Saw some lad getting creased off his bike yesterday evening - about 5 foot in front of me - completely his fault, but he somehow wasn't hurt
Horsing it along the footpath, headphones on so cant hear, car pulls out of 'blind' laneway between buildings just as he is crossing, and nails him - folding the wheels/bike in half horizontally, with yer man up on the bonnet.
I was only thinking afterwards that he would have nailed somebody pretty bad if it was a person rather than a car coming out of that laneway........hopefully it'll learn him a lesson.
I've always maintained that cyclists should be treated like pedestrians, and be allowed to go through lights, cross a path etc, once they give way and pay heed to pedestrians first.
Even if Dublin had the greatest cycle lane system in the world, you'd still have to have traffic lights at junctions - take the canal cycle path as an example - and people, including myself, will still break the lights because the main benefit of cycling (to me) is getting somewhere quickly - and once I do it safely, without pissing others off, then mission achieved.
However, a great degree of common sense would be needed for this as a rule - which generally, when applied to the world - does not work.
I expect that the guards will only hit people that are acting the maggot with these new fines, as they generally have been doing to date (few exceptions obviously)....Ive been pulled over a few times, but each time just been given a verbal warning about it - id imagine that it would have been different if i went flaking through a crowd of people crossing the road.
Horsing it along the footpath, headphones on so cant hear, car pulls out of 'blind' laneway between buildings just as he is crossing, and nails him - folding the wheels/bike in half horizontally, with yer man up on the bonnet.
I was only thinking afterwards that he would have nailed somebody pretty bad if it was a person rather than a car coming out of that laneway........hopefully it'll learn him a lesson.
I've always maintained that cyclists should be treated like pedestrians, and be allowed to go through lights, cross a path etc, once they give way and pay heed to pedestrians first.
Even if Dublin had the greatest cycle lane system in the world, you'd still have to have traffic lights at junctions - take the canal cycle path as an example - and people, including myself, will still break the lights because the main benefit of cycling (to me) is getting somewhere quickly - and once I do it safely, without pissing others off, then mission achieved.
However, a great degree of common sense would be needed for this as a rule - which generally, when applied to the world - does not work.
I expect that the guards will only hit people that are acting the maggot with these new fines, as they generally have been doing to date (few exceptions obviously)....Ive been pulled over a few times, but each time just been given a verbal warning about it - id imagine that it would have been different if i went flaking through a crowd of people crossing the road.
