Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Irish Times

Today's edition of the Irish Times contained 2 articles of interest to cyclists in Dublin.

One detailing the government's uprecedented plans to ban cars from the College Green area by this autumn:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0211/1233867931788.html

The other finally bringing to light the untold statistics of cyclist deaths in Dublin. Hopefully this can prompt some debate like in London and get all HGV's installed with 'blind-spot' mirrors.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0211/1233867931746.html

One interesting statistic that comes to light is:

"Crashes where the fault is more likely to be attributable to the cyclist accounted for a much smaller proportion of incidents. In just over 4 per cent a cyclist hit a pedestrian, while in fewer than 3 per cent of collisions a cyclist turned right into on-coming traffic."

My, my... maybe we're not such a reckless bunch of suicidal maniacs after all! Who'd a thunk it...

2 comments:

john clifford said...

did you see the article in thursdays times about the inquest into a cyclist's death from 2007?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0219/1224241416776.html

"The driver, Ricordas Valaitis, an employee of DMC Trans, who was in possession of a fake driver’s licence, did not see Ms Gill."

"The jury returned a unanimous verdict of death by misadventure under the direction of coroner Dr Brian Farrell."

disgraceful - 'death by misadventure'? he had a fake drivers licence. murder.

Anonymous said...

wonder how many collisions involved taxis? buses? The government can talk about changes that should be made,but i doubt whether much will change..Cynical? Realistic methinks.