Man held over Cork road race

From the Irish Times

A road race in which two Traveller men raced sulkies on the main Cork city to Mallow Road on Saturday morning has resulted in man being arrested while more arrests are expected.

Footage of the video, which has been viewed over 10,000 times on YouTube in the three-day period since it was uploaded to the site on May 6th, shows two men riding sulkies; carts with two wheels and a seat but no body pulled by horses.

The footage shows a garda car driving at speed on the road ahead, with its lights and sirens on, however the racers, and other vehicles, do not stop immediately stop.

Instead the 6 minute 34 second-long footage shows a number of near misses as the riders, and the vehicle in which the man recording the footage is travelling, narrowly avoid oncoming traffic, with several oncoming cars forced to drive along the hard shoulder to avoid the riders.

Superintendent Con Cadogan of Gurranabraher Garda station in Cork described the incident as “extremely serious”.

“The matter is being fully investigated at the moment. The gardaí arrested one male person at the scene in what were extremely difficult circumstances at the time. We are following a definite line as regards a number of other people who were involved,” he said.

A spokesman for Pavee Point, the national Traveller resource centre, described the incident as “completely unacceptable and a potentially catastrophic misuse of a public road”.

“We call for anybody contemplating such activities in the future to stop and instead think of the safety of other road users, their families and their animals.”

Referring to part of the footage which appeared to show four vehicles lined across the road in a “line abreast” pattern to obstruct pursuing gardaí, the spokesman added: “The attempt to obstruct the gardaí when they were seeking to bring an end to a very dangerous incident is obviously unacceptable.”