Sir, – Clare Moriarty criticises what she sees as the increasing tendency of motorists to drive through red lights (“Irish drivers’ habit of ‘running reds’ is not a charming quirk,” June 29th).
While nobody would defend such conduct, we can’t ignore one likely cause of this behaviour, namely the frustration caused to motorists by the extraordinary proliferation of traffic lights in urban areas in recent years, often to cater for cyclists.
One well-known commuter route in Dublin illustrates the trend.
The one-mile stretch between Marino Crescent and the Five Lamps now has 10 sets of traffic lights. Four of these were newly installed in 2025 as part of the never-ending two-year construction of a cycle lane along this stretch (25 per cent of the time it took to plan and execute the Apollo moon landings).
RM Block
This amounted to a 66 per cent increase in the number of traffic lights, virtually overnight, on one very short and very busy route.
Bizarrely, none of these new lights relate to the cycle lane itself. One of them is entirely for use by pedestrians despite being in the shadow of a pedestrian footbridge which the city council installed at enormous cost about a decade ago.
The objective of all traffic management in Dublin in recent years has been to terrorise motorists and make driving in urban areas so unbearable that they feel no choice but to cycle or use public transport. Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that there has been an upsurge in drivers taking dangerous liberties at orange lights and running red lights out of sheer frustration. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
This is why some cyclists don’t stop at the lights
Sir, – I am one of those cyclists so hated by many of your letter writers because I break red lights from time to time.
Perhaps it is worth explaining why I (and many others) choose to break lights. The first reason is that some traffic lights only change when a car appears because the heavy car triggers a pressure pad in the road that does not respond to a cyclist.
If you do not break the lights, you have to wait indefinitely for a car to appear. Another reason to break lights is to avoid dangerous traffic where two lanes merge into one and the cars jostling to squeeze into that lane simply ignore cyclists completely. Your life can depend on getting ahead of the traffic.
There are times when I break the lights for convenience. One example is turning left at lights when you can see clearly that there is no traffic. Coming to a halt and starting again is physically tiring.
In many countries, cyclists are legally allowed to break lights at their own risk when turning. Perhaps we could change the law here so that self-righteous drivers no longer have to worry about cyclists breaking the law?
The reality is that drivers and cyclists are not the same. Cars are infinitely more dangerous and kill far more people than cyclists do. Most of their victims die from air pollution but, as we all know, a fair number also die from reckless driving.
Of course, pretty much all pedestrians break the law as well. They don’t cross at designated crossings and they don’t wait for the green man. They take calculated risks knowing that if a car hits them, they will likely be injured or killed but the driver will be okay. Cyclists do the same.
It’s time for drivers to grow up and accept cyclists are different from cars and will behave differently as a result. – Yours, etc,
TOM MOLLOY,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.
