From the little I've read about it, it seems there is a lot of bad feeling between motorists and cyclists in Australia at the moment. As far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong) it's not entirely uncommon for people to deliberately take physical action against cyclists; pedestrians pushing them over or motorists proactively running into them. Amazingly, people seem to think this might have some kind of link with the Australian women's road racing team horrors in Germany. With it being fairly prominent (or maybe not as much as would have been hoped) in the press, the suggestion is it has aroused a lot of comment relating to cycling on the roads of Australia in general.Whilst things here have their tensions and dangers, I'm pleased to say it hasn't escalated to that level (yet anyway).
Maybe what I'm reading about are isolated and rare cases, brought into the spotlight because they're so shocking and unbelievable? I certainly hope this is the case but fear it may not be.
I recall mentioning to someone vaguely recently (I can't remember who but seem to think it was someone cycling with me) about how Australia must be a lovely place to cycle as there is so much coastline to go round. His response was that it's a really dangerous country to cycle in, because of the way drivers treat cyclists, and he wouldn't recommend doing so there. Needless to say, the opinion of one person isn't enough to damn a whole country but it popped into my head whilst I was writing about this and I thought it worth a mention.
I would welcome any objective information about what's going on between cyclists and non-cyclists on the other side of the planet. Obviously it's hard to remain objective about something where one's life or the lives of people one cares about are threatened, so it's difficult to know quite how 'down the middle' some information may be. It appears, however, cfsmtb manages to keep things pretty reasonable on her blog and doesn't fire off into angry tirades (no matter how tempting these must be). For some reasonably objective and some less objective comments, please have a look here also.
Something I wonder about is why people are so quick to call themselves 'a motorist', 'a cyclist', 'a non-cyclist' or any such term. Presumably most cyclists also drive, so what does that make them? Are they sometimes 'a cyclist' and sometimes 'a motorist'? I suppose, by definition, that's exactly what they are but it's not some sort of overriding label which defines who you are, as some people seem to imagine. Aren't we all different things at different times? If so, can't we accept others may wish to carry on doing different things from us? Why is there this overriding need to interfere or cause people who differ from us harm? Surely, so long as they're not harming anyone else (either directly or indirectly) who doesn't want to be harmed, what's the problem?
3 comments:
Don't worry, most of us are keeping recent events in perspective. But the lovely meedya juggernaut usually has the attention span of an gnat. Care? Long term social responsibility? Whats that?
What has really been going on then? Is there a particularly high amount of tension between motorists/pedestrians and cyclists in Australia at the moment or am I picking it up incorrectly?
The media here rarely acknowledges the existence of cyclists on our roads. Then again, they (cyclists) are so few and far between, it's easy to do so.
Whilst I think cyclists here are perceived as old fashioned, ridiculous and a nuisance, it hasn't got to the stage where physical attack is commonplace. Sure, I'll get abuse shouted at me every couple of weeks, I've had an air horn parped right in my ear by a passenger in a passing car, been hit by a water balloon, had children deliberately run out in front of me/push one another into my path and motorists shout things/make their cars backfire deliberately to attempt to scare me but nobody has actually touched me as yet. I think I would lose it completely if someone did.
*Delayed response*
Whats going on here? Similar situation to what you experience, but Australian conditions, Australian culture and the usual poor compliance. But we're working on it. Long term.
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