With Christmas coming up, councillors in Limerick have welcomed a mandatory hi-vis proposal for all cyclists in Ireland as "timely", calling for cyclists to "respect the laws". However, they were quickly shut down by the Green councillors, saying that "preaching about hi-vis is victim blaming".

At a meeting of the Limerick City and County Council, Independent councillor Fergus Kilcoyne of City West proposed that hi-vis jackets, vests, and lights be made compulsory for all riders of bikes and scooters in Ireland.

He also asked the council to write to the relevant departments in the Irish Government to request that this be made into law.

Cllr Kilcoyne said that he has been contacted by delivery drivers and postal workers who have experienced issues with cyclists in the early hours due to low visibility and the darker mornings. He also accused of cyclists listening to headphones and not having awareness of the roads when cycling, a topic which was recently discussed with much fervour in one of our live blogs.

He said: "Some of these cyclists are wearing headphones. They can’t hear what is coming behind them and electric cars can’t be heard, so they need to be more proactive in their care of cycling... They have to have a bit of respect for our laws here as well."

Fianna Fáil councillor Catherine Slattery seconded his proposal, considering it a "timely motion", especially coming up to Christmas.

Along with things like mandatory helmets and bike registrations, making hi-vis clothing mandatory has been a go-to proposal for a while from many who believe that the majority, if not the sole onus of safety when riding a bicycle lies on the cyclist.

Last month, Oxford's police were in the middle of a debate after they issued "lights and hi-vis rucksack instead of a fine" to cyclists so they could "get home safely and legally". And in February, Good Morning Britain, ITV's breakfast show asked social media users this year whether cyclists should have to wear a "hi-vis uniform" to be able to cycle, and the results were a confounding 85 per cent 'yes'.

Just weeks before this, Police Scotland was at the centre of a "victim blaming" row after a chief inspector urged pedestrians to wear "reflective or fluorescent" clothing after six people walking were killed after being hit by other road users in just 13 days.

Such comments were also heard at the Limerick council meeting from Finn Gael councillor Michael Sheahan, who claimed that to put the blame on motorists is "wrong", reports Limerick Post (link is external).

He said: "Only yesterday evening I saw a family of four – two adults, two children – in total black gear walking along the road, and only that the dog had a reflective band I wouldn’t have known they were there."

"As far as I can see, the Green Party have bikes and buses on their mind and that’s it. The rest of us don’t matter. The taxpayers who are paying to keep our roads functioning properly, they don’t count at all."

However, the councillors were quickly shut down by the Green councillor Seán Hartigan, who said that while cyclists do have a responsibility to have lights on their bikes, mandatory hi-vis wear "will do nothing to prevent injuries to cyclists".

He was referring to the long-term Italian study (link is external) in which researchers looked at whether legislation demanding that cyclists wear hi-vis had any impact on safety, and found that it did not.

Results of the 15-year-long study revealed that mandatory high-visibility clothing did not influence the total number of cyclists involved in road collisions, nor did it affect the number of collisions involving cyclists as a proportion of all vehicle collisions.

Cllr Hartigan said: "A debate about mandatory hi-vis clothing is simply a distraction from the need to enforce road traffic laws. We know from international road safety literature that hi-vis is not the issue in road safety terms, but rather distracted driving or failure by the driver to properly scan the horizon for all travel modes.

"Preaching about hi-vis is victim blaming and a distraction from the principle need to stop distracted and inattentive driving,” he declared, hitting out that putting the onus on cyclists to wear high-vis clothing “shirks the duty of the Gardaí to enforce the law when it comes to speeding."

The City East representative proposed a counter motion to write to the Minister responsible for Road Safety, Jack Chambers, and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, asking for increased penalty points to motorists for speeding, too close overtaking of cyclists, parking in cycle lanes, and other behaviours which impact the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

Supporting his proposal, Green Party colleague Saša Novak Uí Chonchúir agreed that lights, as they are mandatory, should be on every single bike, but didn't back the case for hi-vis.

She said: "If we are asking for cyclists or pedestrians to wear hi-vis, I think we should also call for all cars to be painted in bright pink, bright yellow, bright orange, and bright green."

https://road.cc/content/news/councillors-call-mandatory-hi-vis-all-cyclists-305825