Police target South Australian cyclists

Police have 'launched a safety 'blitz''
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...09/2134767.htm) on cyclists
failing to obey road rules, using the number of cyclists killed in
accidents deemed the responsiblity of someone driving a motor vehicle as
a bizarre justification for the 'crackdown'.


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deejbah

deejbah Wrote:
Police have 'launched a safety 'blitz''
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...09/2134767.htm) on cyclists
failing to obey road rules, using the number of cyclists killed in
accidents deemed the responsiblity of someone driving a motor vehicle as
a bizarre justification for the 'crackdown'.

Nice level playing field in SA, as obviously SAPOL hasn't remembered a
few things that occured in the last four years.

http://www.woj.com.au/?s=Eugene+McGee&submit=search


--
cfsmtb

deejbah wrote:
Police have 'launched a safety 'blitz''
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...09/2134767.htm) on cyclists
failing to obey road rules, using the number of cyclists killed in
accidents deemed the responsiblity of someone driving a motor vehicle as
a bizarre justification for the 'crackdown'.

Fair point. However, doesn't it make it much more difficult for our
various cycling lobby groups to claim the tactically valuable Moral
High Ground when car commuters get to see cyclists brazenly breaking
road rules every day?

I know that the red light runners irritate me.


BTH

In aus.bicycle on Wed, 9 Jan 2008 23:32:15 -0800 (PST)
BT Humble wrote:

Fair point. However, doesn't it make it much more difficult for our
various cycling lobby groups to claim the tactically valuable Moral
High Ground when car commuters get to see cyclists brazenly breaking
road rules every day?

I know that the red light runners irritate me.

And a lot of cyclists too.

Cyclists do it because they can. There are various ways of justifying
it, all of which are flimsy at best, but people will do the most
amazing things to justify their own selfishness.

Problem is... well it is herding cats isn't it?

How can it be stopped? The only way is to make the risk not worth the
reward. And that means identifying cyclists so they can be caught in
the same way registered vehicles are. Which is rather a difficult
job.

Not just working out how to fit a registration label that can be read
by both machines and people, but what to do about a bicycle that
doesn't have one. Hard to chase, hard to catch.

Public campaigns won't work because those who run red lights are quite
certain they are perfectly justified to do so. Whether they use the
"no harm" excuse or the "sustainable transport should have different
rules" excuse or the "safer than being in traffic" excuse, they are
certain that their convenience is more important than any rule. So a
campaign saying they shouldn't is going to have as much effect as a
campaign saying speeding drivers have small dicks if that campaign
isn't backed up by cameras and fines.

Work out how to register cyclists, work out how to catch unregistered
ones that do a runner, work out how to manage child cyclists in that
regime, then bicycles will become part of the transport network.

(I wonder if RFID chips could work, with cops and parking cops
equipped with hand held scanners, and a backpack full of locks. A
bike without a chip gets locked up and the truck comes by later to
impound it. Plainclothes spotters at intersections with readers walk
out, scan the bike, and slash the tyres to stop the owner riding off
then lock the bike... Only cost each rider a couple of hundred a year
to fund, surely!)

Zebee

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

Work out how to register cyclists, work out how to catch unregistered
ones that do a runner, work out how to manage child cyclists in that
regime, then bicycles will become part of the transport network.

(I wonder if RFID chips could work, with cops and parking cops
equipped with hand held scanners, and a backpack full of locks. A
bike without a chip gets locked up and the truck comes by later to
impound it. Plainclothes spotters at intersections with readers walk
out, scan the bike, and slash the tyres to stop the owner riding off
then lock the bike... Only cost each rider a couple of hundred a year
to fund, surely!)

Are you serious? (I suspect not). I can think of at least a dozen
social ills, any one of which could be attacked by similar
zero tolerance overkill and with a better payoff. Red light runners
irritate me too, but the actual real harm they do is only likely to
be to themselves.

--
beerwolf

beerwolf Wrote:
Red light runners irritate me too, but the actual real harm they do is
only likely to be to themselves.

Harsh observation, but probably has some validity to it.

On the subject of cycling incidents we've all probably seen some
terrible bunch crashes either on the telly or in real life, but they
totally pale when compared to the carnage that can occur when things go
wrong and motorised vehicles & humans are involved. Any observation of
the RTA and TAC daily stats will bear that up, as will terrible
incidents on Florida's Interstate 4 in the US.

To paraphrase a article in yesterdays Age, I've never heard of a
similar cycling mishap that involved a combination of ten accidents,
involving 70 bicycles, that killed four people and injured 38 others.
With five of them in critical condition, according to the authorities,
with the largest of the accidents involved 43 bicycles.


--
cfsmtb

In aus.bicycle on Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:20:05 GMT
beerwolf wrote:
Zebee Johnstone wrote:

(I wonder if RFID chips could work, with cops and parking cops
equipped with hand held scanners, and a backpack full of locks. A
bike without a chip gets locked up and the truck comes by later to
impound it. Plainclothes spotters at intersections with readers walk
out, scan the bike, and slash the tyres to stop the owner riding off
then lock the bike... Only cost each rider a couple of hundred a year
to fund, surely!)

Are you serious? (I suspect not). I can think of at least a dozen

Not really. However it does have to be thought about.

social ills, any one of which could be attacked by similar
zero tolerance overkill and with a better payoff. Red light runners
irritate me too, but the actual real harm they do is only likely to
be to themselves.

Well I can see that world peace is a better thing to strive for than
road safety for cyclists, so obviously no one should bother about road
safety for cyclists.

What else you can do isn't the point, can you do this? And why not?
Why is it overkill? If the technology to register bicycles was
available at a price that could be covered by say $200/yr per cyclist
what are the reasons not to do it?

Zebee

"Zebee Johnstone" wrote:

Why is it overkill? If the technology to register bicycles was
available at a price that could be covered by say $200/yr per cyclist
what are the reasons not to do it?

Because we would see a drop in cycling by.. ooh.. say 50-70% at that 'road
safety fee'. And an overall reduction in road safety with more cars on the
roads and fewer cyclists about (oops, sorry people on bikes)

--
Cheers
Peter

~~~ ~ _@
~~ ~ _- \,
~~ (*)/ (*)

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

What else you can do isn't the point, can you do this? And why not?
Why is it overkill? If the technology to register bicycles was
available at a price that could be covered by say $200/yr per cyclist
what are the reasons not to do it?

$200/yr is the reason not to do it.

For those who ride a LOT, $200 may be easily absorbable into the budget,
because you're spending a lot more than that on a bike anyway.

But "they" only form a small proportion of riders.

The vast majority have cheap bikes, commonly around the $200 mark for the
entire bike, so a yearly licence is a joke.

The bike is cheap enough to give away, or stow in the garage never to be
touched again.

So, those people still have to get where they're going, only option left is
to drive. You're left with now disused bike paths, now only covered by the
occasional walker and their dog, further funding will be scrapped, and spent
on roads that are now carrying the new ex-riders. Except the measly amount
that WAS being spent on bike paths doesn't cover the additional workload on
the roads for the single-car-per-person that are using it now.

End result is the city is more stuffed than they were before all this started.
--
Linux Registered User # 302622
http://counter.li.org

On 2008-01-10, Zebee Johnstone (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
What else you can do isn't the point, can you do this? And why not?
Why is it overkill? If the technology to register bicycles was
available at a price that could be covered by say $200/yr per cyclist
what are the reasons not to do it?

About $190 of that would be a good reason not to do it.

--
TimC
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