Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

Was this posted? Judge Nolan's sentencing seems about right to me, but I'm wondering what anyone else thinks.

Depends of the context. In the context of efficency/throughput and safety for anyone outside a car this road is absolutely lacking in 2023.

In terms of safety, if a 1923 car was able to navigate it safely, then it should be a doddle to a 2023 car with its wide tyres, anti lock brakes, etc advanced suspension etc and host of advanced safety features.

Or to put it another way, The only problem i've ever had on this "bad bend" was with meeting drivers coming the other direction through the bend with their wheels way over the center line on my side of the road. I've driven through it hundreds of times and I've never had the slightest issue navigating it safely, or with keeping my vehicle correctly on my side of the road.

Thanks, though you seem to be determined to argue against a point I'm not making.

I'm not talking about all roads, I'm talking about a specific road that is local to me and which I know very, very well. Its a completely boring road with a completely boring bend. Doesnt flood, doesn't ice over, doesnt get covered in leaves. Nothing like that.

And speaking of boring, I'm far from a perfect driver, but I do try to stick to the speed limit.You could say that makes me a boring driver. While sticking to the speed limit I often get overtaken on this very road by other drivers that seem to find my adherence to the law quite boring. I wonder if that has any relevance to the problem of certain drivers finding it challenging to navigate this quite boring bend without crashing.

We've moved to SUVs which are inherently more likely to roll over due to a high center of gravity. They have an excess of power and often on dubious tyres. People are over confident, they get complacent about roads they know well. Lack of enforcement is a factor.

But if there lots of accidents in the same spot, there's obviously something about that location that a factor.

Factors? I'd say from personal observation that speeding and phone use are the real factors. But lets point to a bend in the road that every competent driver can navigate safely instead, because we'd hate to have to accept that it's not the roads - or the cars - it's us the drivers that are the issue.

I'm sure there's a clinical term that psychologists use to describe the deflection seen in arguments like "it was a dangerous bend that caused it", or "but he wasn't wearing hi viz" rather than objectively judging the situation. Whatever it is, it's chronic among motorists.

It might seem like needless belligerence against motorists, but unfortunately simply giving in to this mentality of "I'm never in the wrong - some other drivers may sometimes be in the wrong, but mostly its the roads, conditions and other non-motorists getting in the way who are in the wrong" only adds fuel to the very fire that we're pretending we want to extinguish - namely road traffic accidents involving motorists.

I don't think they have an excess of power, certainly most of what people class as SUVs in this country anyway.

Of course you can crash an underpowered car. However modern cars have the power, great brakes, and driver aids to allow people to carry higher speeds on marginal roads. In the past the limits of the brakes or the car handling would force a driver to drive slower. Combine this with a modern car greater weight, with a SUV high center of gravity and your creating a high speed pendulum. In context of cars flipping it doesn't take that much to flip a car, some cars are far worse than other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIN8CyhYREM&t=327s&ab_channel=OVERDRIVE

Exactly.

And recognising that is not being dismissive of speeding or poor driving habits.

So you think they hit the other car because they felt they were invincible. Not because of the design of the vehicle. It their habit to hit vehicles like this. Ok.

Eh, no, I didnt say any of that. Nobody has it as their habit to hit other vehicles, that would be just silly.

But research clearly shows that the safer people feel in any given situation the more inclined they are to take risks, and when people take more risks they have more collisions. Risk compensation is a very well documented facet of human behavior.

My point is that its exacerbated firstly by cars being more and more loaded with safety systems designed to keep the occupants safe regardless of how much of an idiot is behind the wheel, and secondly by car marketing that emphasises aggression and how people will "dominate" the roads with their new car.

But at the end of the day driver behavior is still a factor in many cases. In the case of his video, I would argue that the situation was certainly made worse by the drivers behavior (at a lower speed for example the RR might possibly just have rode up on 2 wheels and bounced back down )

And look, to your earlier point I'm not dismissing making roads inherently safer at all, but you have to do it the right way. If your follow the american approach for example, which seems to be give them more space, bigger barriers etc, people just seem to risk compensate by driving ever more ridiculously to the point where you have cars going airborrne through the walls of buildings.

I think its amazing for example that the dutch when an incident happens close the road and do a detailed analysis of the factors that contributed to teh situation. I think thats a great approach, and if part of the conclusions formed are the road was too wide / encouraged too much speed etc etc, and needs to be redesigned for a slower speed, i'm on board 100% with that. I'm just not comfortable with the default position pushed by many here including the gardai, of blaming the road conditions and asking no hard questions of the driver.

Id also lay strong odds that they were going to go around the queue and skip/barge in at the front.

Quite possibly, almost be like they believed and had internalised hype they had heard somewhere that their car would allow them to dominate the road 🙂

Opinion piece in Cork's Evening Echo about "bully-boys and bully-girls" cycling of footpaths around Cork. One of the worst pieces of drivel I've read in quite a while, with this probably being the highlight:

Yet another case of "I saw someone on bike do something bad (which had nothing to do with cycling) so all cyclists must be bad".

The solution - No Cycling pavement signs everywhere. You couldn't make it up.

And to finish, with a staggering lack of self-awareness or irony, the so-called journalist also complains about motorists "screaming through the villages and up and down the network of approach roads at all hours of the day and night" with ZERO connection as to maybe that might be why one would choose to be a cyclist on the pavement for personal safety reasons.

I honestly despair sometimes.