Wriggle room required

COMMENT

Another cyclist was killed last week.

That the person in question was a young doctor, soon to be a father, makes it sadder on one level.

On another, harsher level, it should make no difference – every person who dies on the road is a son or daughter, a friend or a partner and will be missed. Some are parents.

Irrespective of who they are, every person who dies on the road will be mourned and grieved for.

The fatality happened on ANZAC day. The cyclist was a son of a friend of a friend, so it touched home. The name of the man in question has been publicised – he’s well known in the cycling community. We’ve offered our condolences; I see no point in naming him here.

The death last week had specific circumstances that can be described rightly as ‘freakish’. That doesn’t lessen the impact for his family and friends.

In the absence of that knowledge, however, the ‘shoot from the hip’ responses that so often dominate discussion in what is euphemistically called the ‘cars versus bikes debate’ (last time I looked debates rarely claimed lives) are sharply highlighted.

Within a short period of the news of the fatality being posted on an authority’s Facebook page, the to and fro started. The ‘cars versus bike debate’ pretty quickly degraded (as this subject almost always does) into a slanging match.

Apart from the fact that body needs to review its social media moderation policies (I posted a comment to that effect and it appears a number of the posts have been cleaned up since), where the exchange happened has less relevance than the substance of it. It was almost as if the fact that a person had died was all but forgotten.

‘Car drivers’ took one side of the debate and ‘cyclists’ the other… I use inverted commas here for a reason. With some rare exceptions, the vast majority of adult cyclists are also car drivers. Thus the label on the debate is simplistic, but you get the idea.

In this particular instance, but also moving beyond it, those commenting on the ‘driver’s’ side of the debate often refer to poor behaviour from cyclists and/or the need to register bikes or get ‘them’ off the road. The ‘cyclists’ refer to drivers out to kill them, deliberately passing just centimetres away, etc.

They’re both hackneyed positions; ones we need to move beyond.

What is very clear to me, increasingly so (as a person who rides both pushbikes and motorcycles -- and drives) is a very clear and present degradation of courtesy and give and take on the road. We are all giving each other less and less wriggle room.

This manifests itself in many ways, the most obvious of which is the speed at which drivers get on the horn when other road users don’t progress at the rate they deem fit.

I’ve observed this impatience with increasing impatience – and in Melbourne at least you’re likely to get a blast if you’re even remotely tardy in stepping on the accelerator.

While there is every indication the tragic death last week would NOT have been avoided by more wriggle room for the rider, many deaths can and would be.

A vehicle forcing past a cyclist, or a delivery scooter rider (or similar vulnerable road user) is something I see every time I drive – and experience almost every time I ride.

When is the penny going to drop that doing this puts the vulnerable road users at a very real risk?

A slight misjudgement by either party, the effect of a poorly repaired piece of road, a sneeze even, can be the difference between a close call and a call to 000.

And at what saving in terms of time? A second here or there? (The same thing applies to those bottom dwellers who refuse to allow vehicles to merge or change lanes. And we’re not even talking a car versus bike debate here – it’s car versus car…)

There are many, many points the parties to these arguments will wish to continue to debate.

Road safety authorities are looking at ‘A Metre Matters’ and similar campaigns… And correctly addressing education on both side of the coin.

Road designers are looking at ways of separating the rapidly increasing numbers of bikes on our urban roads from cars via infrastructure changes. Reality is these programs and builds will take time.

But right now, an easily actionable simple mitigation is available to all of us… And it boils down to a simple thought: give other road users a bit of wriggle room…

Take a breath.

Don’t push past.

And just for a moment imagine that cyclist, or scooter rider, or L-plated motorcyclist, is your brother, sister, father, mother, child or friend…