Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Ireland abandons plan for close pass law and sets to work on ‘dangerous overtaking of cyclists’ offence instead

Attorney General felt passing distance would too easily be challenged in court

Ireland’s Minister for Transport, Shane Ross, says the Government has called a halt on plans for a minimum passing distance law intended to protect cyclists. The Attorney General advised that a specific minimum passing distance would be difficult to enforce and so Ross is now proposing a ‘dangerous overtaking of cyclists’ offence instead, for which a minimum passing distance would not be stipulated.

The minimum passing distance proposal, announced last year, would have made it an offence to pass a cyclist closer than 1m on roads with a speed limit under 50km/h and within 1.5m on roads with a limit of 50km/h or higher.

Ross said: “We had measures ready and prepared for a minimum passing distance of 1.5 for cyclists which is practiced in some other countries, but the Attorney General feels that is not a way forward because of the enforceability measure; that it wouldn’t be possible to do that; it would be challenged; and successfully challenged in the courts.

“There isn’t the technology available at the moment to actually measure the 1.5, in which case it would be challenged in every case, that the technology wasn’t working and you couldn’t prove the actual distance.”

Ross told the Irish Times that there were now plans to make dangerous overtaking of a cyclist an offence, but without specifying a minimum passing distance.

Penalties would be the same as those proposed for the minimum passing distance bill, which were three penalty points and an €80 fine.

Dr Mike McKillen of cyclist.ie pointed out that there is already a law against dangerous overtaking in Ireland, but little evidence that it is enforced when it comes to the dangerous overtaking of a cyclist.

“I fail to see how specifically creating this new offence of ‘dangerous overtaking of a cyclist’ is going to improve on that,” he said.

The Green Party’s Transport Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe told the Irish Examiner that more emphasis should be placed on police enforcement.

“It seems that the Attorney General has adopted a somewhat cautious approach to these much-needed changes. Over 50 cyclists have died on Irish roads in the last five years and we desperately need to improve their safety.

“In the absence of a minimum passing law Minister Ross should proceed with the improvements recommended by the Road Safety Authority in their recent review of minimum passing distances.

"They proposed that An Garda Síochána place a greater emphasis on enforcing unsafe motorist-cyclist interactions, and Minister Ross should sit down with the Minister for Justice to make this happen.”

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

Add new comment

12 comments

Avatar
mikewood | 5 years ago
0 likes

I think the point I was trying to make was that the rider's position is irrelevant and the 1.5m should be measured from the outermost point of the rider, not the centre of the bike. In reality it should be like you would pass another moving vehicle though, on the other side of the road with no oncoming traffic.... 

Avatar
mikewood | 5 years ago
0 likes

It might be possible to measure a distance to a passing vehicle but the retort will be that the cyclist was more than 0.75m from the kerb/edge of the usable road surface which is much more difficult to measure. 

I actually have concerns about the 0.75m/1.5m distances anyway as they seem too close for me if it's based on where the wheels are. If you ride with the tyres 0.75m from the kerb on a mountain bike with 650mm bars then you are potentially dangerously close to a pedestrian on the edge of the pavement at 0.425m

On the other side you could have a truck 1.175m away from your bar ends and that's not enough at any speed, never mind 50mph as you'll get blown towards the kerb by the bow wave and then sucked back in by the depression down the sides. Have a look at a curtainsider truck on the motorway to see what I mean.

And don't get me started on vehicles crossing solid white lines to pass cyclists......... 

Avatar
OnYerBike replied to mikewood | 5 years ago
2 likes

mikepridmorewood wrote:

It might be possible to measure a distance to a passing vehicle but the retort will be that the cyclist was more than 0.75m from the kerb/edge of the usable road surface which is much more difficult to measure. 

I actually have concerns about the 0.75m/1.5m distances anyway as they seem too close for me if it's based on where the wheels are. If you ride with the tyres 0.75m from the kerb on a mountain bike with 650mm bars then you are potentially dangerously close to a pedestrian on the edge of the pavement at 0.425m

On the other side you could have a truck 1.175m away from your bar ends and that's not enough at any speed, never mind 50mph as you'll get blown towards the kerb by the bow wave and then sucked back in by the depression down the sides. Have a look at a curtainsider truck on the motorway to see what I mean.

And don't get me started on vehicles crossing solid white lines to pass cyclists......... 

I don't see where the rider's position comes into this. As I understand it, the 0.75m marked on the 'Close Pass mat' is designed to be indicative of a normal cyclist in secondary position. The idea is to make it clear to drivers that cyclists aren't required - or expected - to cycle in the gutter. There's no suggestion from either Cycling UK (who issued the Close Pass Mats) nor the proposed law in Ireland that this should be considered the maximum distance a cyclist should be from the kerb. It's still perfectly legitimate to ride further out, including taking primary position, and no matter where the cyclist is, an overtaking vehicle should still leave sufficient room.

That said, I do see your point that in some circumstances those 'recommended' distances don't seem far enough. In this regard, the more generic offences of 'dangerous' overtaking might make more sense - although I still think you would find it difficult to secure a conviction if the lorry was over a meter away.

Avatar
CarlosFerreiro | 5 years ago
4 likes

You could solve the "difficult to measure/enforce" issue with a simple change of wording.
On most lane widths giving a 1.5m gap means moving into the next lane, so just make it illegal to overtake (anything) without moving to the other lane. Much easier to assess from photo, video or witness statements, and takes out most of the issues of driver judgement.

Avatar
peted76 | 5 years ago
0 likes

This just translates to 'nothing changing' then by the sounds of it. 

We couldn't prove 1.45m or 1.55 meters.. what a shite excuse, someone should shove the 0.10 meter passes from 'Near Miss of the Day' videos up his nose and tell him to re-iterate that excuse to do nothing and maintain the status quo.

Avatar
Dicklexic | 5 years ago
3 likes

I'm actually inclined to agree with this decision sadly. By stipulating a specific minimum distance you can easily see that without an accurate and reliable/repeatable method for measuring the passing distance, drivers will simply argue that "in their opinion" they were more than 1.5m away. You can imagine it would be very hard to prove a driver was 1.45m instead of his claimed 1.55m for example, thus it would be way too easy for it to fail, and then the driver would walk away scot-free. By being less specific you are hopefully making a successful prosecution more likely, although we would still be relying on the authorities to agree on what is deemed an unsafe pass! 

 

Have the countries that HAVE introduced such laws seen a decent number of successful prosecutions? Or have they often been successfully challenged? Would be interesting to see data on this...

 

Of course the argument that the existing laws should be more robustly policed is totally valid. We've all seen how many shocking close passes are shown on this website (and others) yet the drivers so often never face any sort of sanctions whatsoever.

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to Dicklexic | 5 years ago
0 likes

Dicklexic wrote:

I'm actually inclined to agree with this decision sadly. By stipulating a specific minimum distance you can easily see that without an accurate and reliable/repeatable method for measuring the passing distance, drivers will simply argue that "in their opinion" they were more than 1.5m away. You can imagine it would be very hard to prove a driver was 1.45m instead of his claimed 1.55m for example, thus it would be way too easy for it to fail, and then the driver would walk away scot-free. By being less specific you are hopefully making a successful prosecution more likely, although we would still be relying on the authorities to agree on what is deemed an unsafe pass! 

 

Have the countries that HAVE introduced such laws seen a decent number of successful prosecutions? Or have they often been successfully challenged? Would be interesting to see data on this...

 

Of course the argument that the existing laws should be more robustly policed is totally valid. We've all seen how many shocking close passes are shown on this website (and others) yet the drivers so often never face any sort of sanctions whatsoever.

I don't agree. Having a fixed distance makes it less about the judgement of the driver and it's not that tricky to infer passing distances from a specific camera. Personally, I don't tend to get scared by overtakes when they're more than 1m distance (it's dependant on their speed though), so I wouldn't bother submitting footage if they're more than 1m.

Avatar
alansmurphy | 5 years ago
4 likes

Dangerous - if you don't die it's not dangerous, if you do then there's no evidence. Genius!

 

Avatar
ConcordeCX replied to alansmurphy | 5 years ago
5 likes

alansmurphy wrote:

Dangerous - if you don't die it's not dangerous, if you do then there's no evidence. Genius!

 

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
2 likes

Strange.  A law that seems to work everywhere else somehow won't work in Ireland.  Do I detect the hand of the driving lobby?

If a specified distance isn't going to work, neither is a vaguely phrased law about overtaking a cyclist dangerously, and as pointed out by Dr Mike McKillen, a law already exists but is not enforced, so what exactly is the point of a new one which has the word "cyclist" in it.

Avatar
BehindTheBikesheds replied to burtthebike | 5 years ago
1 like

burtthebike wrote:

Strange.  A law that seems to work everywhere else somehow won't work in Ireland.  Do I detect the hand of the driving lobby?

If a specified distance isn't going to work, neither is a vaguely phrased law about overtaking a cyclist dangerously, and as pointed out by Dr Mike McKillen, a law already exists but is not enforced, so what exactly is the point of a new one which has the word "cyclist" in it.

Does it really work?

IMO no it doesn't, the offence of careless or dangerous driving already exists, IF police were to put as much time into spotting and prosecuting motorists for these long existing offences -or better yet common assault or assault causing actual bodily harm/greivous bodily harm, manslaughter, then we would have the same if not more motorists pulled up.

It ois far easier to say that a person felt fear of harm and that an action was careless/dangerous than trying to use a measure that is virtually impossible to prove.

I've been against the 1.5m rule because it's massively flawed, focusing on enforement of existing laws is hugely better all round IMHO.

Avatar
burtthebike replied to BehindTheBikesheds | 5 years ago
1 like

BehindTheBikesheds wrote:

Does it really work?

IMO no it doesn't, the offence of careless or dangerous driving already exists, IF police were to put as much time into spotting and prosecuting motorists for these long existing offences -or better yet common assault or assault causing actual bodily harm/greivous bodily harm, manslaughter, then we would have the same if not more motorists pulled up.

It ois far easier to say that a person felt fear of harm and that an action was careless/dangerous than trying to use a measure that is virtually impossible to prove.

I've been against the 1.5m rule because it's massively flawed, focusing on enforement of existing laws is hugely better all round IMHO.

Interesting, but such a law, where the mere fact that the victim felt fear of harm is proof of crime, is unlikely to be acted on by the police, witness the fact that such a law already exists but is never, or almost never, enforced.  Given the overworked, uninterested police, I think it is extremely unlikely that they would take reports of cyclists feeling threatened seriously, and even less likely that it would end up in court, and even less likely that the court would convict.

With a specified distance, the crime can be proved beyond doubt, and yes, there is a problem with measuring that distance, but I foresee cheap, light electronic measuring devices for cyclists which will be extremely popular.

Latest Comments