If you’ve ever done a sailing course or manned a small craft, you will have been told that it is always the responsibility of the larger boats to stay well out of the way of the little ones. This is based on the ancient and mahogany logic that if there is a collision, the person most likely to suffer injury is the one in the smaller craft.
In the campaign against safe-passing legislation for bicycles in Ireland, there has not been too much mahogany but plenty of deadwood floating around the surface in the past week or so.
Questions such as, “We already have a dangerous overtaking law, so why do we need one specifically for bikes?” are still bobbing around. Yes, we do have such laws, but the same argument could be applied to many other recently introduced rules for the road. We had dangerous-driving legislation under which folks making phone calls while in command of a vehicle could have been prosecuted, but the government still felt the need to introduce new ones in 2014 that referred specifically to having a phone in your hand.
That was on the more rational end of the scale. During the week, the right-to-kerb-hug lobby had contributions to make along lines that at times seemed to suggest a cyclist could be as culpable as the truck that crushes the life out of them, because they might have “swerved” into its path. The proposed new rules, they claimed, would shift all the blame on to drivers.
The old canard that cyclists needed to be “more responsible”, be compelled by law to wear helmets and do some kind of course before being allowed to ride a bike was wheeled out. Similarly, cyclists should also share liability for any accidents — and only then would they even consider giving them enough space on the road to get where they are going safely.
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Verona Murphy, spokesperson for the Irish Road Haulage Association, got airtime on the Sean O’Rourke current affairs programme on RTE radio on Thursday, to say things like: “The new law enforces liability on only the motorist if a cyclist veers into that path”; and “Why are we blaming the people in trucks?”
Ultimately, it all smacks of desperation, which is no real surprise given the measures are set to go into committee stage early next month — and are already looking strong in terms of support across the political parties.