YOU’RE standing at a city pedestrian crossing, with cars backed up on either side of the lights. Your “walk” light goes green and you step off the kerb.
Suddenly a blurred object zaps past you, missing you by millimetres. As it dissolves into the traffic, leaving you shaken and furious, you get a vague impression of two wheels and a figure wearing a helmet.
And there isn’t a thing you can do about it, other than shake your fist and shout redundant expletives at the long-vanished perpetrator.
It’s not his or her fault that you didn’t end up in a heap in the gutter, or in hospital – but it’s not worth calling the police, because cyclists cannot be traced and they know it.
This is an extreme case, of course. Most push-bikers are good and responsible citizens who obey the traffic rules but many city cyclists, like drivers, are in a perpetual hurry. Unlike drivers, though, they are able to flout one-way signs and run red lights with only the slimmest chance of getting caught. They ride two or three abreast, preventing cars from passing. They mount the footpath, weaving in and out of hapless pedestrians. Then they disappear, leaving us fuming and impotent. It shouldn’t be allowed – so how to punish the culprits?
A bike registration and taxation scheme has often been proposed but never seriously considered by government. The South Australian transport department, lobbied hard to introduce legislation recently, said: “The administration costs of introducing and operating a registration scheme for cyclists would far outweigh the benefits.”
Bicycle SA, in contrast, believes that cyclists should actually get a tax rebate. “Why should a cyclist pay for registration or have another barrier put up to stop them from riding when they’re actually saving the economy?” said a spokesman for the lobby group. “Nationally the current rate of cycling is saving $150 million in health costs, $64 million in congestion costs and $10 million in greenhouse emission costs.”
That last point alone is virtually unanswerable. As a nation, we cannot be seen to be discouraging what is essentially a healthy and environmentally-friendly form of transport. Registration might help to catch a small proportion of villains but why use a ruinously expensive sledgehammer to smash a few nuts? It would make far more sense to prevent anti-social behaviour in the first place.
It’s quite possible many cyclists don’t even realise how potentially dangerous their behaviour is. Before we can legally drive a car, we have to take lessons. It’s the same with motorbikes – you’re not let loose on the roads until you’ve passed a stringent test. But what happens when we want to ride a pedal-bike for the first time?
Mum and Dad make sure our training wheels are fixed on properly and we hop up on the saddle before zooming off, yelling “Wheeeeee! Look at me!”
For we never make the official transition from child to adult rider. As youngsters, the road – or footpath – belongs to us and our parents are there to watch out for danger. But from that cathartic day when the training wheels come off, the bikes simply get bigger and faster. And that’s where the real problem lies – not with lack of accountability but lack of education.
So let’s put the brake on those vengeful, if natural, thoughts of tax and registration, and accept that it will never happen. Apart from the practical difficulties and cost, most cyclists are also car drivers and pay their taxes accordingly, so yet another tax won’t help. Anyway, registration of motorised vehicles is far from a panacea for all the ills of the road. There are plenty of users in all categories – trucks, cars, motorbikes – who break the rules with impunity, even if you do manage to take down their rego.
Prevention is far more effective than punishment, and education has to be the route to travel. The only body to provide nationally standardised training, AustCycle (www.austcycle.com.au), like AustSwim, is a network of franchisee providers who employ accredited teachers. AustCycle’s NSW pilot scheme last year was so successful it is to be extended Australia-wide. Additionally, every state and territory runs proficiency courses at all levels but all these schemes are voluntary.
It’s hard to see how cycle education can be made compulsory without coming back to the administrative problems but incentives could work: for example, vouchers for free or subsidised courses with each geared bike sold. This would be accompanied by a campaign to persuade adult riders that however outstanding a child cyclist they were, there is still plenty for them to learn.
Until this happens, too many of them will continue to deserve the “Lycra lout” label as they whizz off down the road – or footpath – with their inner four-year-old still yelling: “Wheeeeee! Look
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