From yesterdays Saturday Age:
Out of grief, a campaign of shock tactics
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Bug Me Not to register
(Yeah, good on you Harry, the current system doesn't work, lets simply implement another equally inept fine system)
Simon Gillett, husband of Amy Gillett, says drivers should be given a jolt to make them more considerate. Simon Gillett, husband of Amy Gillett, says drivers should be given a jolt to make them more considerate.
In his mind's eye, Simon Gillett can vividly imagine the sort of television advertising campaign he believes is necessary to save cyclists from road carnage� Something shocking, something that will jolt us out of a culture of carelessness, something that draws on the sort of pain he is experiencing himself � and he's preparing to help fund it.
"I can envisage you having the irate motorist, he's got the kids in the car, he runs a bunch of cyclists off the road, someone's getting hurt. He pulls up, and it's either his wife or his nephew or one of his other kids.
"He realises what he's done, injured one of his own family."
But Gillett, 47, a former Olympic rowing coach turned cyclist, believes any campaign needs to focus on cyclists' behaviour, too.
"You can't expect motorists to respect cyclists if cyclists don't respect the road laws themselves."
Gillett's plans come as:
- Victoria Police are extending their hunt for a P-plate hit-run driver who injured cyclists in a serious incident on the Beach Road at Black Rock last Sunday.
- Bicycle Victoria's general manager, Harry Barber. supports a senior Victorian policeman's call for introduction of demerit points against cyclists' driving licences for bicycle offences.
In the wake of his wife Amy's death in Germany, no-one would have demurred had Simon Gillett, who attended her memorial service in Adelaide on Friday, retreated into his private grief.
Yet this has not happened � he is determined to retrieve some meaning from his devastating loss and says he is not "hiding under a stone".
Gillett has set up the Amy Gillett Safe Cycling Foundation, with more than $100,000 already pledged, which has as one of its goals making Australian roads safer for cyclists.
The fund is being administered by Cycling Australia, the principal body for competitive Australian cycling and road training, and Gillett believes it will receive plenty of support in a campaign the public will welcome.
"Drink driving has become socially unacceptable, but it wasn't unacceptable 20 years ago. If we can make running over cyclists or treating cyclists badly unacceptable, then we've won the battle, basically," he says.
Riding up to 300 kilometres a week out of Ballarat, Gillett thinks he knows plenty about the problems, and the places where things need to be improved.
In Melbourne, he supports a plan being developed by Beach Road stakeholders, including councils and police, to create a clear cycling lane at the time cyclists most use the road, from 6-10am on Saturdays and Sundays.
Police and cycling bodies are concerned to solve the problems of Beach Road because it is the logical training track for international competitors in the Commonwealth Games. The time trial will be held between St Kilda and Beaumaris.
Police appealed last week for any witnesses to a hit-run incident in which a dark maroon or purple 1996-98 sedan clipped a number of cyclists just north of the Black Rock clock tower roundabout at 9am on Sunday.
The car was displaying a P-plate in the rear window.
Police are combing Melbourne for the car, which lost its left mirror and was seen to accelerate then skid into a turn off Beach Road and into a side street.
The cyclists were in a group of 14, riding in pairs in the left lane, when the car hit three of the outside riders. Two were taken to the Alfred Hospital; a Pearcedale man with suspected fractures which turned out to be severe bruising, and the other, Renato Picciani, 38, of Windsor, with a deep gash.
