Sir, – A fairly common experience for a cyclist is that a car driver will overtake them and then turn left, forcing the cyclist to brake, assuming they are lucky enough to notice the car coming around them.
A fairly common experience for a cyclist who gives out about nearly being knocked down by a careless or aggressive driver is to hear that cyclists often fail to stop at red lights.
This makes no sense. It clearly doesn’t work as an argument justifying a motorist knocking down a cyclist when the cyclist is abiding by the rules of the road, but it is put out there anyway, as if some cyclists breaking red lights should be regarded as being in some way exculpatory when, in another circumstance, a drivers runs a cyclist off the road.
To some drivers, all cyclists are simply jaywalkers on wheels. It is possible that a belief that cyclists aren’t legitimately part of the traffic might leave some drivers less disposed to yielding right of way to a cyclist, and feeds into snap decisions that leads them to cut across a cyclist’s path? – Yours, etc,
COLIN WALSH,
Templeogue, Dublin 6W.