Cyclists can be a pain - but they’re not the killing machine on our roads

A YEAR or so ago, a neighbour’s tree blew over down the road from our home, blocking the way for traffic.

I was alerted to the situation by the number of cars screeching to a halt outside my living room window, then performing six or seven degree turns and heading back the way they had come.

It was daylight and the stretch of road is straight enough, but I went into community mode: I alerted the neighbour, who was away, and he arranged for a group of local men to arrive with chainsaws to remove the tree.

Until that could be done, I donned my orange high-vis vest, assumed a position of self-appointed authority, and positioned myself outside my house, in order to warn oncoming traffic of the blocked road ahead.

Anyone who has ever broken down on a motorway and stood alongside their car will know how the proximity to the sound and sheer speed of passing traffic can be a real eye-opener, something you just don’t get a sense of when you are encased in your vehicle whizzing happily along amongst them.

That day outside my house was a similar wake-up call. Only then did it dawn on me the incredibly selfish, bone-headed ignorance, and utter lack of common-sense and road knowledge of a frighteningly high proportion of Irish motorists.

There is a sharp bend in the road 100 yards from our driveway, plenty of time you would think for motorists to see a man in a high-vis vest waving his arms to get them to stop.

An unnervingly high number took an age to see me and slow down; what could possibly be distracting them from the basic competence of looking where they were going, I wonder? Surely not the ubiquitous mobile phone?

My job was to tell these people the road ahead was blocked and they were welcome to turn around in my driveway. I was happy to offer them alternative directions if they were new to the area.

In that 45-minute spell while the tree was being sawn up, three - yes, THREE - motorists chose to disbelieve my story and drove serenely on, until they reached the fallen tree that was clearly visible from where I was standing.

There, they waited impatiently, their engines running - but you don’t rush a burly countryman with a chainsaw in his hand. In the end, said drivers had to do a U-turn and speed back past me the way they had come.

My god, I thought, what type of selfish, stupid motorist ignores all the evidence of their eyes and ears, and of a responsible adult flagging them down, and believes the rules of the road are simply not applicable to them?

That blinkered attitude, like a bull who is going to charge and to hell with the consequences, seemed to permeate from many of the drivers I stopped.

You might be thinking boy racers were the worst offenders. Not so. I found them to be the most observant, the most understanding, and the most amenable. A few even offered to give the fellas a hand with the tree.

The ones in the 4x4s appeared, in my admittedly brief experiment, to be the ones who had an aura of arrogant invincibility, cooped up in their four panels, oblivious to any goings-on in the world around them. They were heading from A to B as quickly as possible, and nothing and nobody was going to stop them.

I will not gender these people, but suffice to say that middle-aged women are at least as baleful of the world around them as middle-aged men.

At one point, a few cyclists came along, and I told them they would be able to pass by the fallen tree on a grass verge and carry on their merry way.

As we chatted, I told them the experience had been an eye-opener for me, seeing the sheer volume of motorists who, quite simply, did not deserve to be given the responsibility of a set of car keys. One of the cyclists raised his eye to the heavens. “Tell us about it,” he muttered.

Now, I am a motorist, and haven’t been a committed cyclist since I was 16 (when I became the proud owner of a red Vespa 50 scooter, but that story is for another day).

I, too, get irritated by the odd cyclist who treats drivers with discourtesy, the ones who cycle three-a-breast, and, perhaps worst of all, the ones who squeeze into Lycra shorts and puff and pant past my house at 7am on a Sunday, shouting profanities at each other in loud voices that echo around our valley and are enough to wake up the dead (and hungover).

A few Echo columnists recently had their say on the poor attitudes of such cyclists, particularly ones in the city who use footpaths and put pedestrians in peril.

All of which is true, and fair comment.

However, we need to draw a distinction here, I feel, between discourtesy and poor cycling that can be an irritation, and discourtesy and poor driving that can, and sadly does, on a far too frequent basis, endanger lives.

Those failings are not responsible for every death on our roads - far from it. Accidents will always happen, and many factors can be at play. Even the most careful driver (and cyclist) can hurt or be hurt on our roads.

But, as the number of road deaths in 2023 soars above 150, far higher than in previous years, my observations may go some way to explaining the reasons why.

Education and policing of drivers strike me as being the first important steps to make our roads safer. I only hope a large cohort of motorists are not too bone-headed to learn.