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

No, you did not force him to do anything. I'm simply stating that by not cycling in the cycle lane, you bear some of the responsibility for this situation arising. The government spends quite a bit of taxpayers money on building and maintaining cycle lanes, and if cyclists refuse to use them, then it's hardly fair to complain about close interactions with motorists. Again, I did not address section 10(2)(a) because it's not relevant to a thread about cyclists and therefore OT.

Assuming you are correct regarding speed/position (which I did not observe in the video) then the motorist violated section 10(1).

Regarding the RTA, this is not written into the legislation but is considered by AGS to be the most fair and objective measure of cyclist endangerment. If a cyclist maintains their line, does not reduce their speed and there is no collision/contact then they were never in danger, or so the thinking goes.

Both. I commute by bike to and from work whenever I am in up in Dublin, and use my bike for other errands as it beats travelling by car unless I have passengers. Cycling infrastructure has improved so much in the last five years that there are bike lanes most places I go. Yes there are occasionally deliver vans etc blocking bike lanes, but with proper hand signalling and checking the relative speed of cars, I am generally able to pass them safely. Proper hand signalling also means that motorists can't use the "cyclist appeared out of nowhere" line.

So you can't cite anywhere in the RTA, or indeed anywhere else, where you got those statements from (aside from 'Trust me bro, this is what AGS do' which isn't exactly a strong argument).

As an experienced cyclist yourself, can you walk me through how you would have approached the situation? Where would you have pulled out of the cycle lane? Where would you have pulled into the cycle lane? How much clearance would you have given the parked vehicles when passing?

The government could spend a billion euro on that one cycle lane, and if people still park illegally in it, I'm going to leave the cycle lane in order to get around the obstruction, and I'm also going to do it in plenty of time to avoid any sort of "cyclist came out of nowhere" excuses. Weaving in and out of the cycle lane at the last second is a far more dangerous approach.

Motor tax threads are always funny considering the majority of cyclists here own a car. Quite a lot of them own nice cars too and several grands worth of multiple bikes and when you consider the aero carbon bikes or ebikes that a lot of people have you're talking a significant contribution of VAT that would more than make up for any tax.

I've paid nearly €2,000 in VAT on the bikes and wheels currently in my house. That would be worth 20 years of EV motor tax!

If anyone needs to pay tax it's the trucks, buses and campervans all on a €300 odd rate but I wonder if they know that...

But did you not see that they "commute by bike to and from work whenever I am in up in Dublin, and use my bike for other errands as it beats travelling by car unless I have passengers."

I’m not a racist, some of my best friends….etc

Try cycling through Ranelagh.

I've nearly been taken out of it,

Motorists come shooting out of side roads. The cycle lanes have cars parked along them.

Nearly 4 years now but it's worth a shot, it's not like the cameras are cheap.

You're right the cyclist should have looked back, seen that there was only one car coming behind him, calculated that vehicle's speed of approach and the likelihood of another vehicle arriving behind that one, then calculated their own speed and distance as they approached the obstacle, and gambled that they wouldn't have got stuck behind the car parked in the cycle lane, so as not to delay that important motorist by so many seconds.

If you've been cycling for a few years you know that if you pull in after the first car you're likely to get stuck behind the second waiting for traffic to pass. The second car is close enough so you might as well stay out. It's not like you're doing anything wrong by doing that just making your life a bit easier, why should a cyclist have to do anything different just to make the motorists life easier? It's not like they're holding traffic up doing 10kph up Alp d'Huez. Do you really need to pull it so a car doesn't have to fully move over to pass? Do you need to wipe the motorists arse too?

I call custard on your claim to ever actually cycle @Sono Topolino

Nobody who hates cyclists enough to cycle through ALL the old tropes could actually be a cyclist themselves.

Person in a car is my suspicion.

Jesus. Can't say wearing hi viz has ever - not even once - helped my pedal my bike. How does hi viz stop you from getting pinched by parked cars? "try to be a smart arse" ... "trying to get ahead quickly"... "putting your neck on the line"... your mask has well and truly slipped. It's not that hard to drive considerately. You're not that important that you need to "get ahead quickly". And in most cases, the only ones putting cyclists necks on the line are drivers from the categories of 'clueless', 'aggressive', 'selfish' and 'sorry I've just got to read this WhatsApp'.

There is absolutely no way that the cyclist in that clip should have pulled in to the cycle lane as it is absolutely clear from the footage that his instincts about the driver behind were spot on - he'd have been forced to brake due to the other clown of a driver that sees cycles lanes as fair game for dumping their car and the one behind who just couldn't care less about anyone else on the road. What was the driver's rush to "get ahead quickly" - why did he have to be such a smart arse? Could he not just have waited for a few more seconds and overtaken when the cyclist had moved into the clear bike lane or there was no oncoming traffic?

Your attitude is typical of so many motorists - where you have two road users, the cyclist should always inconvenience themselves so that the motorist can be less inconvenienced.

As for "I'm simply stating that by not cycling in the cycle lane, you bear some of the responsibility for this situation arising" ... thankfully that prehistoric attitude of "you bear some responsibility for being a victim due to the clothes you were wearing" has been well debunked over the past few decades by more enlightened members of the judiciary. Absolutely no different here. Cyclist did absolutely nothing wrong, was not legally required to use the cycle lane, the cycle lane had vehicles parked in it, there was very little traffic behind him and he was moving at a decent clip in a relatively low speed-limited area.

So the RSA's recommendation about 1m and 1.5m carries no weight, because it's not set down in law, but the RSA's recommendation about slower vehicles keeping to the left should be followed, even though it's also not set down in law? I'm struggling to understand the contradiction here? I mean surely the different interpretations you arrive at couldn't be just down to the fact that the guidance you want to ignore might cause a driver a fractional delay in their journey in order to ensure safety of vulnerable road users, and the guidance you advocate adhering too could inconvenience/endanger vulnerable road users but might result in a fractional reduction in a driver's journey time?

Also worth noting that you continue to insist the drivers are "simply required not to endanger" other road users, even when it has been pointed out to you the the actual legislation specifies that a driver should not "inconvenience" other road users while overtaking.

And especially relevant that the RSA guidance on keeping to the left is far from absolute. The RSA makes it very clear in the Rules of the Road that there are multiple situations were a cyclist would correctly take the 'primary position'.

The level of cherry-picking in your posts is off the charts.