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Rema

Here's an article from today's Irish Independent. The guy has lifted most of it from UK tabloid articles earlier this week but the best bit is:

"The most dangerous of the species is the professional cyclist, mostly couriers, who clad themselves in body-clinging black Lycra to emphasise their menace."

You'd have to pity the poor sap, being threatened by tight shorts!

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THE EU is planning to load the blame on the driver of any car in collision with a cyclist, no matter who is at fault.
On the face of it, this is a licence for 'Lycra louts'.
The proposal, which is buried in the Orwellian-sounding Fifth Insurance Directive, would guarantee compensation to any cyclist who has a run-in with a motor vehicle.
In support of the plan, one EU official said many European states already recognised that a motor car was a lethal weapon and all practical protections must be extended to cyclists.
Which may be stating the obvious, but the official tagged on another reason for the proposal as "a further effort to reduce the number of car journeys, especially in built-up areas". So, that's it: the insidious plan to promote cyclists at the expense of car drivers is another attempt by environmentalists to make motoring an indulgence of the wealthy. After successive governments' efforts to tax motorists off the road, the beard-and-sandals lobby aim to make drivers pick up the bill for what amounts to an extension of compensation culture for cyclists.
Anyone who has negotiated the traffic in downtown Dublin, or any of our grid-locked cities on a wet winter evening, knows all about the lawlessness of cyclists. And the long arm of the law appears just as blind as justice is supposed to be when it comes to bringing delinquent cyclists to book.
When they're not hogging bus lanes, Lycra louts take to the pavements with apparent impunity and while ignoring traffic lights, they use the yellow boxes at intersections as a 10-yard on other traffic. Motorists making a left turn are a challenge for cyclists to race up and overtake on the inside lane and then they dodge and weave between vehicles like boxers.
How many cars have scars where their wing mirrors used to be, amputated from the vehicle by speeding cyclists riding the narrow wall of death between cars waiting in traffic?
How many motorists have been insulted with profanities by self-righteous road-raging cyclists who have, on occasions, smashed a gloved fist on the bonnet?
Of course not all cyclists, no more than all motorists, are guilty of
reckless riding, but many do believe themselves to be immune from any road rules
In a snap survey of regular visitors and spectators at the district courts conducted yesterday no one could recall the last time a cyclist was charged with having no lights on their bikes.
It is at night, and at dusk, that cyclists are most vulnerable and if they do have lights, their balancing act, doing figures of eight in the yellow boxes at intersections, is a bizarre urban phenomenon.
The most dangerous of the species is the professional cyclist, mostly couriers, who clad themselves in body-clinging black Lycra to emphasise their menace.
The Lycra louts are, by far, the most aggressive and they must believe they have divine protection as well as a licence to do their will and get their way without any interference from the law enforcers. With one hand on the handlebars and the other pressing a mobile phone to his ear, a Lycra lout
can even overtake the traffic on the outside by cycling on the wrong side of the road and feel secure from prosecution.
If any motorist was as impervious to the rules of the road, he or she could, and should, expect to be waved down by the boys, and girls, in blue.
The woman wobbling on a bicycle laden down with shopping bags is now a relic of a bygone age, replaced by a courier racing through traffic as though ferrying a donor organ for a dying child.
Cycling in cities is dangerous, and it is also a high-risk pastime on badly lit suburban and country roads and lanes.
British figures show that a cyclist is twice as likely to be killed than if they were using any other form of transport - and per kilometre travelled,
cyclists are 14 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than car drivers.
The British Medical Association has noted that even with these frightening statistics of death and serious injury, cycling does increase the lifespan.
Of course, cyclists, unlike motorists, do not have to be insured for any damage they do, or injuries they cause. But if the EU proposal becomes law,
motorists will be liable to compensate cyclists in any collision - no matter who is at fault. Is that an incentive for safer cycling, safer roads, or a curb to the compensation culture?
Sam Smyth

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Karma

It is nice to recognised as the most dangerous thing on 2 wheels by someone who is coping someone elses work.(have not read the article in the paper)

Yes there are things we do that annoy other road users, some more than others.
Appentlenty it is the second most dangerous job in the
world(?Underwater deep sea welders in first!)

Going to work
Will respond properly later.
DotC

2 graham

What a knob!! Bet he's never been on a bike in his life...
He seems bitter about the fact that we can get around the city faster than his spluttering automobile. so we may cut a few corners and do things that annoy some people, but at the end of the day as he admits himself, the only people we're (mostly) hurting are ourselves.
He seems to think that telling us how dangerous it is and how many of us are killed validates him, but he failed to add the important statistic of how many of those cyclists were injured or killed by those self-same cars he's trying so valiantly to defend.
I've never made a claim from any accident even when totally in the right and I still have scars to prove it, what's the big deal about a goddamn wing-mirror?!
Anyway, as you can see that article had meade my blood boil. But there's no point in getting upset is there, I may end up getting on my bike and venting all my rage on a poor defenseless couple of tons of steel...

Karma

Could explain why you have not been seen since friday.

2, are you going to the boards drinks night in Spy?

9

2 graham

I have not been seen since FRiday due to a poxy case of food poisoning from di Fontaines of all places!!
Myself, Grainne and one of her friends went in after Handels. they wree sick on Sat and Sun but it only hit me on Monday morning. Had a 40 hour fast and sleepathon. It was rotten. I'm alright now, but not 100% yet. Will defo be in on Monday. Soooooo broke, definitely not going to Copenhagen... arses.
May see you over weekend or if not on Monday.
And oh yeah, cars suck an all that jazz...