Sir, – In your editorial (June 26th), you have made a commendable appeal to all road users to improve their behaviour towards each other.
However, in your pursuit of balance you have perpetuated a false equivalence by apportioning equal responsibility to all road users.
The overwhelming burden of responsibility lies with drivers to not strike vulnerable road users with their mechanically propelled vehicles, not vice versa.
All of the hi-vis vests in the world will not make someone on a bicycle more visible to a driver who is looking at their phone. The best plastic cycling helmets on the market cannot protect a person from a driver who routinely breaks the speed limit. No amount of pedestrian or cyclist vigilance can account for the outrageous fact that we permit heavy goods vehicles with large, inherent blind spots to access our urban areas on a daily basis.
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It is time for us to get serious in this debate. It is the duty of those who create the danger to look out for, and protect, the vulnerable.
Where drivers fail to adhere to that duty of care, we must hope that the Garda Síochána will intervene to remove them, and the danger that they bring, from our roads.– Yours, etc,
KIERAN RYAN,
Drumcondra,
Dublin 3.