Zebee Johnstone said:In aus.bicycle on Sat, 25 Feb 2006 13:20:27 GMT
dewatf <dewatf@!coldmail.com> wrote:
Really? There's just been a rather famous case in Sydney of sonmeone
who didn't even have a conviction recorded for killing a motorcyclist.
Zebee
dewatf said:That seems particularly sloppy (as you would expect from an academic these
days since facts no longer matter in Ivory Towers).
dewatf said:Nor is there any evidence of cyclists being treated as less worthy than cars in traffic offenses by Australian courts.
dewatf said:The Germans and Swedish, however, are much more strict with highway patrols and in imposing traffic fines in general than in Australia (except where
redlight and speeding cameras can raise revenue for State Governments at
little cost).
dewatf said:His suggested that a presumption of guilt be applied without evidence is nonsense and does not apply in any civilised legal system.
dewatf said:As to cycling and walking being safer where there are high numbers of cyclists and pedestrians that is purely a correlation (as Pucher partly concedes by claiming only a probable improvement in safety by volume). The main reason is that people cycle and walk when they feel safe doing so. The main claim for increased cycling improving safety come from Copenhagen where they managed to increase cycling and reduce accidents/km. The major drive for increasing cycling in Demark was by making cycling safer through bike lanes, off road cycleways, Copenhagen cycle lanes. Safety will not improve by just increasing volume, just putting more cyclists on Canterbury Rd or the shoulder of the M5 is simply going to put more cyclists in hospitals and morgues. To increase safety in Australia you will need better infrastructure changes and major changes in culture by both motorists and cyclists.
dewatf said:There are several factors that effect cycling rates
1) suitability of geography and climate
2) safety
3) infrastructure
4) culture.
dewatf said:And the biggest one is culture. Cities that are suitable and have had a long history of cycling e.g. Amsterdam and Copenhagen have the highest rates of cycling, and always have. Having such a culture they have better trained cyclists and drivers are much better at driving with cyclists.
dewatf said:Whilst those two cities have been successful in further increasing the rates of cycling are many other cities where cycling initiatives have failed and there little correlation between amount of money spent
encouraging cycling and cycling rates overall.
dewatf said:While cities such as Portland and San Francisco have managed to boost public transport and cycling they have achieved this by restricting development which produces high property prices and restricting cars. This has created a class of wealth professionals living in the city, meanwhile the cities are collapsing as economic growth and people move elsewhere, usually suburbs and industrial parks located on freeways.
dewatf said:Factors that have reduced walking and cycling also include increased wealth, changes in occupations, transporting of children to day care, schools and activities outside local areas. Frank Furedi, a UK sociologist,
has done research finding that fear for children's safety seems to have
been a driving factor for driving children everywhere in Anglo-Saxon
countries more than other developed countries (when the children are
probably more at risk from mothers driving other children around in SUVs
than anything else!).
dewatf said:There are many things that can be done to improve cycling and public transport like planning, building infrastructure, improving safety,
education but they have to be integrated with sustainable economic systems
and cultures, and it is a lot more complex that Pucher makes out. Simply
finding correlations between cycling and characteristics somewhere like
Copenhagen does not prove causal relationship there, let alone prove chains
of cause and effect you can apply in somewhere totally different like
Sydney.
dewatf said:A better place to look for Australia would be Perth, which has increased cycling and public transport rates. Though it should be noted that that has involved infrastructure projects bankrolled by a commodities boom and GST revenue from NSW and Victoria.
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