Is the anti-cyclist thing a unique Irish/British phenomenon?

Cookie_Monster

NZ isn't too bad IMHO, having covered over 20,000km here I don't consider it particularly bad. I've had more worse experiences in Ireland than NZ
Aus is much worse, while I haven't personally cycled there, friends have and have a lot of poor reports.

The real problem in NZ is the Govt's attitude, mandatory helmets, little interest in infrastructure and so forth.

Greybottle

guanciale wrote: »

In anglo-saxon countries it appears that cars demknate the transport debate more than in other western democracies. The car lobby is strong and powerful.
Also anglo saxon economies are really poor at planning and strategy - the UK, US and Ireland lag well behind many EU nations in terms of overall infrastructure.

In Ireland presently, many national roads are operating well beyond peak capacity.

Combination of poor incrastructure, crowded roads (more cars and bikes) is contributing to a greater number of incidents. This is bourne out in insurance statistics on claims frequency.
The issue for us cyclists is that the impact of an incident is greater.

I'd disagree with this bit. The car lobby is the strongest lobby group in Germany. It's followed by the Employers Federation, which of course has several reps from car companies on its board.

It's an attitude issue here. It's prevalent by a few loud voices in the media and this filters down to the people. It's mind boggling...people complain about the traffic in Dublin, but the same people complain about buses being in the way and cyclists taking up too much space.

It's people having a rant for the sake of having a rant and nothing more. It's also the lack of politicians having the balls to stand up, say whats right, and make plans for a country with a vision 10, 20, 40 and 60 years down the road, instead of looking nio further than the next election.

dermabrasion

Lived in Canada for years. Around the city it was ok. They (Ottawa) had decent infrastructure for recreational cycling. Not so good for commuting. But the long winter is difficult to commute anyway with cold, ice, and salt.
However, out in the sticks it was a different story. I was buzzed by HGV's (semi's) and pick-ups more times than I can remember. I had beer can's chucked at me several times, and 'fag' shouted out the window. These idiots were stereotypes; in pick-ups, either orca fat, or emaciated with a Maple Leafs ball cap. Walmart types.
Anyway, when I retuned home, I noted how accommodating Irish drivers were. No-one has thrown beer at me here. Not on a bike at least.

murf

Greybottle wrote: »

It's an attitude issue here. It's prevalent by a few loud voices in the media and this filters down to the people. It's mind boggling...people complain about the traffic in Dublin, but the same people complain about buses being in the way and cyclists taking up too much space.

That's part of it too - everyone has a tendency to only see the immediate problem and not the larger picture. Busses, bus lanes, luas, pedestrians, traffic lights all delay me, ipso facto remove them and life would improve. It's the small view, the same one that says electric cars are the answer - no, they will help environmentally but won't solve the bigger issues of space usage. Just because cars are sometimes the right answer doesn't mean they always are. “The way to take a problem, and make it a huge problem, is first to ask the wrong question and then to feed us the wrong answer.” (Charles Bowden).
So a conflict has been created artificially - between transport forms. The real question is how to let people move efficiently with the space available, and that needs a blend of transport forms.

tomasrojo

dermabrasion wrote: »

I had beer can's chucked at me several times, and 'fag' shouted out the window.

Is this a Canadian thing? That happened to me walking around Toronto a few times.

mcgratheoin

mrcheez wrote: »

You know everyone by name in the Animal & Pet Issues forum, or the Motoring forum? Or posting comments on various newspaper sites, or driving for Dublin Bus, or driving a taxi, or... ?

I don't think that a bus or taxi driver or even someone posting under an article on a website qualifies as a strident voice in the media? I'd assume that he was referring to the list of media & public personalities headed by Messrs Hook and Deputy McGrath.

mcgratheoin

Tombo2001 wrote: »

As a driver, I cant remember one incident in the past ten years where I could say 'that cyclist did something to annoy me'.

Depends on what annoys you I suppose. I can't think of any incidents with cyclists where I felt a cyclist put me (when driving) in danger though, nor can I think of a time where a cyclist negatively affected my journey time. I was actually just thinking about this in the car yesterday (I had to drive as I was travelling a long >100km distance) - anyone who could sit in Dublin's gridlock, watch the poor behaviour of the majority of drivers at junctions/roundabouts etc. and blame cyclists for congestion seriously needs their head examined.

tomasrojo

tomasrojo wrote: »

Is this a Canadian thing? That happened to me walking around Toronto a few times.

Now I think about it, it might just be that Canadians have clear diction. I never understand what people are shouting out windows at me here.

CramCycle

mrcheez wrote: »

You know everyone by name in the Animal & Pet Issues forum, or the Motoring forum? Or posting comments on various newspaper sites, or driving for Dublin Bus, or driving a taxi, or... ?

In general, I find the majority of DB drivers to be quite well mannered and safe to be around, private coaches are more of a mismatch, same with taxi drivers, generally quite good drivers. There are a few, and I have to be careful not to extrapolate based on the fact that the sh1t ones are easier to recall.

mcgratheoin wrote: »

Depends on what annoys you I suppose. I can't think of any incidents with cyclists where I felt a cyclist put me (when driving) in danger though, nor can I think of a time where a cyclist negatively affected my journey time. I was actually just thinking about this in the car yesterday (I had to drive as I was travelling a long >100km distance) - anyone who could sit in Dublin's gridlock, watch the poor behaviour of the majority of drivers at junctions/roundabouts etc. and blame cyclists for congestion seriously needs their head examined.

Had to drive for work today, going along the M50, as we toddled along at a sedentry pace, I was in awe at the number of people just tapping away on their phones or constantly lane switching which done nothing other than cause a domino of brake lights, as well as the hard shoulder speeders.

My favourite was the person driving their merc while texting furiously, the kept speeding up and slamming on, nearly rear ending the car in front several times. The rocking of the car seemed to put their son to sleep though, or knocked him and gave severe whiplash, who knows.

donaldtramp

Typical annoying Irish cyclists.

"I was given a lot of room, so I went for a 4 hour cycle to see how far I could push my luck until someone got dangerous and I could give out to them!"

Cyclists in Ireland break red lights, they're annoying and FEW like them.

mrcheez

Lol thanks for proving my point

magicbastarder

donaldtramp wrote: »

Typical annoying Irish cyclists.

"I was given a lot of room, so I went for a 4 hour cycle to see how far I could push my luck until someone got dangerous and I could give out to them!"

Cyclists in Ireland break red lights, they're annoying and FEW like them.

hello and welcome to the cycling forum.
please read the charter, and bear point 8 in mind:

8. Negativity

There are lots of places on the internet where you can have a rant about cyclists. This isn't one of them. This is a place for people with an interest in cycling to discuss cycling. If you treat it as a venue for holding all cyclists to account for perceived or actual misbehaviour by some, you can expect to find your access swiftly removed. In short, we are not your punching bag. If you really do want do want an answer to your gripe, do a search. The usual topics, such as cycle lanes, cycling two abreast etc. have been discussed, ad nauseam, many, many times before

Poster banned by Cyclo Nazi CramCycle

AndrewJRenko

Captain Slow IRL wrote: »

Is 'anti-cyclist' to infer that they are never at fault?

I cycle and drive; the amount of arsehole cyclists I encounter when I drive exceeds the amount of arsehole motorists when I cycle, by miles. There's no smoke without fire.

I suppose it depends on your definition of arsehole. Are the 82% of motorists who break speed limits (RSA Speed Survey) considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the 88% of red light jumpers at the Luas camera who are motorists considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the motorists who got us to 2nd worst place on the table of mobile phone abusers considered to be arsehole motorists?

Hoboo

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

I suppose it depends on your definition of arsehole. Are the 82% of motorists who break speed limits (RSA Speed Survey) considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the 88% of red light jumpers at the Luas camera who are motorists considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the motorists who got us to 2nd worst place on the table of mobile phone abusers considered to be arsehole motorists?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

tomasrojo

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

I suppose it depends on your definition of arsehole. Are the 82% of motorists who break speed limits (RSA Speed Survey) considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the 88% of red light jumpers at the Luas camera who are motorists considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the motorists who got us to 2nd worst place on the table of mobile phone abusers considered to be arsehole motorists?

They sure are!!

el tel

Last week for the first time in years I was driving in Dublin. Mostly was going about the M50, but one evening, 7pm drove from the Red Cow to Ballsbridge, along Naas Road, Davitt Road and R111 beside the Grand Canal.
Well all can say is that I'd be happy not to do that again.  It really is no wonder that some drivers have a low opinion of cyclists and vice versa.  To be honest, seeing the poor state of the infrastructure and how some people go about their business in vehicles and on bikes respectively might actually convince one that there is a god, because otherwise the number of fatalities would be in the hundreds, rather than dozens. Given my doubts about the existence of a benevolent sky fairy, I must therefore conclude that the vast vast majority of drivers and cyclists are in fact safe, aware and respectful of each other.

kirving

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

I suppose it depends on your definition of arsehole. Are the 82% of motorists who break speed limits (RSA Speed Survey) considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the 88% of red light jumpers at the Luas camera who are motorists considered to be arsehole motorists? Are the motorists who got us to 2nd worst place on the table of mobile phone abusers considered to be arsehole motorists?

And people complain of "whataboutery"....

The reality is that some cyclists break red lights and some motorists speed. Bringing this type of stuff up again only perpetuates the clear gulf between motorists and cyclists present on this forum.

I'm a cyclist, and if we as a group don't recognise that cyclists who for example break red lights (even with no danger) irritate everyone and give drivers a bad attitude towards cyclists as a whole. And the same goes for bad drivers.

Macy0161

Kevin Irving wrote: »

I'm a cyclist, and if we as a group don't recognise that cyclists who for example break red lights (even with no danger) irritate everyone and give drivers a bad attitude towards cyclists as a whole. And the same goes for bad drivers.

But it is a false equivalence which is worth pointing out, and isn't whataboutery.

Bad cyclists are an irritant. Bad drivers kill or cause life changing injuries.

Irritation doesn't excuse deliberate behaviour (which close passes, either for punishment or impatience are) that could kill or cause life changing injuries.

AndrewJRenko

Kevin Irving wrote: »

I'm a cyclist, and if we as a group don't recognise that cyclists who for example break red lights (even with no danger) irritate everyone and give drivers a bad attitude towards cyclists as a whole. And the same goes for bad drivers.

It's not the breaking of lights that gives some drivers a bad attitude towards cyclists as a whole. That's just an excuse. If you had a magic wand and made all cyclists obey all lights from now onwards, do you think attitudes would dramatically improve? Or would the whinging continue about the mythical road tax, the lycra, the 'terrorising' of people on pavements and all the other usual old canards.

The solution to the 'give all cyclists a bad name' syndrome is to point out how ridiculous it is to treat any group in that way.

kevingonewest

OnDraught wrote: »

I’ve been living in Sweden and spending a good amount of time in Copenhagen where cycling is quite popular. What struck me about both places is that the motorists and cyclists very rarely share the road at all. They have so much space on their massive streets to install big cycle lanes they don’t have an issue.

In Sweden pedestrians and cyclists share a lot of these paths with no markings and it works fine because the cyclists yield to the pedestrians.

With an infrastructure like that it’s easy to see why there is no animosity there.

Bugger infrastructure, we need safe use of actual roads as if we were humans worth the effort of treating as such, quite possible if people can get over the prevailing THICKO culture. I ran from Stockholm north to the artic circle and into Norway almost 30yr ago, and on those country roads our group would met cars traveling at about 50mph toward us. In the afternoon,  with their headlights on (on great flat straight roads with superb surfaces in the middle of nowhere, no Guards ) who would cross to the opposite lane a half mile in front of us. It was like being transported to an alien world where people had advanced to the stage of actually being civilised.

kirving

Macy0161 wrote: »

But it is a false equivalence which is worth pointing out, and isn't whataboutery.

Bad cyclists are an irritant. Bad drivers kill or cause life changing injuries.

Irritation doesn't excuse deliberate behaviour (which close passes, either for punishment or impatience are) that could kill or cause life changing injuries.

I didn't say that the two were equivalent, but every single discussion on here turns to car drivers vs. cyclists. Why do you think this might be?

I see absolutely terrible drivers and cyclists every single day, and I spend a lot of time on the road. Yes, the bad drivers have the potential to cause more harm than cyclists, but that doesn't excuse bad cycling either. You (and I) can't just brush it off and say that since we think it isn't necessarily dangerous, that it doesn't matter.

Human psychology doesn't work like that unfortunately - and I'm not condoning drivers deliberately endangering cyclists here.

If a subset of a group of people consistently break seemingly innocuous rules, it has a lasting and damaging effect on the rest of the populations opinion of the whole group.

To be honest, half of the time I'm on the bike between the canals in Dublin, my heart is in my mouth just waiting for the cyclist in front of me to get knocked down. I consistently see cyclists put themselves in positions where their life of in the car drivers hands. If the worst were to happen, then yes the driver would be legally responsible.

Morally though, you have noone to blame but yourself if you cycle between two busses with 2 feet to spare and get killed. I've had no incident that I can remember, because I make damn sure that I don't put myself in that situation to start with.

Lumen

Kevin Irving wrote: »

I didn't say that the two were equivalent, but every single discussion on here turns to car drivers vs. cyclists.

If by "on here" you mean "on this planet" then I'd tent to agree. There's nothing exceptional about this forum in that regard, except that some people on here tend to think about these sorts of issue more than average.

Weepsie

Kevin Irving wrote: »

If a subset of a group of people consistently break seemingly innocuous rules, it has a lasting and damaging effect on the rest of the populations opinion of the whole group.

If this were true, then every single driver would be getting routinely abused on radio call ins, forums, in the national media for being a nuisance and a danger.

It's to me unique against cyclists and then among cyclists it's used against taxi drivers too.

It's used elsewhere in other things, ie some people equate a minority of people of certain ethnicity doing something bad with all of them being a danger. However, in terms of identifying people by their mode of transport, your point doesn't really hold true as it's only really cyclists who come in for this regular bs.

AndrewJRenko

Weepsie wrote: »

If this were true, then every single driver would be getting routinely abused on radio call ins, forums, in the national media for being a nuisance and a danger.

It's to me unique among cyclists and then among cyclists it's used against taxi drivers too.

Ah here, give the poor taxi drivers a break. Someone has to listen to them;

http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/senator-martin-conway-cyclists/

Rave.ef

el tel wrote: »

Last week for the first time in years I was driving in Dublin. Mostly was going about the M50, but one evening, 7pm drove from the Red Cow to Ballsbridge, along Naas Road, Davitt Road and R111 beside the Grand Canal.
Well all can say is that I'd be happy not to do that again.  It really is no wonder that some drivers have a low opinion of cyclists and vice versa.  To be honest, seeing the poor state of the infrastructure and how some people go about their business in vehicles and on bikes respectively might actually convince one that there is a god, because otherwise the number of fatalities would be in the hundreds, rather than dozens. Given my doubts about the existence of a benevolent sky fairy, I must therefore conclude that the vast vast majority of drivers and cyclists are in fact safe, aware and respectful of each other.

Earlier in the year I was delivering goods(artic) to the no1 ballsbridge site and absolutely hated travelling along the canal. It was only a minority would keep themselves in a safe position. Every red light I was stopped at there could be 3 or 4 using the trailer as a resting platform. 45 foot trailer at half 5 6 in a February evening it's hard to see people on your left hand side. Eventually they changed to drop to earlier so I could atleast see people in the day light.

magicbastarder

the one manouevre i see other cyclists doing which drives me up the wall more than others is cyclists undertaking HGVs - i cross the liffey at the east link, so i'd see a few HGVs on my commute.

mrcheez

magicbastarder wrote: »

the one manouevre i see other cyclists doing which drives me up the wall more than others is cyclists undertaking HGVs - i cross the liffey at the east link, so i'd see a few HGVs on my commute.

One thing that dog walkers do that drives me up the wall is walking their dogs with leads on the cycle lane... They don't even pay Cycle Lane tax Joe!*



*I'm just illustrating a point, I don't actually hate dog walkers.

There needs to be usage of the word "some" more often, and not blame an entire group for the actions of a few.


Back on topic, I think the people that most often act aggressively against cyclists are those that more often "feel hard done by" in life.

For example, in northern European countries where general welfare is quite high people act less aggressively on the road as they don't feel that someone is getting a better deal than they are.

In Ireland, I'm betting those that act aggressively against cyclists are the same that complain about paying water bills, or feel cyclists get away with murder not paying the same heavy taxes they do.
Similar mindset would persist in the UK, or rural areas of Canada as mentioned earlier.

This would also explain why I felt safe in Malta, where people are not generally feeling disenfranchised as many Irish/British typically would.

magicbastarder

mrcheez wrote: »

There needs to be usage of the word "some" more often, and not blame an entire group for the actions of a few.
...
In Ireland, I'm betting those that act aggressively against cyclists are the same that complain about paying water bills

uhhh...

magicbastarder

it's about empathy, not about social status. motorists don't hate other motorists (well, not in the way many hate cyclists) because they cannot easily place motorists into a box saying 'these people are assholes'; because they'd be putting themselves in the same box.

i bet if you randomly changed 90% of cars to black cars, and 10% to white, you'd have people ringing george hook complaining that white car drivers are a menace to the road and should be removed.

riffmongous

I don't drive but as a pedestrian living in central europe I'm always shocked when I come back to Ireland by what I see from cyclists around Dublin. The crappy cycling infrastructure is of course partially to blame but it's still no excuse for some of the chaotic behaviour (from peds too here mind), I'm amazed more people aren't hurt.