Claire Byrne Live debate on cycling deaths

Pinch Flat

nailer54321 wrote: »

No one has mentioned cyclists wearing the correct hi viz and having lights on there bikes. I drive through the city centre every morning around 6am and am always baffled about how many cyclists don't have lights on the bikes and are dressed all in black. No that it is dark in the morning for god sake can all you cyclists out there get lights for your bike and wear a hi viz bib. Do you not realise that you can not be seen in the dark with not lights on your bikes and dressed in black. I am not bashing cyclists, this is just my observation over the last few weeks since it has gotten dark in the mornings.

And yet I managed to get knocked off my bike from the rear - twice - both motorists Claimed to have not seen an 80 lumen (I.e. very bright - visible from a kilometre according to the manufacturer) and a half watt flashing helmet rear light and a hi vis bag cover - all accompanied by my good self at 6'2" and 16 stone.

nak

beauf wrote: »

Anyone who thinks that these days must be oblivious to society and the world around them.

It explains all the "they don't pay tax/should have a licence" rants.

They just can't imagine not using the car. Most of them live in South County Dublin and don't venture into the city centre that often, so they don't see that many cyclists commuting. For some getting the bus is seen as a terrible hardship and they would rather pay extra for a taxi.

I know people in the UK that are the same - my 14 year old nephew had never been on public transport until we took him on a train. My flatmate used to drive to the shop 200m away when walking would have been quicker.

Wishbone Ash

nak wrote: »

... my 14 year old nephew had never been on public transport until we took him on a train.. ....

I don't think my 14yr old daughter has ever been on a Dublin Bus. She does get the train to school but shudders at the thoughts of having to share a bus with others.

magicbastarder

when i was a kid my folks used to refer to the 39 as 'our' bus and i couldn't understand why other people were allowed on 'our' bus.

beauf

They must never look at social media or the news in general. Cycling is constantly mentioned.

Chuchote

nak wrote: »

It explains all the "they don't pay tax/should have a licence" rants.

They just can't imagine not using the car. Most of them live in South County Dublin and don't venture into the city centre that often, so they don't see that many cyclists commuting. For some getting the bus is seen as a terrible hardship and they would rather pay extra for a taxi.

I know people in the UK that are the same - my 14 year old nephew had never been on public transport until we took him on a train. My flatmate used to drive to the shop 200m away when walking would have been quicker.

It's also hugely expensive to use a car - an average of a stonking €11,000 according to a recent AA study - and the average Dublin car journey is just 2km, according to the CSO - and drivers may be beginning to feel a bit stupid.

magicbastarder

that AA figure is hugely overblown. they estimated several K on parking, IIRC.

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

that AA figure is hugely overblown. they estimated several K on parking, IIRC.

When I gave up my car I worked out that I was spending around a thou a year on parking - and I'm not a commuter. If you park in, say, a Red zone (or indeed in the dearer Yellow zone) for eight or eight-and-a-half hours a day in Dublin, how much is that over a year?

Wishbone Ash

Chuchote wrote: »

... If you park in, say, a Red zone (or indeed in the dearer Yellow zone) for eight or eight-and-a-half hours a day in Dublin, how much is that over a year?

Currently €2.90 per hour in the yellow zone so around €25 for 8.5 hours €125 per week or about €6,000 per year.

(Incidently, it's illegal to park for 8 hours in one street - you'd have to be prepared to move to a different street every 3 hours. Proper order too compared to years ago when office staff hogged spaces all day).

Chuchote

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Currently €2.90 per hour in the yellow zone so around €25 for 8.5 hours €125 per week or about €6,000 per year.

(Incidently, it's illegal to park for 8 hours in one street - you'd have to be prepared to move to a different street every 3 hours. Proper order too compared to years ago when office staff hogged spaces all day).

So that sounds as if the AA are right, if they're talking about people paying for their car on the never-never, paying tax, paying insurance, paying petrol, paying the mechanic to fix it, new tyres, and an NCT however often. And of course AA membership :P

endagibson

alb wrote: »

Self driving vehicles are going to be the real solution, it's just a matter of how long it takes, but it probably won't take long enough that any other significant change in infrastructure happens before that.

I wouldn't have any faith in driverless cars solving much. Parking could become unnecessary as the ability to send the car home exists, but that is dependent upon legislation allowing cars to travel while empty, the cost of fuel remaining the same, time taken and congestion.

Congestion is the big problem on the roads and although I can see driverless cars helping slightly with that due to additional efficiency in changing lanes and handling junctions, it won't make it go away and might actually increase it. Congestion is caused by there simply being too much vehicle carrying too few passengers. You can spot it yourself any morning on your commute by counting the occupants on any vehicle. Excluding buses and lorries, most cars of all sizes are running at 20% capacity. Vans aren't so bad; they can often have two or three people in the cab.

Thinking again about driverless cars and congestion, it should actually become worse if sending the car home instead of parking becomes the norm. Then you have a number of cars on the road travelling at 0% capacity.

magicbastarder

yeah, i keep hearing what will be possible with driverless cars; which continually misses the point that there's plenty possible with current cars, which society shows little interest in.
e.g. the notion of pooled cars which will massively reduce the number of cars actually needed in the national 'fleet'.

i can still see a huge number of people who want to sit in a car on their own.

endagibson

DanDublin1982 wrote: »

Its amazing how often cyclists with no hi viz actually get noticed. :pac:

I did look up some stats on the times of cycle-involved collisions a few years ago and it was tiny. Almost all occurred during daylight hours.

It really is time to put this visibility canard to rest. If you weren't seen it's because someone wasn't looking. My belief is that the cyclist was seen and a decision was taken to act regardless, but you can't admit that to a Guard when it all goes wrong.

tomasrojo

endagibson wrote: »

My belief is that the cyclist was seen and a decision was taken to act regardless, but you can't admit that to a Guard when it all goes wrong.

At official levels, drivers' claims to have been unable to see cyclist or pedestrian they killed are treated as the definitive word on what happened. In the words of Mandy Rice-Davies: they would say that, wouldn't they.

cdaly_

magicbastarder wrote: »

yeah, i keep hearing what will be possible with driverless cars; which continually misses the point that there's plenty possible with current cars, which society shows little interest in.
e.g. the notion of pooled cars which will massively reduce the number of cars actually needed in the national 'fleet'.

i can still see a huge number of people who want to sit in a car on their own.

To be fair though, you also see a huge number of people who want to pedal a bicycle on their own. I don't see any tandem-pooling going on...

tomasrojo

I'd love to go about on a tandem. Maybe when the kids are older. I have two kids. Maybe a trandem.

cdaly_

tomasrojo wrote: »

I'd love to go about on a tandem. Maybe when the kids are older. I have two kids. Maybe a trandem.

If you're in Clontarf this weekend.*










*You won't get to go very far on it though...

Chuchote

Or something like the Dublin Pedibus, where tourists power the bus by pedaling. (Can't understand why they face in rather than out, though.)
http://www.dublinpedibus.com/

alb

endagibson wrote: »

I wouldn't have any faith in driverless cars solving much.

I think in the long run they'll have a massive impact, in a number of ways. The first way is safety, which is why I mentioned it in this thread. There'll be way fewer cases of cars hitting cyclists, it most likely won't happen at all unless the cyclist does something to cause it.

endagibson wrote: »

Congestion is the big problem on the roads and although I can see driverless cars helping slightly with that due to additional efficiency in changing lanes and handling junctions, it won't make it go away and might actually increase it.

This isn't directly related to this thread, but I think they'll have a huge impact on congestion too. research shows that how humans drive has a large impact on what causes traffic. It'll improve this aspect.

On a bigger scale car ownership should drop in urban areas once automated vehicles are widespread for a number of reasons - when you can cheaply and almost instantly have a car at your service on demand (and I mean a service much better and cheaper than current taxis by this) there's little need to own one, like when you've spotify or netflix you're less likely to own a media collection. Insurance for manually driven cars may become prohibitively high if they end up being the ones causing all the remaining accidents.

If the trend in vehicles changes from primarily ownership to primarily hire on demand, vehicles themselves will change. The most common vehicle may only seat one or two people meaning it can be smaller, but whatever happens there should be little reason for many cars with many empty seats to ever be on the road in this scenario. Lets hope my day-dreams of automobile utopia come true

magicbastarder

i dunno. humans have an uncanny knack of taking something designed with one goal in mind and using to achieve the opposite.

Wishbone Ash

Chuchote wrote: »

...Can't understand why they face in rather than out, though....

Because it's a beer bike and supposed to resemble a pub counter. They'd look a bit odd facing away from each other.

tomasrojo

I agree with a lot of that in theory. It's really down to whether automated cars work as well as people are assuming they will, and whether they are cheap enough, and whether lobbying gets in the way.

At the very least, I assume some of the technology for detecting likely collisions is going to make its way into mainstream cars quite soon, even if those cars are still driven by a human. Nudging the driver towards staying within the speed limit would be good too (or substantially below it when conditions are bad).

99% Invisible had a very good podcast in the last year or so about automated driving, which touched on planes crashing because the pilots don't build up enough "proper" flights, where they are actually in control, and are too inexperienced to act when something really weird happens; and it touched on elevator operators and the obstacles that had to be overcome to get people to trust elevators that were "self-driving".

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/johnnycab-automation-paradox-pt-2/

Chuchote

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Because it's a beer bike and supposed to resemble a pub counter. They'd look a bit odd facing away from each other.

Ahh, that explains it! I thought they were for tourists to see the city while powering the yoke by pedalling for fun!

tomasrojo wrote: »

99% Invisible had a very good podcast in the last year or so about automated driving, which touched on planes crashing because the pilots don't build up enough "proper" flights, where they are actually in control, and are too inexperienced to act when something really weird happens; and it touched on elevator operators and the obstacles that had to be overcome to get people to trust elevators that were "self-driving".

Mind you, most people don't do well when the sudden happens. I've known dogs from childhood, yet when my dog saw a squirrel in the park with me on the other end of the lead and dreaming, I experienced dog-powered flight, and unfortunately human-skid-powered landing without landing gear except for an elbow sliding along the ground collecting filth and discarding skin.

tomasrojo

Chuchote wrote: »

Mind you, most people don't do well when the sudden happens. I've known dogs from childhood, yet when my dog saw a squirrel in the park with me on the other end of the lead and dreaming, I experienced dog-powered flight, and unfortunately human-skid-powered landing without landing gear except for an elbow sliding along the ground collecting filth and discarding skin.

The example the podcast gives is the Air France 447 flight that crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The autopilot suddenly shut off and the pilots were so used to manipulating the controls in a relatively ham-fisted way and relying on the system to smooth out the input via software that they caused the plane to stall. Then they couldn't figure out what was happening.

Despite that, flights done with autopilot are much safer on average, though, as that example demonstrates, autopilot can cause or strongly contribute to crashes that wouldn't have happened with humans fully in control. Hence the "paradox" of the title.

magicbastarder

this is a famous article on flight 447, probably similar to the podcast, in case you can't listen to it:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash

i do wonder with the advent of self-parking cars, and lane assist, and radar controller distance maintenance, whether this will allow joe soap to fall into the same trap; but there are many, many more joe soaps than there are professional airline pilots.

endagibson

magicbastarder wrote: »

i dunno. humans have an uncanny knack of taking something designed with one goal in mind and using to achieve the opposite.

I don't know how they're going to sort out the liability.

Chuchote

endagibson wrote: »

I don't know how they're going to sort out the liability.

Fault is in the cars: maker pays
Fault is in the stars: no one pays
Fault is in some eejit fecking around with it: eejit pays

boardbeer

tomasrojo wrote: »

The autopilot suddenly shut off and the pilots were so used to manipulating the controls in a relatively ham-fisted way and relying on the system to smooth out the input via software that they caused the plane to stall.

Being in the air and needing to keep flying is the problem. An AV, on catching a NPE in its control system, for example, would probably just need to come a stop, broadcasting its status to cars in the vicinity and the traffic control system.

endagibson

Chuchote wrote: »

Fault is in some eejit fecking around with it: eejit pays

This is the one I'm on about. The public expects them to be driverless, but I expect that for liability purposes, the driver is going to have to be quite involved still.

Chuchote

Talked to glider pilots years ago and they said it was a popular recreation for pilots, because in an emergency you'd find yourself reverting to glider behaviour and could glide even a heavy jet in to a landing somewhere, with a bit of luck.