Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
In Nobody Needs This, a new series for The Journal, Emer McLysaght focuses her eagle eye on the trends, products and notions we can do without. It’s not all giving out, however. She’ll also be keeping up with what’s catching her attention, keeping people interested and, quite frankly, driving her mad.
I LIVE NEAR a busy junction in Dublin 8; a crossroads with traffic lights, pedestrian lights, filter lanes, yellow boxes – there’s a lot going on.
Driving home recently I slowed to a stop at the junction as the light switched from amber to red. The driver of the car behind me, who I’d noted in my rearview mirror had been speeding up in anticipation of me breaking the light and with an obvious plan to do the same, leaned on his horn in rage. Then, in a move I can only imagine was fuelled by the divil himself, he overtook my stationary vehicle – traffic light still very red – and zoomed past me, turning right through a thankfully-empty, green-manned pedestrian crossing.
“But Emer”, I hear you say, “maybe this driver was on his way to a medical emergency. Maybe his partner was crowning? Maybe there were outstanding circumstances that could explain his behaviour?”
Nah. This guy just couldn’t believe that some silly bint had held him up at a light he intended to “make it through”. He had the beetroot visage of a person who spends every second behind the wheel cutting corners and close passing cyclists. He’s also one of an alarmingly expanding number of road users who see a red light as merely a suggestion.
It might have been the first time I’d been overtaken at a red light, but it certainly wasn’t the first time I’ve been beeped at for stopping at one. Maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it’s a lack of enforcement and accountability, maybe it’s a symptom of the individualism of late-stage capitalism, but we have got to stop driving like lunatics.
The Road Safety Authority states that a driver must not proceed beyond the stop line (or the traffic light if there is no line) on an amber light unless it would be unsafe to do so. You are not supposed to coast on through as it switches from amber to red. It’s becoming the norm for multiple cars to carry on through the amber and red lights, as if it’s a social contract we’re all sleepwalking into, pedestrians and safety be damned.
I had a driving instructor in my early twenties, an older man with the thousand-yard stare of a person who’d had to engage the dual controls more times than anyone should have to endure. He had mantras he’d repeat that stay with me to this day:
“Never speed up approaching a traffic light.”
“Don’t worry about the ball in the street, worry about the child coming after it.”
“Pay attention to the car in front of you, but also to the car in front of him.”
He also told me to imagine a yellow box junction to be electrified. If you drove on and blocked it when you weren’t supposed to, you and the car would get a shock. At that same junction near my house I would dearly love to rig up some kind of taser system for those drivers who must feel compelled by the power of Christ to roll onto the yellow paint, sure that they can squeeze through before the light changes or, more often than not, too busy looking at the phone to notice what they’re doing.
When you bring your car in for an NCT, instead of making everyone sit in the grim little holding pen looking through the window like new dads gazing into a 1950s hospital nursery, they should quiz those waiting on the rules of the road. If you don’t pass, you fail the NCT. I’d particularly like questions that focus on indicator use on a roundabout, test knowledge of lane use on a motorway, and demonstrate how utterly craven it is to assume right of way when turning left across a cycle line with a flashing filter light.
Stop breaking red lights. Stop breaking amber lights. Check your mirrors for cyclists, and then check again. And remember, you are not in traffic. You are traffic.
Today is National Pigeon Day, our beautiful and misunderstood erstwhile postmen of the sky. Watch a two-minute documentary about Daniel, Stephen’s Green’s “Pigeon Man”, follow Pam the Pigeon or learn about Tomm, who rescues and rehabilitates injured pigeons on the streets of Manchester.
I went to see The Whiteheaded Boy at The Abbey this week and kept imagining people walking past the theatre listening to the gales of laughter rolling out and wondering what was happening in there.
It’s a reimagining of Lennox Robinson’s 1916 comedy, set in the late 1970s somewhere around Cork or Limerick, about the favourable treatment of a youngest son and discontent of his siblings. Worth seeing alone for Clare Barrett as the hilarious matriarch. It runs until 25 July.
If you’ve been a live music fan for any length of time in Ireland you’re probably familiar with the ticket reselling site Toutless, which has been on the go for almost twenty years. In a statement to users they’ve announced they’re building a new platform in order to respond to the ticketing industry “shifting under our feet”. They say “scammers are operating at scales we’ve never seen before. The current Toutless architecture isn’t built to handle what they are throwing at us on a daily basis”. You can donate here and find out more here.
Emer will be back next Friday morning with more recommendations.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say