At least we aren’t all still wearing stackhats (shudder).

When riding I can measure my performance against cars quite often, and if the traffic’s heavy I always win along Dynon road.

There’s a couple of quite dangerous spots on Dynon Rd that I’ve written to both Council and VicRoads to fix, but they both replied expressing a distinct lack of interest. No priority. One particular intersection all I wanted was a give way to cyclists and pedestrians sign, just a reminder of what is legal. VicRoads said they didn’t want to sign every intersection because the onus should be on the drivers to know. That’s great, a comfort to me when I almost get wiped out once or twice a month.

The HUN is pretty notorious for it’s anti cycling threads (although that comment thread at ninemsn when the incident in Sydney happened last May was very similar in sentiment).

It’s high time car licenses were issued as a privilege, not a birthright. bi-annual testing at the motorists expense ought to fix it along with psychological profiling

* cycling with a helmet: .1%
* cycling without a helment: .2%
* driving: .5%

but compulsory helmet laws caused 1/4 of all cyclists to drive instead, then I’m fairly sure the actual probability of somebody being injured or killed has increased, even though the cyclists are now twice as safe (assuming nobody rode with helmets to begin with).

I don’t have real numbers, so I don’t know the above phenomenon is real or not, but it’s certainly plausible.

There’s a companion comments thread here which makes for some disturbing reading.

In practice, it takes me longer to get to my work by bike than by train because I need to get to East melbourne from Footscray and after Footscray road I have to go up bloody horrible La Trobe street and then Victoria street, which is something I really hate, so I just ride to Footscray and train the rest of the way. Of course, this means this only happens relatively rarely as you can only do that off peak – they lifted the bike ban on trains but the overcrowding in peak hour makes it practically impossible.

car driving and alcohol makes you stupid, fat and dangerous

Let’s hope they catch the bastards.

They’re the same people that go through the turnstile to validate their ticket at the railway station, with a queue of people just behind them, and stop immediately at the exit of the damn turnstile to fish out their mobile and start yakking!

As I understand it, 90% of all road fatalities are head injuries, which would be prevented by helmet wearing. We could massively reduce the road toll by legislating for all car occupants to wear helmets (now that’s what I call a level playing field). As I understand, they prevent injury not just from the impact, but because the smooth plastic surface slides along the rough road surface slowing you down more gently that the quick stop if your head hit, which tends to break the neck leading to death or severe disablement.
As far as I know, the helmet laws initially caused a rise in cyclist fatalities, as many people stopped cycling, so cyclists were less visible and so more vulnerable, but as people have gotten used to the helmet laws, cycle fatalities per person riding are now lower than they were before the introduction of the laws, which I guess was the point of the laws.
So I may not like a helmet, but I’d rather be dorky than dead, as getting hit by a car (non-fatally) certainly reminds you.