Y'all are missing the key point, if the headline and my understanding are to be believed. They're proposing making it a CRIMINAL offense, not a fine you misdemeanor, but a can put you in jail criminal offense (felony for you yanks), that's way over the top.
This is fucked and no way something like this should pass.
Also if a cyclist is expected to wear a helmet and high reflection vest then car drivers should be required to do the same, windows should also be completely down with no music playing what so ever. If you go a cellphone or you are eating a burger or snack bar straight to jail for attempted manslaughter.
Their cars and lorries also need high-vis striping, no less than 7 stripes front to back, and 3 wrapped around the body. The stripes must also be painted into the base coat, they may not be part of a wrap.
Im thinking the equivalent would be cars have hi visibility paint. I hate cars with matt colors matching the road. Can't even seen them without the lights on.
Why does the rider need to be visible? Surely if the bike is visible that is enough. Part of why my bike has bright lights on it. You can't see me? Sure, but you can see the bike, avoid that and everything is fine.
But what if the rider gets off the bike? Then he could suddenly become invisible!
A lot of people park their cars on the "bicycle boulevard" that I live on, in order to visit businesses on the street a block over. Then they get out wearing all black and cross the street, and they're very-nearly invisible. I think we should have a law that drivers must wear hi-viz at all times, in case they need to get out of their cars.
(And helmets. Drivers should wear helmets. Head injuries from car crashes are still a serious problem.)
When there are road works they tend to close the high way or at least some lanes because a hi vis jacket doesn't protect you against speeding lunatics.
There are also a lot of photos of hi-vis roadworks and emergency vehicles that motorists have crashed into. It's almost like it's not visibility that's the problem…
I think the issue was the car its self was not visible enough to the emergency vehicles. Car drivers should be wearing reflective gear and helmets, and the car should be fully reflective.
Visibility helps
We are not invisible. The problem is that motorists aren't looking or aren't caring. Put some plain-clothes cops on bikes as bait and catch the incompetent.
Added visibility still helps
It really doesn't, especially if it makes you look less like an ordinary human. You absolutely don't want them to think you're an expert rider who doesn't need space, or something like that.
You don't need them to see you from space. You need them to see you from just far enough away, but actually care enough not to endanger you.
Bizarre to argue against added visibility improving safety
Well, truth is often stranger than fiction. Look at the research. Once a threshhold of visibility is achieved, more is not better. Beyond a point, more is actually detrimental.
Sounds interesting. Do you have these studies? I've always just read that visibility is a plus in traffic.
Is this the same Ireland where a TD couldn't get into Dublin to propose a congestion-mitigation policy to the Dáil Éireann because he was stuck in a traffic jam for THREE AND A HALF HOURS? But, yeah, go ahead, discourage bicycling with punitive laws. What could go wrong?
A Teachta Dála (/ˌtjɒxtə ˈdɔːlə/ TYOKH-tə DAW-lə; Irish: [ˌtʲaxt̪ˠə ˈd̪ˠaːlˠa] ⓘ;[3] plural Teachtaí Dála), abbreviated as TD (plural TDanna in Irish,[4] TDs in English), is a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, the parliament of Ireland. The official English translation of the term is "Dáil Deputy".[5][6] An equivalent position would be a Member of Parliament (MP) in the UK or Member of Congress in the US.
That's hilarious (in a coping with the horribleness way).
I'll find a citation for it because I'll keep it for future transit discussions.
Edit: Found them: it just happened this week.
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2026/0121/1554356-m50-traffic-labour/
As an Australian who has lived with compulsory helmets for decades I think wearing a helmet and high vis is probably bare minimum if you have to share with cars and not nearly enough if you have to use door lanes and deal with Ford Rangers and garbage trucks.
Unfortunately once you go down this route cycling partipation drops and its a net fail for public health.
Sedate cycling on seperated pathways and through parks gets lumped in with high risk road cycling. It ends up being completely inappropriate for the type of cycling most people would like to do (not high risk vehicular cycling).
Why bother building expensive dedicated safe infrastructure when people have a magical inch of styrofoam on their noggins and a yellow shirt to protect them from 2 tonnes of murder machine.
Yes, pedestrians only roadways & other important infrastructure is must, but it best to use good enough helmets over none. You my brother bought me a skydiving adventure with a expert on my back as fall through the sky, because I loved the glider experience (by the). When the corporation said, I could wear a helmet, because it endangers the expert on my back. My mind & my head’s senses are the most part of my body, so I said, no thank you, to my brother. I told my brother, it is transferable, so why do not you use the experience, he said he would never do skydiving.
We used to wear helmets whenever we rode after witnessing a fatality on the Great Victorian Bike Ride when we were teenagers.
Dude had his helmet hanging on his handlebars, came off at speed and skidded on his head. When the Ambos came (they weren’t called Paramedics back then), he was still alive, but his brain was exposed.
We never wore our high-vis vests though, they were loose and would droop off our shoulders and we would get tangled.
There was also the story about the dad so was fooling around with his kids bike without a helmet in the back yard; fell over, cracked his head and died instantly; (plausible, but unproven).
I'd be dead a few times if it wasn't for my bike helmet.
I agree with wearing helmets & punishing cyclists who do not, like motorcyclists & such drivers & like having to wear a seatbelt, but that is going to far. This almost seems like a made-up article, almost like The Union.
If they're going to do that, they should also go back to requiring motor cars to be preceded by an attendant on foot, waving a red flag.
You know, for safety.
tbf people should be wearing all of those things.... should never trust anyone behind a wheel.
Feels like blaming the victim to me.
Why don’t drivers put their phones down? They’re the one running bicyclists over, not the other way around.
That's not victim blaming, that's being sensible.
As someone who both bikes a lot and drives, seeing bikes in the city at night on a rainy day, with all the various lights, water reflections and loss of visibility from rain is a nightmare if they don't use lights, or have poor ones. Hi-vis vests are a godsend, makes life easier all around.
Where I'm from, you are required to adjust your speed to visibility.
If someone has trouble seeing cyclists who have all the required visibility measures, they are driving too fast, or shouldn't be driving at all.
It's hard to see this as anything else but allowing drivers to drive faster at the inconvenience of cyclists, under punishment of a felony.
If someone has trouble seeing cyclists who have all the required visibility measures
That was the point I was making. Cyclists SHOULD be wearing/using all of these at night/in the rain, for everyone's safety.
If you can't see cyclists during the day in fair weather without them wearing a hi-vis vest, you shouldn't be driving. I think we're on the same page there.
It's a safety precaution, like bike lights and seat belts. It's better that people take precautions. I've worn a hard hat on job sites for years because it's Union mandated for safety.
It doesn't take a moron texting and driving to run into a cyclist.... morons can be distracted or stupid for any reason. As I said, can't trust anyone behind a wheel. Just saying it how it is.
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