A simple stroll has become a dangerous pastime, thanks to Dublin's menacing fleet of arrogant cyclists, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
AH, CYCLISTS. What a lovely bunch they are. They break red lights. They never indicate. They travel the wrong way down one-way streets. And then they expect you to admire them. The other week a friend of mine narrowly escaped being run over on a pedestrian crossing by a cyclist who thought that the rules of the road did not apply to him. As she remonstrated at his rapidly retreating back he shouted over his shoulder, "It's still better than cars."
Is it now? Is it better than cars? The pedestrians of Dublin have a difficult relationship with the city's motorists, who break red lights, who never indicate etc (see above). But there is this much to be said for Dublin motorists: they don't drive along the pavement except in extreme circumstances.
Dublin cyclists travel on the pavement as a matter of simple routine. This may mean, as it did in our house last week, that your guests are almost demolished by a cyclist on the pavement as they exit your front door.
It may mean, as it did on the morning that I am writing this, that you nearly have a coronary as a cyclist hurtles past you from behind, missing you by inches, as you are walking along the pavement, minding your own business, at the top of Harcourt Street. This cyclist swept over the two Luas tracks and travelled, it need hardly be said, against the direction of the one-way traffic before making his way down the crowded pavement on the opposite side. Yes, he looked like a professional cyclist.
It may mean, as it did at noon on Wednesday, May 21st, that you are chatting with your friend on the pavement in Fairview, when a very nice looking lady, all in black, cycles past you without a care in the world. My friend and I raised impotent fists, and wished that we had umbrellas to shake. We felt a bit like those people in the film The Matrix. You know, the ones who wear all those lovely leather clothes and can run upside down and are part of a tiny minority who are charged with saving the world.
Lonely is, I suppose, the word I'm looking for. Incandescent with rage, whenever a cyclist shaves past us on the pavement (which was, and still is, every ruddy day) but firmly convinced that we were the only ones who really saw the spreading conspiracy.
But there are straws in the wind. First of all Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author, wrote in the Guardian about how people cycling on the pavement in Miami Beach made him furious. Irvine Welsh has survived many difficult life experiences; it is unlikely that anyone would call him an old lady. The article was entitled "I'm Still Mr Angry". He nearly hit one pavement cyclist, a course of action The Irish Times does not recommend). And then last Tuesday Seán Finn of Kilmainham wrote in to this newspaper. It was then that we knew that we were not alone.
Finn was wondering if it is going to take a death or a serious injury before the gardaí do anything about high-speed cyclists hurtling along our pavements. For Finn's more embittered pedestrian comrades the answer to this question is an emphatic yes.
When was the last time you saw a member of An Garda Síochána on the pavement, unless his car is parked on the pavement? The gardaí just don't know this is going on, and when they find out it will take several extremely expensive reports before they can do anything about it.
Our parliamentary representatives are worse again, although perhaps a bit of leafleting for the Lisbon Thing might put them wise to it. Our only hope lies with our local councillors, so you can see how bad things are.
Pavements used to be sacred places within the urban landscape. Children could walk there. Old people could make their way to the shops unmolested. Humans, devoid of any protective covering, could travel along them at their own speed. That was before cyclists, who somehow manage to be both smug and manic at the same time, decided that pavements were a legitimate target in their never-ending war on the car. The pedestrians and the pavement and city life itself are the collateral damage in this battle. So much for the environmental benefits of cycling.
It is amusing that the chairman of the Dublin Cycling Campaign wrote in to this newspaper last Thursday to blame the civic authorities for the fact that adults have taken to cycling on the pavements, terrorising their fellow citizens and incidentally - I just throw this in, in a light-hearted, nonchalant way - breaking the law. Amusing, but not convincing.
We pedestrians, cynical after so many assaults, are beginning to come to the conclusion that not all cyclists, despite their frantic haste, are delivering kidneys to the transplant units of our paediatric hospitals. Yet they all look so stressed. So we have taken to shouting at them, things like "Is the road not big enough for you?" and "Will your mammy not let you ride in the road?" So far we have only one recorded apology, which came from a Chinese cyclist who duly left the pavement and cycled in the road. He seemed to survive that little transfer quite well, but of course it will never catch on.