Re: Re: Cycling in Irish Cities

aha ctesiphon, there was me thinking you were an “Uncle Tom” cyclist but it seems you’re a rebel at heart 😀
one of us, one of us, gooboo gaaboo, one of us…

Black spots; lots but ones that immediately spring to mind: coming onto Stephen’s Green from Hume Street, the Matt Talbot bridge to Moss Street (already mentioned), cycling through College Green can be dodgy – particularly going from Pearse St to Dame Street, the junction at Christ Church is awful for cyclists, basically anywhere optimised for motorised traffic flow – e.g. Beresford Place, pretty much any right turn but especially on multi-lane one-way streets (one-ways are generally bad because drivers seem to go faster).

However, the most dangerous situations for cyclists are not specific to location, in my opinion. The worst situations are left turning cars when the cyclist is going straight ahead, cars pulling out of minor roads and doors opening on parked/stopped cars. My intuition, from experience both as a cyclist and a driver is that you’ll probably never be hit from behind by a car – it’s the cars on front of you that are the danger from a cyclist’s point of view. Even for a good driver it is easy to miss the fact that a cyclist is behind you or alongside you but you’ll always notice one on front of you. As a result, even though it may seem contradictory, you are generally safer IN FRONT of the traffic. Therefore, for example, at a red light I will always squeeze between lines of cars to get to the front of the junction (especially a multi-lane dodgy junction like the one at Christ Church) before the lights change – in this way I’m guaranteed to be seen by the cars waiting to go and will be given due consideration. I also will assume that no driver in front of me has seen me and cycle defensively on that basis. This is also the reason why rear view mirrors are useless on bikes.