The Road Safety Authority has made some particularly watery comments on the mooted - but shelved - plans for a close-pass law to make cycling safer.
Having watched police forces in the UK perform close-pass operations for a couple of years now, the Irish Government promised to introduce legislation.
It would have meant drivers were legally obliged to allow a 1 metre gap when passing cyclists. And on roads where the speed limit was above 50km per hour, the distance was to increase to 1.5 metres.
However, just a few months after Minister for Transport Shane Ross said it was happening, the new law was put on the shelf.
Apparently his legal advice was that it would be unworkable and unenforceable in the Republic.
There seems to be very little understanding in Government circles that cyclists want the legislation as a means to changing driver behavior rather than securing prosecutions.
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If the new law was introduced, it would create a debate around, and draw attention to, the need for drivers to pass cyclists more carefully.
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It would also enable extreme cases of close-passing, especially those captured on cyclists’ cameras, to become a Garda matter.
Furthermore, if the legislation was in place, the Garda would be put under pressure to enforce it, or at least raise awareness around it.
The head of the Road Safety Authority, Liz O’Donnell, has made it clear that her agency is not in favour of creating a new offence of close-passing.
While the RSA is charged with working to make the roads safer, O’Donnell has suggested in an interview with The Sunday Business Post that close passing legislation is not justified.
For that reason, she says, the RSA has decided on a token commitment to the idea of safe passing because there is no evidence to go further.
Any move to introduce the close-passing law would need to be “evidence based”.
“We still support it in terms of a voluntary, advisory sort of instruction to motorists,” she said.
“It’s in the rules of the road to have a safe passage distance for cyclists when you’re overtaking them.”
It’s not the first time the RSA has taken a questionable approach to cycling safety of late. One of its “experts” penned a particularly obnoxious column for the Irish Independent recently.
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