Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120335292#Comment_120335292

100%, the NCT is a long way from perfect but before it, my god, there was some awful yokes on the road

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120335292#Comment_120335292

I think people overplay the extent to which the NCT is responsible for people driving newer cars now. Personally, I'd guess a lot of it has to do with vastly changed socio economic conditions rather than the idea that were it not for the NCT, people would be happy to drive around in rust buckets held together with baling twine and struggling to get up to 80kmph/ over a hill without the engine blowing.

I do think the NCT has a role in monitoring emissions - my first car was 14 years old, otherwise running fine, but kept failing on the emissions test. A pain in the hoop for me as I ended up just scrapping it and buying a new car, but probably a win for society.

Seth Brundle

My recollection from back when the NCT first came out was that the car itself was responsible for very few crashes (only a few percent) as it was usually driver error so the safety aspect doesn't necessarily stand up. However, I think one big change was that people pre-NCT were happy just getting a basic oil service and not having to pay much to maintain their car. The NCT has meant that people now need to ensure that the car is maintained to a minimum standard.

However, yes, in that same time, we've seen people's spending capacity increase so people have been able to get newer cars. We've also seen our road surfaces improve tremendously in that timeframe which has reduced the percentage of failures down as a result of worn suspension components.

Macy0161

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120334427#Comment_120334427

Dirt is one thing, could be laziness. The number with non-reflective plates/ those greyed out yolks, and non compliant plates is quite the other!

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120339466#Comment_120339466

True again. And the Gardai don't seem to give a f**k. In fact I was on the N11 near Ashford the other week doing 100kmph on cruise control and a car passed me doing about 110kmph with a marked Garda car more or less tailgating him. No blue lights etc. The car pulled in in front of me and the Garda car just ploughed on. They seem to have completely given up even pretending to care about enforcing the law when it comes to motoring.

Hurrache

110 indicated on a car is usually only around 100 anyway based on my experience over a few different cars, you see it if you have a GPS running or even with Google maps open.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120339608#Comment_120339608

Possibly true, I don't know, but I don't think we should all be the judges of our own speeds. There's a limit. There are road signs. And we have pretty much uniform speedometers in all our cars. We have the perfect, in-built ability to make all of our speeds on the roads more or less uniform. People making up their own speed limits as they feel like it is what causes half of the chaos on our roads - even just the whole speed up > brake > change lane > speed up > change lane again > brake > speed up is a big part of the problem with tailbacks.

Anyway, the point was more the mindset of the Garda that day - aware that he and the car were doing 110 according to their speedo, but decided that was fine. And it's not an infrequent occurrence either. It - and the whole 'sure my speedo is wrong' mindset - just encourages a sense of everyone for themselves once behind the wheel.

Hurrache

Point though is that the car likely wasn't speeding.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120339679#Comment_120339679

Sure no wonder the roads are a nightmare to drive on. F**k all speed enforcement and we can all be the judges of what speed we reckon we're going at. It's wild west farcical. No wonder you get lads sitting on your rear bumper if the attitude is "well, the speed limit is 100, which means I can do 110 on my speedo, and they'll always allow you a few kmph over the limit before actually ticketing you, so I'll stick it to 114kmph... and there's a car in front of me I need to pass, I'm allowed to speed up to overtake so 117kmph is fine."

I get your point, but my point was not about scientific proof of speed, it was about attitudes to driving and specifically enforcement. 100 is a limit, not a target. Here you have a Garda who thinks its fine to overrule your vehicles speedo indicator and a motorist with such scant regard for speeding that even when a Garda is sitting behind him he just carries on. It all just means that you have people in one lane doing 90kmph on their speedo because they couldn't be bothered dealing with the arseholes in the other lane who hammer away at 110 on theirs.

And we wonder why there are so many speed-related deaths on our roads?

Anyway, as I say, I get your point and I'm not looking for an argument so I'll stop derailing the thread with my rants!

Hurrache

Speed limits are absolute, they're not defined by an individuals speedometer in their car which can vary for all sorts of reasons such as wheel and tyre size.

Large bottle small glass

It is certainly law in the UK that speedometers can't underreport speed, but they can over report(10% plus 10km/h I think).

Typically in the last few cars I've had when compared against a GPS device, 127km/h on speedometer is about 120km/h on GPS.

A Garda with a speed gun recording a motorist at 125km/h (on my car showing circa 132km/h) is unlikely to pull the driver over; he will have a margin of error on his own device and that's before you get into calibration controls etc etc.

cletus

As said, cars over estimate speed, often by 8-10kph.

Most likely you were doing 90 or a little more, and the guy who passed you was doing 100 or a 102.

Gardas won't pull for a few km over, it's too easy to argue about accuracy of the equipment etc.

*Edit* large bottle small glass in there ahead of me

CramCycle

As @Large bottle small glass says, it is that legally the calibration of speedometers are allowed to be report up to 10% over but not anything under. For this reasons in the past, cars always were made to be lower, and that driving instructors used to tell you to drive at 10% higher than your speedo to make sure you were going fast enough ( a different time). Newer cars tend to be closer to the correct speed in my experience

More interesting, the gardai will be far more lenient ant give you the 10% leniency in most scenarios (from a garda, not written down anywhere) but the Go vans give no leniency. Those people who are going the 10% over will eventually get caught if we had better enforcement as its too fine a line for them to be on the right side of the line 100% of the time.

Stark

I imagine with the Gardaí pulling people, it's largely an opportunity cost issue where if they're spending time pulling people over for going say 105km/hr then they're going to have to let a few people doing crazy speeds pass by. Whereas the camera vans don't have that issue.

JMcL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120334581#Comment_120334581

I've no problem with the approach per se, and 100% agree with you that it would be gamed. It's the execution or lack of that pisses me off. Assuming somebody with 2 brain cells to rub together put together the service level agreement - not a given with the Irish governments track record in this type of thing - there isn't a hope in hell that NCTS are even ball park with this charade.

In between my message 2 days ago and now they've sent me an NCT notice for our second car due an NCT in 3 weeks time. I click on the link to make an appointment. End of September! The only thing they can offer me elsewhere is Cahir in August - a 130km round trip. Now they know when NCTs are due, I'd hope they know the length of their queues, why don't they allocate a space and offer that in time instead of pointlessly sending out an "oh by the way, your NCT is due in 3 weeks" notice.

Anyway, rant off and back to 2 wheels!

Grassey

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2023/03/11/is-it-possible-to-live-a-car-free-life-in-ireland/

It article pay walled which can be read in full here. https://archive.is/6PVmm

A fairly long rambling incoherent piece I thought - didn't really engage with the question. Just got a load of soundbites to tick the usual boxes.

cletus

Yeah, not a great article, and poorly edited.

I don't know if it's possible to actually engage with the question other than to say 'it depends", though.

Much as I like cycling (I keep a bicycle in my classroom so I can cycle to the shops at lunchtime instead of driving in) we have two cars in our home, and the reality is that they're both necessary.

Regarding public transport, I often think that there should be two discussions running, PT for commuting to and from work, and PT for 'leisure' travel, for want of a better word.

magicbastarder

I think we had a lot of that with the debate over 'unnecessary' travel in the last week.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120343909#Comment_120343909

I really disliked that phrase, it was misleading and was used by the greens to be misleading, which is odd given their remit. Those journeys are not unnecessary, it was just that for a small number of bus/train trips, if it were free, there would be some people who would hop on the bus or DART for one stop rather than walking it. I got a flat on the train before and I was tired so when I hopped off in Dun Laoghaire, instead of cycling to work, I waited and got the next DART so I was within walking distance. by their definition "unnecessary" but it was necessary, I just had more than one option. Interestingly, being free had nothing to do with it and if PT was made free, I would still cycle from Dun Laoghaire rather than get the DART closer. I actually think they overestimate how lazy some people are. In the majority of cases, even if free, if you pull up to a bus stop and there are 60 people waiting and your destination is only a 10 minute walk, you will probably walk because between arrival, loading, unloading, chance of not getting on, it isn't worth it.

magicbastarder

it was a response to a parliamentary question, so probably drawn up by some staffer rather than used off the cuff himself. but yeah, if they'd used the term 'discretionary journeys' it'd have been much less of an issue, despite having the same meaning.

i suspect it was being used in a dry academic sense (necessary journeys are one you'd take anyway, unnecessary ones are ones you'd take on top because of FFT).

cletus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120343909#Comment_120343909

We didn't have it properly though (do we ever in this country).

My commute is not possible without a car. It's that simple. Even though my wife takes the train to Dublin for work, getting to the train station without her car isn't feasible.

Outside that, though, we'll make journeys using bicycle, train, Luas, and less recently bus and Dart.

So while I'll make use of PT as much as I can, talk of living without a car can seem like a very urban-centric idea to people living either rurally, or in places ill served by public transport.

Hurrache

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120341766#Comment_120341766

One of the cars in our house was due the NCT in February. Next appointment anywhere in Dublin when checking in January was August.

A quick phone call and the fairly pleasant agent said they'll organise something sooner and if I had a preference for a location and time, within a few days I received a text with the appointment details with the date being before my current one even expired and the location in the nearest cente to me.

Seems to be common enough at the moment.

magicbastarder

i was even once told on the phone that it might be worth shacking up unannounced and asking to be let in if they had a gap.

i had great fun with the NCT last year; 10 year old car, no reliability issues until literally the point the mechanic hopped into it and turned the engine to bring it in for the test, and it wouldn't start. turns out the immobiliser had glitched, but by the time i'd copped my test had been cancelled.

got that sorted, two months later was due to go back for the test, and less than 24 hours before the test the car entered limp home mode. very quick swap of plugs, leads and coil pack and she got through.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120344332#Comment_120344332

But that's not the way he used it, he stated it in a sense that they were completely unnecessary as in you wouldn't take them if the option wasn't there. In truth, they were necessary but the fact they went to PT was unnecessary. He should have stated that they were necessary, there was just a small chance on a **** day, if the PT wasn't full, you might have jumped on the bus for a stop if it wasn't overcrowded or if you got a flat tire and it was off peak, you might just hop on the DART rather than change the tube in the pissings of rain. It was lazy in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think free PT is necessary but am all in favour of it being subsidised to make it more attractive than car journeys in urban areas or where a PT alternative is realistic.

Macy0161

Well I think Dart/ Rail is probably the wrong context for free public transport anyway. The big savings would be dwell times for buses imo.

https://www.irishtimes.com/transport/2023/03/12/were-being-forced-out-of-the-city-centre-irish-times-readers-react-to-plans-to-cut-car-use/

....

mvt

There is an article in todays Irish Times about a charity called Empowerment Plus, based in Mullingar which provides support to at risk children in their homes.

It seems this charity had donated €28,850 to a cycling club ,TC Racing Club which was founded by the charities chief executive Tom Clogher.

It seems strange to me that a charity would do this,would imagine it should be the other way round.

magicbastarder

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/03/13/tusla-threatened-to-withdraw-charitys-funding-over-shortcomings/

that's the article.

mvt

Yep,thanks for that,don't know how to post links.

At least its reassuring to know they wont do it again .

I'm being sarcastic btw.

Seth Brundle

Good riddance to what was a stupid idea...

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2023/03/13/controversial-deansgrange-cemetery-cycle-plan-formally-dropped/