crunchysteve: Buddha on a bicycle. (0)
crunchysteve ([personal profile] crunchysteve) wrote 2025-05-30 03:57 am (UTC)

Re: Thoughts

Nah, seriously, it's a cultural thing and Australia's 2 largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, have almost European standards of alternative transport, like metro and light rail. (Melbourne has the largest light rail network in the world.) There's a load of political lip service to broader public transport safety when there's a high profile crash, but the upshot is to invariable blame the victim, not the motorist at fault, even if the crash is caused by police undertaking a high speed chase - it's treated as collateral damage.

League of American Bicyclists are an international ally of Australia's Bicycle Network, the latter having better local knowledge. Although Bicycle Network share premises and board members with RACV, the state motoring lobby. Something I consider a conflict of interest, so I have respect for local community bicycle user groups. However the problem of car-centricity is a national political/cultural problem.

Also worth noting, Australia's legal system is more like the UK's and a licence is not a right, it's a privilege, hence driving, in law should be treated the same. Alongside this, Australia's constitution is considered to guarantee freedom of movement provided that movement is lawful, the "legality principle." On that basis, lawful cycling (and we are legally required to use the road, not the footpaths alongside the roads, and are not required to carry hold a licence in order to cycle, cyclists should be recognised as being on the ride by right, while motorists are there by privilege alone. This is very much the approach many member states of the European Union see road usage. Sadly, public culture and political cowardice see it the other way around in Australia, apart from a brief period in the 90s, when I was privileged to be a part of the national cycling lobby. Crikey, we made some inroads, back then, including having bicycles lawfully recognised as vehicles in the national road rule standards.

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