speed, but he was certainly going to give it a shot.

I don't know. I'm not sure that the 70% of cyclist road deaths in urban areas are all because of cyclists making mistakes around HGVs. There fundamentally is a mismatch between city streets and HGVs.

There are dickhead HGV drovers, motorists, cyclists...I have plenty of stories about each and every type of road user I could whip out!

In the same way most people have fixed and negative views on cyclists because a lot of them don't cycle through the city on a regular basis, and, due to a subsequent lack of understanding of the risks we take, and as a consequence the way we ride (not using unsuitable cycle lanes etc.) are extremely frustrated at cyclists, we get annoyed by this (so popular is this that cyclist bashing/negativity is in the charter of this website, and 100% of my non cycling friends and family don't understand things like not cycling in the cycle lanes, taking your space in the road etc. and are annoyed).
The same thing rings through for HGV drivers. I can almost guarantee that every cyclist with a big problem with HGV's has never driven one, or spent time in and around them. They don't understand them

I think a bot of compassion and mutual understanding seems largely absent in how cyclists approach and deal with HGV's.

Ideally they wouldn't be in the city, but until there is a workable alternative but they are, and it's really, really not that hard to deal with them. They're the biggest, loudest, slowest moving vehicles on the road. You can't miss them one way or another!

Also a point to make is that HGV drivers have to do regular CPD's to retain their licensees. They're tested on a regular and ongoing basis, unlike almost every other road user.

tomasrojo

prinzeugen wrote: »

Its nothing to do with economic collapse but more to do with how people live/shop. The high street in the UK started to die when they lifted planning restrictions on the size of supermarkets. Even smaller supermarkets in towns could not compete with the "superstore" outside town.

Good point, but I'm not really talking about the death of the traditional high street. I'm talking about towns in England where there are close to no shops or businesses in the high street, not just an absence of traditional traders.

I went to Hull once on sort of a Philip Larkin pilgrimage, and, while it's not the most economically depressed town in England, it really has so many streets with nothing much on them. Leeds, in contrast, is nothing like that; pretty active town. And Manchester is stuffed full of active shops and restaurants. York even more so, given that it's smaller.

Hull was pretty bad, but there are post-industrial towns that are much worse. So it's much more than lifestyle change. It's an almost complete lack of any economic activity.

prinzeugen wrote: »

Basically all the producers send products to a Central depot and its is then sent out to stores as each store needs the stuff.

Other products locally produced are usually sent direct to the store/shop.

Where I worked we had around 6 deliveries a week from the distribution depot in the UK per week and 20+ from smaller suppliers in Ireland.

The 40ft trucks that came from the UK contained all the pallets for the Irish stores the company had at the time. Each one was packed with exactly the stock that the store was running short on. One pallet could contain 40-50 different products for many departments. A shop would not be send a pallet of baked beans or a pallet of tomato sauce. there would be a few trays of each mixed in with the other stuff.

If distribution depots were to open to the public not all stock would be available and it would be like a super Argos..

Most peoples idea of hell.

That's very interesting. Is that a redistribution point for one company? How does that compare to the redistribution model discussed earlier for Sweden and Germany (no HGVs allowed in city centres, and all HGVs drop off their loads to be decanted into small vehicles for that last few kilometers). I imagine there's quite a bit of overlap.

(I'm not being lazy! I just have no idea where to read up about these things, and I'm actually pretty interested. And first-hand accounts are always valuable.)

tomasrojo

nee wrote: »

There are dickhead HGV drovers, motorists, cyclists...I have plenty of stories about each and every type of road user I could whip out!

Certainly, in the story I told, the driver's behaviour was extraordinary. It was very dark and late, so I can only assume he was in a hurry and was taking a chance that no-one was around.

But (and I know I won't convince you on this!) for the life of me, I can't see any sanity in having vehicles like HGVs in towns. Despite drivers' professionalism and rigorous testing and so on, they disproportionately kill cyclists and pedestrians (as I said, 70% of urban cyclist deaths are down to HGVs). They're huge, ungainly, have poor sight lines and have unsurvivable momentum at even low speeds.

prinzeugen

endagibson wrote: »

I think there's more to it than that. Most regular shops now cannot afford high street rents and rates. Therefore the high street ends up filled with banks, building societies and bookies.

Banks?? really! You must have not been it the UK recently!

prinzeugen

tomasrojo wrote: »

That's very interesting. Is that a redistribution point for one company? How does that compare to the redistribution model discussed earlier for Sweden and Germany (no HGVs allowed in city centres, and all HGVs drop off their loads to be decanted into small vehicles for that last few kilometers). I imagine there's quite a bit of overlap.

(I'm not being lazy! I just have no idea where to read up about these things, and I'm actually pretty interested. And first-hand accounts are always valuable.)

Yes one company. But all use the same "modes" if you could call it that.. Cant compare it though.. Irish road traffic law restricts the weight for light vehicles.

One pallet could put a LGV over its limit and driver loose license etc..

British Railways started it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Universal_Trolley_Equipment

What shops now use to transport perishable goods.

40ft Freightliner containers.. Or shipping ones as we call them now, were developed by British Rail.

Plants came on Dutch trolleys.. Again custom to the customer.

Each trolley or pallet is destined for one shop. One truck..

50+ smaller trucks is not good. M&S did it.. But went back to the 40fter. With 4 axles which is not banned in DCC!

prinzeugen

tomasrojo wrote: »

Good point, but I'm not really talking about the death of the traditional high street. I'm talking about towns in England where there are close to no shops or businesses in the high street, not just an absence of traditional traders.

I went to Hull once on sort of a Philip Larkin pilgrimage, and, while it's not the most economically depressed town in England, it really has so many streets with nothing much on them.

Both once great fishing towns.. I hope they come back now the UK is out Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duoq7esgf5s

ted1

endagibson wrote: »

I think there's more to it than that. Most regular shops now cannot afford high street rents and rates. Therefore the high street ends up filled with banks, building societies and bookies.

Banks and bookies , both are very successful in transitioning to online and closing physical stores

Chuchote

prinzeugen wrote: »

Its nothing to do with economic collapse but more to do with how people live/shop. The high street in the UK started to die when they lifted planning restrictions on the size of supermarkets. Even smaller supermarkets in towns could not compete with the "superstore" outside town.

I don't know about that. In my locality, since the death of the Celtic Tiger a street of about 20 shops has had 14 shuttered for most of the time since; occasionally a shop opens, but shuts again in a few months. Even the 'We Buy Your Clothes' shop shut! And I've seen the same in small towns that I've visited in the last year.

Also with more woman working, the traditional, stay at home wife that could visit the Butchers, bakers etc disappeared and it was quicker to get everything under one roof.

In the 1950s, butchers, bakers, greengrocers and newsagents all delivered. You could order over the phone, or you could wander down the street and choose your goods and have the van bring them to the house.

A more civilised time, mind; it was the norm then for everyone in the family to come home for lunch, aka 'dinner', and then go back to school or work. And there was little of the insanity of working long hours of overtime, unless you were in a factory that had a big order on, and then the work was paid at a higher rate.

Where I worked we had around 6 deliveries a week from the distribution depot in the UK per week and 20+ from smaller suppliers in Ireland.

The 40ft trucks that came from the UK contained all the pallets for the Irish stores the company had at the time. Each one was packed with exactly the stock that the store was running short on. One pallet could contain 40-50 different products for many departments. A shop would not be send a pallet of baked beans or a pallet of tomato sauce. there would be a few trays of each mixed in with the other stuff.

Brexit is really going to screw this up. Either the goods will be delivered directly to Ireland from Europe, or we'll be hit with double tariffs as it comes through a non-EU country.

Jawgap

Chuchote wrote: »

.......



In the 1950s, butchers, bakers, greengrocers and newsagents all delivered. You could order over the phone, or you could wander down the street and choose your goods and have the van bring them to the house.

A more civilised time, mind; it was the norm then for everyone in the family to come home for lunch, aka 'dinner', and then go back to school or work. And there was little of the insanity of working long hours of overtime, unless you were in a factory that had a big order on, and then the work was paid at a higher rate.

.......

As long as you discount the industrial schools, TB, emigration, record low population levels, grinding poverty, church dominated healthcare and education systems, the lack of infrastructure (such as electricity beyond the cities and towns) and the lack of free schooling......it was a grand time.

And work wasn't paid at a higher rate. The reason cycling rates were so high in the 1950s was because people couldn't afford cars - they weren't cycling because it was a lifestyle choice, they were cycling because most could only afford bikes for day-to-day transport.

From what I know of the period, I'd prefer now - we've never been healthier, wealthier or safer - whether on or off the bike

Chuchote

All very true. Though not about the bicycles; cars were simply not generally seen as a way to go to work. Living in Dalkey, virtually all the local civil servants, etc, took the Number 8 into town to work. Businesspeople were more likely to drive, but they were the exception. The GPO had a gigantic cycle park in the centre of the building and most people who worked there — the civil servants running the postal service — cycled in, including a succession of Secretaries of the Department, until the 1990s at least.

But the good parts of that lifestyle are still in operation in many countries: if you move to France or Spain you're still likely to find people living that way.

The industrial schools, the TB, the emigration: these came from an arch-Catholic rule that we still haven't shaken off.