Anti Cycling Legislators in Aus hit a new low.

Kev W

desertcircus wrote: »

You do understand that there is usually a purpose or reason for the existence of a law, right? That they don't simply appear fully formed in the statute books?

I do, of course.

Eamonnator

CramCycle wrote: »

MOD VOICE: I haven't read the thread, I don't want too. It is the only reason cards are not coming out. Trolling is a card and a ban, responding is the same. I will go back and start reading the thread from the start but any trolling, feeding trolls or general wind up shenanigans after this post will be met with a card and a ban. If you do not know for certain if your post is not in one of these categories then either PM me for clarification or don't post.

I wish you well in your journey.

josip

desertcircus wrote: »

Grand. Except breaking a red on a bike at 20kph and breaking a red in an SUV at 40kph aren't the same thing, just as throwing a tennis ball at someone isn't the same thing as throwing an axe at them.

Kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared, divided by two. So if a cyclist on their bike weighs 100 kilos and is travelling at twenty kilometres per hour, and a driver in their car weighs two tons and is travelling at forty kilometres per hour, then the cyclist has a kinetic energy of about 1,512 joules. The car, meanwhile, has a kinetic energy of a hundred and twenty one thousand joules, or roughly eighty times that of the cyclist.

Now, my handlebars are (I think) 40cm width, and a Volkswagen Golf is almost exactly 180cm wide. We'll add an extra 5cm to the bike, just to make calculations easier, and figure out that a cyclist is at least four times more likely to be able to avoid hitting a pedestrian, given that they only have to move about 45cm in either direction to avoid the hit, while the car could need to move a solid three feet. The real figure for how easily a cyclist can evade a collision in this situation is almost certainly far higher, given the lower speed and the fact that a cyclist will have far more time to react than a driver in the same distance, but let's leave the multiplier at four. Plugging that into our kinetic energy calculations from earlier, we can see that the danger level from a car breaking a red light is about three hundred and twenty times as high as the comparable figure for a cyclist.

I bravely submit that a legal system which insists upon treating these two things as identical is a stinking heap of dog vomit. They're not the same thing, and pretending they are does nobody any favours.

*I should point out in the interests of openness that my initial figure of 800, mentioned in an earlier post, was wrong. The correct figure, as broken down above, is 320. If you're furious about my error, read the last post as though it says 320 rather than 800. I don't think it loses much.

Your points are valid and I agree that a car RLJing will do significantly more damage than a cyclist. I don't think it's valid however to try to apply absolute numbers to the risks of RLJing for cyclists and motorists. There are so many other contributing factors in assessing the risk that make any final number open to debate.
For example, have you considered the relative visibility of the bike/car in day/night situations and which would be easier for a pedestrian to spot?

Or those pedestrians who cross at junctions without looking if they hear nothing coming? A RLJing car will at least be audible to a non-looking pedestrian.

I cycle to work 3 days a week, drive the same route 2 days and usually drive at the weekend.
Drivers and cyclists on that route both amber gamble in equal amounts.
The percentage of other cyclists who completely disregard the red or decide that the pedestrian green also applies for them is quite high however, 20-30%. I've seen 1 car RLJing in that time.

RainyDay

josip wrote: »

I cycle to work 3 days a week, drive the same route 2 days and usually drive at the weekend.
Drivers and cyclists on that route both amber gamble in equal amounts.
The percentage of other cyclists who completely disregard the red or decide that the pedestrian green also applies for them is quite high however, 20-30%. I've seen 1 car RLJing in that time.

Do you notice many speeding drivers on your journey, the ones over the speed limit? Do you notice many drivers on their phones?

josip

RainyDay wrote: »

Do you notice many speeding drivers on your journey, the ones over the speed limit? Do you notice many drivers on their phones?

Phones very much so.
Speeding drivers, less so, but that's probably more due to my route.
The downside of my route however is that frequently drivers don't leave enough room when passing.
Eg. I have been hit in the last month, but it wasn't a full impact and didn't knock me off.
It was by a mammy on the school run who IMO pose the biggest risk to me (again partially due to my route and time of commute)

buffalo

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/new-cycling-laws-one-of-the-first-bike-riders-hit-with-319-fine-for-not-wearing-a-helmet/news-story/2301f9cec9572e76555fe372da7a6a38

“I’d just picked the bike up from the bike shop after getting it fixed,” he said.

“It got wrecked in an accident with a taxi on Market St about three weeks ago. I knew about the no helmet laws but I was just riding about a mile and a half home.

Strangely for a news outlet, there's no mention of whether he was wearing a helmet in the original accident.

More seriously - here's a guy who continues to cycle, despite having been in an accident. Exactly the type of thing society should be applauding but instead he's being fined.

check_six

Here are some examples of the perceived criminal activity observed by the writer of that article:

While the vast majority of cyclists kept to the left lane, some riders weaved among the traffic, coming less than a metre from vehicles moving slowly through the rush hour traffic.

At the intersections with Flinders, Crown and Riley streets, a number of cyclists pushed to the front of the traffic queues stopped at red lights, leading to some distance issues between cars and bikes when the lights turned green.

In Randwick, a number of cyclists were spotted riding in the middle lane of the three city-bound lanes, on Alison Rd.

Several weaved among the traffic even though a shared cycle/pedestrian path runs along the northern side of the road.

Along busy Bondi Rd at Bondi, several riders darted between vehicles slowing moving towards the city.

I'm struggling to understand why the writer is just listing off people he has seen cycling. Can anyone help me out here?? What is the matter with Australia?

josip

buffalo wrote: »

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/new-cycling-laws-one-of-the-first-bike-riders-hit-with-319-fine-for-not-wearing-a-helmet/news-story/2301f9cec9572e76555fe372da7a6a38

Strangely for a news outlet, there's no mention of whether he was wearing a helmet in the original accident.

More seriously - here's a guy who continues to cycle, despite having been in an accident. Exactly the type of thing society should be applauding but instead he's being fined.

Reading down through that article here's the bit I like (not sure if it's been mentioned already)

Motorists who do not leave a 1m buffer between their vehicle and a bike when travelling up to 60km/h can be hit with a $319 fine and lose two demerit points.
Those travelling more than 60km/h must leave a 1.5m space.

That would be a real revenue generator over here

tomasrojo

I'm fairly sure the passing-distance law won't be enforced much. Unless you film cars, it's easy to deny (easier than saying "I am wearing a helmet" when you're clearly not), and the police seem much keener on ticketing cyclists anyway.

tomasrojo

Bike Snob NYC writing about this today:

What a stupid, stupid law. No truly great city makes you wear a plastic hat in order to ride a bike, only the second-rate ones like Seattle and Vancouver. Helmeted society cannot flourish. Way to consign yourself to mediocrity.

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ie/2016/03/you-call-that-fine-this-is-fine.html

tomasrojo

The rot had set in by 1948:

ALL RIDE BIKES
IN COPENHAGEN
(By Neville Smith.)
COPENHAGEN: inougn_ i
yield to nobody in my ndmir-
ation of Mr. Hubert Opper-
l man as a sterling representa
tive of Australia's sporting
' nrowess. and though I have
hitherto regarded the bicycle
as a harmless, useful, and
innocuous instrument of pro
gression, I must now confess
that I have temporarily lost
both my enthusiasm for Mr.
Opperman and my kindly, if
condescending, approval of
the safety cycle.
This city of Copenhagen, with a
population of 1,000,000, has 400,000
bicycles, and I have dodged, been
assalied by, jumped out of the
way of, been tinklod at by,, and
anathematised 398,000 of them.
Before the war, they tell me, there
were more than 700,000 bicycles
in Copenhagen. Life must have
been hell then.
They come at you in all shapes
and sizes. There are tall ones,
short ones, shining ones, rickety
ones; some have baskets on their
handlebars, some have babies on
brackets just behind the rider;
over in Sweden soldiers wear
spurs when riding bicycles, for a
reason that I have not been able
to discover; a few minutes ago I
saw a tandem with father and
mother riding in "Daisy-give-me-
your-answer-do" fashion, two kid
dies In a sidecar, and the usual
baby on the back. Quite a family
affair!
ROYALTY TOO
In. most of the bigger Scan
dinavian and Dutch cities the
bicycle Is made use of to an ex
tent unheard of in Australia. They
are ridden by people of all ages,
and of all classes from royalty
down to the errand boy delivering
the week's washing. A fair amount
of the transport of parcels and
packages is made by medium of
the old push-bike, which has
been adapted into some queer
shapes to provide the accommo
dation. To see a youth trundling
along an .affair that looks like a
universal carrier with a bit of
bicycle fastened on the back is
startling, but the youth does not
seem in the least embarrassed.
Of course, places like Amster
dam, Copenhagen, and Stockholm
are mostly flat, and the road sur
faces are good, which reduces the
effort that would be needed, say,
in panting up the Collins-street
hill. Petrol is also short in these
days of restrictions and currency
difficulties. But even so the bike
is more part of daily life than
one would expect.
Over in England the university
cities of Oxford and Cambridge
are noted for their fleets of
bicycles, which glide through the
narrow, winding streets in coveys,
or gaggles, or prides, or some
thing. But Oxford or Cambridge
can look almost deserted com
pared with Copenhagen.
Whizzzz . . . That one missed,
but only just!

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/171441248?searchTerm=Opperman%20road%20safety&searchLimits=l-decade=194|||l-year=1948

(@BehoovingMoving via @cosaingalway on Twitter)

check_six

Wow. That's a bit alarming.

1948 also saw the release of the classic Italian movie The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette). The movie is about a man struggling to get by in post war Italy who pawns everything to get a bike to qualify for one of the few jobs going. The bike gets robbed and the man and his son set off to try and retrieve it. I'm thinking of doing a remake set in Australia but with the Kafka-esque legislators trying to do a good man down through punitive fines and blunt thoughtless laws.

Jawgap

Today’s hoverboard hysteria isn’t so different from the early panic around bicycles

tomasrojo

Jawgap wrote: »

Today’s hoverboard hysteria isn’t so different from the early panic around bicycles

That link is quite funny. "Suffering from bicycle heart"!

check_six

Hoverboards? Weird that I barely remembered the number one exploding toy from last Christmas. Are they still a thing? Anyone spotted them in the wild? The stories associated with them would lead me to believe you would be safer riding in a Mad Max style nitrous fuelled war buggy than one of these hoverboard dealies.

tomasrojo

I see a few variants trundling around.

If people can't be arsed with active travel, this seems like relatively innocuous alternative. Some excercise gained by standing, I suppose.

Jawgap

check_six wrote: »

Hoverboards? Weird that I barely remembered the number one exploding toy from last Christmas. Are they still a thing? Anyone spotted them in the wild? The stories associated with them would lead me to believe you would be safer riding in a Mad Max style nitrous fuelled war buggy than one of these hoverboard dealies.

......still safer than a bike, if certain constituencies are to be believed:D

btw - I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the social workers come for me - we had a hoverboard - my kids do have bikes - and they play rugby!!!

Doctors urge schools to ban tackling in rugby

dub_skav

Jawgap wrote: »

......still safer than a bike, if certain constituencies are to be believed:D

btw - I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the social workers come for me - we had a hoverboard - my kids do have bikes - and they play rugby!!!

Doctors urge schools to ban tackling in rugby

You're a monster

CramCycle

Balance hover boards are still around but they were nowhere near as popular as made out to be. I only see one kid in my area with one and know one person.

Good core workout.

tomasrojo

They were more open in 1937 (last sentence):



The Braidwood Review and District Advocate (NSW), 16 Nov 1937
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/120713032

catbear

I really got the sense that as an emigrant nation Australia cherished material success, and car ownership was an important signifier of that success. The city populations really emptied out to suburbs with the post war rise of the car and only the poorest remained behind. They took to the car culture so completely that no suburb was complete without a drive through bottleshop (off-license).

Cycling as a commuting option just didn't seem to register while I lived there. Cyclists were either vellodrome want-to-bes in matching corporate riding gear, or hipsters with stripped down fixies.

Where cycling in ireland is still considered a sensible commute alternative, in Perth it seemed a statement of competitive aspiration or hipster non conformity (which in its ubiquity was actually conformist).

I had a lot of difficulty just getting a bicycle which allowed me to sit more upright, everything was geared towards speed. After a year and half I just gave up on cycling there, it was too dangerous. Cycle tracks were being used as race tracks by the office set try-hards and serious pileups were common. I had a few close calls on designated cycle tracks where I had to take evasive action to avoid oncoming pelotons that viewed pedestrians and other cyclists as collateral damage.

Bicycles never fell out of use here, but in Australia they were abandoned for the car and then rediscovered by enthusiasts of differing tastes. The corporate want-to-be try-hards in their speed commutes, the baby-boomer cycling gangs in their unsparing crotch bulging cycling shorts dominating sunday morning coffee shops, or the irritatingly predictable accessorizing hipsters now dominate the Australian societies perception of cycling.

To us a bicycle is a utility, it's convenience is self evident whereas in australia to many a bicycle is a statement.

tomasrojo

We're informed 2 cyclists were booked today $425 for "track standing" waiting for signal @ Centennial Pk, Sydney. Are we feeling safer yet?
— Australian Cyclists (@icycleivote) March 9, 2016

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ie/2016/03/the-current-score-nypd-1-vision-zero.html

tomasrojo

Yes, it gets even worse with confirmed reports that the NSW Police Riot Squad have been deployed to fine cyclists.

https://twitter.com/icycleivote/status/707818266073427968

I'm starting to wonder whether "Australian Cyclists" isn't the equivalent of the Road Sofa Authority.

check_six

tomasrojo wrote: »

https://twitter.com/icycleivote/status/707818266073427968

I'm starting to wonder whether "Australian Cyclists" isn't the equivalent of the Road Sofa Authority.

Like I said before, you know things have gone turbo-stupid when you can't tell the reality from a parody.

tomasrojo

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/11/i-am-terrified-of-riding-on-sydney-roads-nsw-cyclists-on-new-road-rules

Some vox pop on poxy cops.

CramCycle

tomasrojo wrote: »

Some vox pop on poxy cops.

That hit with the rear dash cam was nasty

NamelessPhil

tomasrojo wrote: »

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ie/2016/03/the-current-score-nypd-1-vision-zero.html

Someone should let doozerie know!

check_six

Anyone see the names of the political parties in that article: Greens NSW, Australian Labor, and Christian Democratic seem standard, but Animal Justice, and Shooting and Fishing parties? Bit odd.

Although to be fair those in glasshouses shouldn't be throwing stones (Tribe of the Irish, We Ourselves, and Soldiers of Destiny, anyone?).

catbear

check_six wrote: »

Anyone see the names of the political parties in that article: Greens NSW, Australian Labor, and Christian Democratic seem standard, but Animal Justice, and Shooting and Fishing parties? Bit odd.

Although to be fair those in glasshouses shouldn't be throwing stones (Tribe of the Irish, We Ourselves, and Soldiers of Destiny, anyone?).

They have motoring enthusiast party in Queensland.
It's a consequence of mandatory voting, if you can't ignore politics then you at least make it an extension of your hobbies.

tomasrojo

As predicted, the police in NSW have turned out to be a lot more interested in collecting fines off cyclists than enforcing the no-close-passes law.

the amount of fines collected from people riding without helmets totalled $350,262 in March and April, compared with just over $50,000 in the same period in 2015.

In contrast to the number of cyclists penalised, four motorists were fined for not passing cyclists at a safe distance during the period.

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ie/2016/05/things-are-going-to-get-worse-before.html