plus they wouldn’t be fat little piggies if they rode.
Its due to lack of road structure to include cycling, the lack of public transport options, and Australia’s love affair with the vehicle which is continuing to hamper the emergence of cycling as a proper method of transport.
I’d appreciate the government taking the initiative and making roads safer for everyone, not just bikes, not just cars, not for the transport groups and companies, but everyone. Making things safer permanently is different from intermittent revenue raising.
It’s not the cars, but the drivers.
Get into a conversation with any modded car guy, and eventually the conversation will turn to near misses, top speeds blablabla, and then the inevitable “but my car is designed to do those speeds, it’s safe”. Yeh, I used to be into cars, and I’m honestly surprised that myself or someone else isn’t dead because of my attitude at the time.
But whatever, I’m sure all the car guys you know are angels.
I don’t disagree with any of your points. I don’t really have any point or argument, I’ve just had a shit morning and am sick of reading the same stuff when there is a blitz.
i just think if it was about safety, they’d be giving warnings before they started handing out fines. especially after they tripled the fines last year, to what i consider a crippling cost. if anyone seriously thinks these fines are comparable to the severity of the offences they are fucking idiots. cops are nothing more than parking inspectors with guns these days. if the govt/cops were serious they might spend some of the revenue raised on public awareness campaigns, installing more bike lanes, driver education, encouraging (safe) cycling etc etc.
Today I saw another nice, powerful VZ SS commodore smashed into a tree.
That tree was fuckin’ close to MY commodore. Lots of destruction can be caused by cars when some douchebag is driving them crazily. Be careful out there boys and girls.
Saw 4 cycle cops down collins street today outside parliment and 8 on foot in a big group.
Also a policeman on motorbike futher down collins before swanston!
Whew!
there is definitely an increase in police prescence but last night on the WNR was saw 3 instances of cops pulling over other vehicles in the space of 10mins around fed sq.
so they are definitely looking for cars/motorbikes as well as cyclists.
still, i wish they wouldnt advertise it as a bike crackdown when the stats seem to indicate that its an overall blitz. i guess it appeals to the anti-cyclist lobby, and still gets the numbers they need.
^ Agreed, but there is a more complex argument behind this, what with the power of the media, 24 hour news cycles etc. I’m not going to go into this now though.
In my professional capacity I’ve left two message with Vic Police media asking for figures regarding the last 4 operations of this kind, to compare the number of cyclists fined with the number of drivers. Haven’t heard anything back yet.
Yeah, my bro works for the Department of Justice as a media advisor or something, and he reckons that they Vic Pol people are horrible to deal with. He said the same when he was a journo.
Cops on bikes ‘hiding’ behind some bushes outside Costco this morning on the Footscray Rd bike path. Wasn’t sure if they were pinging red light runners or random bike checks…probably both.
Seeing as I am a such a law abiding citizen, I rolled right through.
