Journalism and cycling

mr spuckler

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Dreadful article, but I interpreted that as meaning that the car would go from no lights to side lights to head lights automatically - not head lights to full beams.

except that he says clearly that his full lights were on because he was using automatic lights.

ford2600 wrote: »

*they don't mention Deceased by name.
*the lack of empathy and blaming of Deceased is staggering

those 2 points in particularly left me feeling incredibly cold after reading it

Tenzor07

Article in the Indo also, nice victim blaming for sure! Passive-aggressive from Murdock!

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/80000-schoolstarting-kids-to-receive-free-hivis-vests-this-year-36067964.html

"Cycling has got much more popular and we are delighted to see that. It's a healthy activity. We need to make sure people feel safe and we have a number of measures there. We want to do as much as possible for cyclists," she said."

"It is important to mention that cyclists have a responsibility to adhere to the rules of the road and to respect traffic signals and other vulnerable users such as pedestrians out in the city as well."

Borderfox

Will these hi-vis vests work?

Moflojo

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Article in the Indo also, nice victim blaming for sure! Passive-aggressive from Murdock!

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/80000-schoolstarting-kids-to-receive-free-hivis-vests-this-year-36067964.html

Note the words Murdock actually uses, as they're quite telling:

We need to make sure people feel safe...

She's saying the RSA's job is about the perception of safety, rather than actually campaign for a safer environment. She should be concerned with making people safe, not just making them feel safe.

magicbastarder

Moflojo wrote: »

She's saying the RSA's job is about the perception of safety, rather than actually campaign for a safer environment.

i think you're reading too much into just one word.

AndrewJRenko

Borderfox wrote: »

Will these hi-vis vests work?

They will work to create the impression that the RSA is actually doing something about saving lives on the road. They will not save lives on the road.

Chuchote

Snorted at the TV tonight as even the army were in hi-viz while clearing up after the floods in Donegal. It would make you re-imagine the great battles of history if they'd all been wearing hi-viz.

RobertFoster

Chuchote wrote: »

Snorted at the TV tonight as even the army were in hi-viz while clearing up after the floods in Donegal. It would make you re-imagine the great battles of history if they'd all been wearing hi-viz.

Certain contingents have been donning hi-viz since at least 1690 :pac:

papu

magicbastarder

is that napoleon doing his 'you shall leave this much distance while overtaking me' gesture?

papu

magicbastarder wrote: »

is that napoleon doing his 'you shall leave this much distance while overtaking me' gesture?

Un point à cinq mètres

I love Sean nos

Barmy stuff from the UK: there's a tunnel that's part of the national cycling network, but cycling in it is banned.

Now they want to open it to cycling and there's a bit of a ruckus. A councillor performed a survey:

Cllr Woods, representing Canary Wharf ward, ran a survey on August 1 which found 191 cyclists unlawfully riding through the tunnel in just 50 minutes, while 152 walked and eight ran with their bikes. There were 274 pedestrians in that time, including 31 children, as well as five mums with prams and one wheelchair disabled.

“Cyclists are their own worst enemy,” Cllr Woods added. “A small number of red-light dodgers abuse the system in the streets and we fear they’ll continue cycling in the tunnel.”

So that's 351 people on bikes and 274 on foot.

Why not ban the people not on bikes?

HivemindXX

That's a little confusing. The council wants to allow cyclists to use the tunnel and Woods seems to have shown that they are already using it, a lot, with no problems. He then goes off on some irrelevant tangent complaining about cyclists.

Based on this statement which seems to be at cross purposes to his apparent goal I'm confident Woods is in fact his own worst enemy. Good on him. Idiots like that need to be resisted. It's a lot more efficient if they do it themselves.

Chuchote

Irish Times letter by Lous O'Flaherty of Santry:

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/traffic-congestion-in-the-capital-1.3199760

Traffic congestion in Dublin will not be resolved until measures are undertaken to remove the vast number of free all day parking spaces in the city centre. Some are available to employees of private companies but many are the preserve of TDs , Senators, civil servants, gardaí­and employees of CIÉ and Dublin City Council. Among these are the people who decide what form of public transport should be available for the rest of us.
Did I hear someone muttering “turkeys and Christmas”?

Chuchote

Separately, a long piece by a lawyer from a few days ago about the prosecution of the London cyclist involved in a fatal collision with a pedestrian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2017/aug/23/motorist-would-not-have-landed-cyclists-wanton-and-furious-driving-charge

Motorist would not have landed cyclist's 'wanton and furious driving' charge
Martin Porter
Charlie Alliston should have had a front brake but 18mph is a cautious speed and double standards are at work here

Wednesday 23 August 2017

A heavy-handed prosecution against a cyclist for manslaughter has failed but a charge of “wanton and furious driving” has succeeded.

In 2016 more than 400 pedestrians were killed on UK roads. Each a terrible tragedy to those involved and almost all avoidable. One of these casualties, Kim Briggs, died after a collision between herself and a teenage cyclist, Charlie Alliston.

She was extraordinarily unfortunate. Research indicates that 10% of pedestrians struck by a motor vehicle at 20mph are killed. A rider on a lightweight bike will have less than one 10th the mass and therefore kinetic energy and momentum of an average car, and the speed of impact was said by the prosecution to be “up to 14mph”.

Yet tragically the unsuccessful efforts of Briggs and Alliston to avoid each other led to her death from a brain injury. This is a very rare occurrence and has received much publicity. We are inured to the 400 or so pedestrian deaths linked to motorised traffic but not to the vanishingly rare occasions that are linked to bicycles.

It is no coincidence that the one death of a pedestrian involving a cyclist is the one case where a manslaughter charge has followed. This is reported to be a first. It is also one of the few cases where wanton and furious driving has been charged. These are both offences triable only in the crown court and were no doubt selected in preference to summary offences (triable by magistrates) due to the perceived seriousness of the offending and its consequences.

Alliston could have been charged with one or more of the lesser offences of breaching the Construction and Use Regulations, of dangerous cycling or of careless cycling. Prosecutors appear to have wished to get around the fact that parliament has not legislated for causing death by careless or dangerous cycling offences.
(snip)

Borderfox

A piece on Pat Kenny on Newstalk shortly about the driver that collided with the pedestrian in Meath that wasn't wearing hi viz

check_six

Borderfox wrote: »

A piece on Pat Kenny on Newstalk shortly about the driver that collided with the pedestrian in Meath that wasn't wearing hi viz

Coming up in 5 minutes. Still not sure how the angle that "My lights don't illuminate the space in front of my car, but I was driving in the dark anyway." is any kind of explanation or excuse for what happened.

Borderfox

http://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/newsireland/death-on-a-rural-irish-road-i-knew-id-hit-someone-but-there-was-no-body-on-the-road/ar-AAqDlkE?li=AAaxjhv

Borderfox

Straight road
under speed limit according to forensics
Familiar road
Lights on
Hits pedestrian without seeing them
Sends pedestrian 19m into field


Im missing something on this, it doesn't add up

Pinch Flat

It's becoming common place for motorists to say "where's your hi-vis", when they've nearly collided with me in Dublin city center. Had this a few times. Never mind my 100 lumen strobes that I have on the bike 365 days of the year. A bit of hi-vis would have peaked their attention more.

As a car centric country, the blame has to squarely be placed in the injured persons lap. So pedestrians. cyclists were at fault because they couldn't bee seen. There's almost a complete absence of a narrative about night driving, how to scan the roads, make sure you can see properly.

What's also interesting is that a car mounts the pavement, barrel rolls and takes out 6 pedestrians, some of which are critically injured, a in a parallel story last week. There's almost a media blackout on the story. Can you imagine the outrage if someone cycled a biker recklessly down Grafton Street and hit 6 pedestrians - The media would go into melt down such would be the frenzy. But no, in a car centric society, sure he was going a bit fast or whatever and this is almost acceptable as a consequence.

check_six

Borderfox wrote: »

Straight road
under speed limit according to forensics
Familiar road
Lights on
Hits pedestrian without seeing them
Sends pedestrian 19m into field


Im missing something on this, it doesn't add up

How do they calculate the speed of the car on impact when the car didn't brake? The driver reckoned he was going 80-90kph, forensics said 50kph. They can only roughly guess the position of the man, surely? This would make the speed calculation only very vague.

mr spuckler

Borderfox wrote: »

Straight road
under speed limit according to forensics
Familiar road
Lights on
Hits pedestrian without seeing them
Sends pedestrian 19m into field

Im missing something on this, it doesn't add up

i fully agree, even listening to him speaking just now it doesn't sound / feel right. at that speed and if he had full lights on i can't see how he'd have failed to pick him out sooner, even if it was just before impact.

i strongly believe btw that people walking on dark roads like that should wear reflectives or carry a torch to flash at oncoming cars so no problem with that part but the rest of it is just odd. and tragic.

Borderfox

Nice bit of victim blaming with the added dig against cyclists too

No idea how forensics came up with those figures

ford2600

check_six wrote: »

Coming up in 5 minutes. Still not sure how the angle that "My lights don't illuminate the space in front of my car, but I was driving in the dark anyway." is any kind of explanation or excuse for what happened.

Wow.

We still don't have his name.

I've interviewed a lot of driver's over the years. A driver underestimating his speed is really rare; like never.

Muphet of a Garda. I wonder did he base calculation on rest position of car?

A 730d doing 35mph on a national primary road....there would be a line of cars behind.

Lights are useless it seems. Hi vis is the only thing to see here

check_six

The piece on the radio added up to "wear hi-vis". I missed a bit of it, but as far as I could tell there was no mention of lights on the car at all. If you can't see where you are going, surely you should proceed with high caution, not just plough on because you "know the road"?

RayCun

Pinch Flat wrote: »

It's becoming common place for motorists to say "where's your hi-vis", when they've nearly collided with me in Dublin city center. Had this a few times. Never mind my 100 lumen strobes that I have on the bike 365 days of the year. A bit of hi-vis would have peaked their attention more.

It wouldn't, of course.

People don't like to think that they're in the wrong.
Was there nearly a collision?
Maybe it was someone's fault.

Was the cyclist not wearing high-vis/a helmet/breaking a light/going too fast/too slow/too far out/in lycra/wearing earphones/on the road when there's a bike lane? Then it was their fault.

Was the cyclist doing none of those things?
Well then, it was nobody's fault - "sorry mate, I didn't see you", hey, no harm done, right?

TheChizler

check_six wrote: »

Coming up in 5 minutes. Still not sure how the angle that "My lights don't illuminate the space in front of my car, but I was driving in the dark anyway." is any kind of explanation or excuse for what happened.

Was watching something very similar on one of those UK cop shows at the weekend. There was a hit and run with a guy cycling who was unfortunately killed. Straight piece of road on an overpass (night time). The man hadn't been wearing high vis and they couldn't find a reflector or lights on his (mangled) bike. They only found the driver the next morning after her father saw the damage to her mini (bonnet and windscreen caved in) and convinced her to call the police.

No charges were pressed as he hadn't been wearing high vis or lights and the paramedic thought he could smell alcohol on him. Yes it's incredibly stupid to cycle without lights, but there was no mention of the responsibility of the person driving to drive at a safe speed or anything. Not to mention leaving the scene knowing she'd hit something. Full blame lay on the poor man who was killed. The police were even saying "the poor girl who hit him".

I love Sean nos

TheChizler wrote: »

They only found the driver the next morning after her father saw the damage to her mini (bonnet and windscreen caved in) and convinced her to call the police.

They really need to come down like a hammer on hit and run drivers in both this country and over there.

Chuchote

Broadsheet (dunno if it counts as journalism) has a piece about parking in cycle lanes:

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2017/08/28/hows-my-parking/#comments

tomasrojo

TheChizler wrote: »

The police were even saying "the poor girl who hit him".

There are profound psychological forces at play in all these responses to road deaths. It probably has very little to do with the subjects ostensibly under discussion (hi-viz, whatever), and more to do with defence mechanisms, such as "this will never happen to me because I do X", or "this wouldn't be my fault, were I in the driver's place, because these people do Y: if fact, were it to happen *I*'d be the real victim".

(And that's on top of guilt for unsustainable lifestyles and in-group/out-group bias. Not all of these apply to everyone, but usually more than one applies, so it's a powerful emotional response, which allows people to mostly ignore the humanity of the deceased.)