Near Misses Volume 2 (So close you can feel it)

Tell me again how it's cyclists who break red lights that are the real danger?

I could practically smell the Brut coming off this guy through the glass. He gave me a little tongue waggle as he passed and all, the old scamp.

Gotta love the detail you can capture on these new GoPros though

I imagine in the advent of modern technology where you can't believe everything you see, there is a risk that people will upload falsified images.

What I can't understand is why there isn't enforcement when the resulting fines would more than cover the salary of a guard doing that job. What is the obstacle here? It honestly boggles the mind.

Was the red light camera at Blackhall place, was put in because it’s one of the most commonly jumped red lights and constant collisions with the luas because of it.

They put it in around 2010, and for the first 164 days it detected 800 and something red light jumps. And then it’s sat idle and unused since 2016.

I'm guessing the fine money can't pay staff? There must be a paperwork issue, I don't believe smaller speeding offences go to court. If they stood in hot spots they'd clean up. With the laser gun they don't need to pull people over, surely they can log tenfold the amount of offences.

If they stood somewhere like an overpass on the N4 or M50 they'd clean up in just 30 minutes. I drive them daily using cruise control and the majority of traffic will drive by as if I was doing 10-20 under the limit. Regardless of the time, weather or volume of traffic.

Speeding has become so normalised in the last year or so. If I'm the only car on a stretch of road a queue will eventually form behind me because I'm doing the speed limit. People see a gap in front so they drive faster until they get behind the next car. If there's a bus lane on a 50-60 road there's a guarantee I'm getting undertaken because there's a gap in front of me and the person doesn't understand why I'm not driving faster. I had someone behind me throw up their hands because I wasn't driving faster when there was nobody in front of me. All doing the speed limit. It's just too casual these days and nothing is being done about it. I genuinely don't get it.

I recently got flipped the bird by a local chap whilst driving my young daughter somewhere.

My crime ? Maintaining 60kph along a 2.6km stretch of narrow local country road with a 60kph limit, despite this chaps best attempts to push me to speed by driving like a maniac right in my back window the whole time.

An "accident" on this road is reported on our community whatsapp group every month or two, usually blamed on the road itself (there's a "bad" bend apparently). With fools like this occupying our roads I dont think the road is the big problem.

Apparently you don't need to obey the speedometer in your car as it always understates the speed by about 10%. So you should have been driving 66kmph. And as its unlikely that you'll get done for speeding if only 5% over the speed limit you should have tagged on an extra few kmph. Let's call it an even 70kmph. That's what you should have been doing to avoid the ire of the really important people who are always in a mad rush to get to their really important appointments.

I just had, for the second day in a row, a car pass me in the extra-wide, solid white line, cycle lane on St Stephens Green South. All so he could undertake about 15 cars who were driving in the correct lane. But of course it's cyclists and the Greens who are the problem.

I think it all goes to the root of why speeding is seen as socially acceptable. Sure how is anyone to know what speed they're actually doing? And if nobody knows, shur who gives a s**t. "How dare you take issue with my driving, I'm not doing 110kmph, I'm doing 100 and you're doing 90" goes the conversation between two people with different notions of how to stick to the same speed limit.

It also probably goes to the root of why there is so little effort by the Gardai/ State to punish speeding drivers.

Just back from a walk to get a coffee to see a driver use the contra flow bus/ cycle lane to overtake stationary traffic from the pedestrian lights at Institute of Education on Leeson St all the way down to the St Stephens Green crossroads - ostensibly to use the right turn 'lane' there, only for him to cut back in at the very last minute to continue straight on. Nobody bats an eyelid. It's all just so blasé.

I doubt it has ever been enforced and all he has to do is say he's making a delivery and is exempt, its a ban on paper nothing more, the fact a HGV driver was oblivious to it says it all.

I just don't understand how the majority of people passing cyclists can't just fully move over to the other side of the road regardless of what the 'safe' distance is. Costs you nothing you'd be moving over anyway.

I had nice one over the weekend . Coming back from howth towards baldoyle church I had a muppet give me a dangerous close pass . He then stops as traffic is backed up. I go by him and he’s on his phone sitting there while traffic moves off looking at the phone .

The lights turn red and I stop . He wakes up oblivious, and goes through the red lights as a family are about to cross . I looked at the father and he looked at me, both of us exasperated . In the space of a couple of minutes he gave me a close pass, messed with his phone , broke the lights and wasn’t far off wiping a family out . Absolutely no self awareness and just doesn’t give a flying F…

Now that is a close pass. Crist. Why do we cycle