7 News story on cycling safety tonight (Wed 7 July)
Howdy cyclists,
Tonight's Channel 7 News is doing a story (or maybe even a 7 News special report) on cycling and safety in Adelaide.
As we know some people who are kept in in dark rooms and not often let out (editors) things might come up rosey.... although I wish I did get that haircut. .. and thanks to all the motorists who beeped their horns and revved their engines as they passed.
If you are reading this and want to complain please go here or here and if you want to get more involved in cycling advocacy join BISA.
Tonight's Channel 7 News is doing a story (or maybe even a 7 News special report) on cycling and safety in Adelaide.
As we know some people who are kept in in dark rooms and not often let out (editors) things might come up rosey.... although I wish I did get that haircut. .. and thanks to all the motorists who beeped their horns and revved their engines as they passed.
If you are reading this and want to complain please go here or here and if you want to get more involved in cycling advocacy join BISA.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by heather on -
Angus, I think you mean tonight Wednesday but 7 July.
Good idea to add the links.
If you want to contact more MPs, Prospect BUG has included many email addresses in the file Contact_Politicians. See www.adelaidecyclists.com/group/bugprospect
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Permalink Reply by Gus K on -
Ah yes,.. stupid non digital watch.
I've edited the title so I don't look bad.
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Permalink Reply by JDL on -
First part of the story, about a cycling education course looked good... However I'm not sure cyclists asking for the city speed limit to be lowered is doing us any favours....
Drivers' attitudes are far more important to maintain/improve than lowering speed limits in the small area of the CBD. Cyclists on prime time TV asking drivers to be forced to drive slower is hardly going to improve drivers' attitudes.. And in the unlikely event the speed reduction was implemented it's only in the city anyway (if I heard it correctly over my kids!) so would only benefit a fairly small amount of cyclists...
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Permalink Reply by Wombat on -
The eventual aim would be, I would imagine, that any reduction in speed limits happens in a similar way to the last one, where one council picks it up (as Unley did) and others follow suit. Unley currently has a 40km/h limit and it would not be hard to change the limits for the city also.
There have been other discussions on Adelaide Cyclists on this topic and Jeremy Miller has made some very good points (although I just had a quick scan through his blog posts and can't find them right now).
There are places around the world where city councils have gone out on their own to change things for cyclists and this almost always means a drop in the speed limits. For instance, Hackney Borough in the UK have changed their speed limits (2 years ago last month) down to 20mp/h with a huge increase in trips made using bicycles being met by a decrease in the number of cyclists being injured or killed in accidents.
It is worth the fight to get this done, even if it takes a long time to get there. A speed reduction in the city would have benefits for all cyclists in Adelaide either directly or indirectly.
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Permalink Reply by P'An-Tau Jiricek-Scott on -
None. You can't go faster than thirty through the city during peak hour anyway, so it won't make a difference......unless they start fining cyclists doing fifty on their roadies :P
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Permalink Reply by VeloAvenger on
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My thoughts exactly. There's so many lights that are even red with no other traffic that you only reach the speed limit a fraction of the time spent on city streets.
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Permalink Reply by Wombat on
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These points are true, but none of them make any difference to the idea that by making the speed limit 30km/h (for instance, matching the 20mp/h from Hackney) car drivers are being deprived of their right to get from point A to point B uninhibited in the shortest possible time. Whether they are physically able to do the current speed or not is irrelevant to their ideas of self and of liberty and rights.
This is the emotional and illogical argument we have to find a way to combat... together.
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Permalink Reply by Gus K on
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When you do these media things, especially for TV news, you say a lot and only a little can be used. I actually said that life is getting faster, cars are being driven faster because we are all in need to get somewhere now. If a car driver is frustrated by the speed of their journey don't blame cyclists, they are actually taking cars off the roads.
My point that was partly used was that speed limits need to be re-enforced because "the damage to a cyclist from a car travelling at 30km/h or 40km/h could be less than a car travelling at 50 or 60km/h. That is the speed of cars using the CBD and suburban streets is increasing and when those cars come to T intersections they don't often slow down.
On Wombat's point about 40km/h speed limits in Unley you could listen to the podcast I just posted with Jeremy MIller interviewing the Thinker in Residence, Fred Wegman, on road safety. But to save you getting to the point in the audio I can refer you you to the transcript.
Jeremy: So, I like the idea of introducing elements of intrigue and uncertainty, sometimes, particularly into lower speed, neighbourhood style environments.
Prof. Wegman: Yeah. For me, it starts with a functional classification as you call it, to make clear what function the road has to perform. Then I'm very much in favour of safe and credible speed behaviour. And I'm pretty much in favour of giving a predictable road environment to the road user so he knows what to expect from the road and he knows what to expect from other road users.
Jeremy: We have, in Adelaide, as you'd be aware, there are several limits of speeds that are applicable in the metropolitan area. Some might argue that they're too high across the board, whether or not we should have a 50km/h speed limit in the center of Adelaide, particularly when we have a lot of vehicles which are capable of accelerating to that speed very quickly, as well. Large, powerful cars are one of the aspects of the Australian car driving culture. But when we compare that to a suburb, say like Unley in South Australia. I don't know if you're familiar with yet, but I'm sure you will be.
Prof. Wegman: I've been there.
Jeremy: OK. They've had a 40km an hour speed limit for 11 years now and, in conjunction with that, they did a lot of traffic management strategies within their local council area. The only local council in South Australia who adopted that speed limit and very radical at the time, but the result of that has been very much a safe and convenient neighbourhood environment. I only say that anecdotally by looking at the number of children who cycle to Unley Primary School. Whereas a lot of primary schools have seen a reduction in bicycle use and they've been taking out their bicycle racks, the bike racks at Unley Primary are full every day. I think that is, very much, a correlation of that safe neighbourhood speed, perhaps the location of where Unley Primary School is as well. But we have a very safe and convenient access to that school for the local kids. Whereas that's not the case for a lot of other primary schools who are stuck in high speed traffic, urban environments.
How does that compare to, say, the examples in Holland in as far as local, neighbourhood speed limits and also the responsibility of the car and certainly the responsibility of the driver, that if they have an accident with a cyclist or pedestrian? It's usually the driver who is deemed to be at fault in the first instance, in some of the European countries.
Prof. Wegman: The first question: How does this road environment, such as in Unley, relate to how kids are coming to school and whether parents do see a need to bring their kids because they're considered unsafe or whatever. An interesting example you mentioned, I'm certainly going off of that whether that's fully right and that's for these residents and these children. It's important that they have an environment like that because I've travelled these Unley streets and they are pretty wild. If you have a bad mood and would like to travel faster than 40 k...
Prof. Wegman: It's more impossible to do, I see it every day.
Jeremy: ...it's more than impossible to do that. Oh, OK. But it's an interesting concept so to say.
Prof. Wegman: Yeah.
Jeremy: We have in Europe far more narrow streets, if you talk about the residential streets. In Europe, it's not unusual to make these streets 30 k. Whether you can make 30km/h or 40km/h or 50km/h in these fairly wide residential streets here in South Australia in Adelaide, I don't know yet. I have to make up my mind. But, I learned that in the past it was very traditional to go by bike to a primary school and that, in the meantime, that has been changed over here. Same is true for secondary schools, high schools where I learned in the past in Australia, it's very usual to travel by bike, and now...
Prof. Wegman: Yes, it's more common for the parents to drive the children to school.
Jeremy: There's a cultural element and it has to do, of course, with sort of time of everybody's busy travelling to a job and it seems like that's an important element. Talking about who's at fault in a crash, that's interesting to learn that there was a minister in the past in the Netherlands who changed the law and came to the conclusion that, by definition, the car driver's responsible for a crash with a pedestrian or a cyclist. But they changed it again back.
Prof. Wegman: Right.
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Permalink Reply by heather on
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Angus, I read the transcript with Jeremy and Prof Wegman.
It makes sense to lower the speed limit in the CBD.
I really like the idea of banning car parking in many CBD streets.
Adelaide City has very cheap off-road car parking, compared with Sydney and Melbourne.
It could cope with reducing supply and upping prices,
and so encouraging more to use public transport into the city, or even cycle.
Then the on-street car parking areas could be converted to bicycle lanes.
Think how nice it would be to cycle east along North Tce from King William St,
without being jammed between opening doors and moving vehicles.
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Permalink Reply by Wombat on
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Banning on street parking would reduce the ACC's income by $M's of dollars a year. This would definitely have to be picked up by the off-street parking stations... or they could introduce a toll/tax for taking your car into the city like London has. That would stop ppl in their tracks.
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Permalink Reply by William Whittaker on -
Actually, Adelaide City Council has been rather industrious in reducing on street and free parking already. If anything, removing on street parking increases their revenue - they own the Upark facilities around the city, I believe.
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Permalink Reply by Gus K on
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Whoops! Sorry wrong link! I deleted my reply and need to repost it,....
.. I just noticed that some of the transcription I pasted into this conversation has the names of Jeremy and Prof Wegman switched around a few paras in. I can't change it here now but have fixed it in the full transcription which you can read here.
© 2013 Created by Gus K.
