it is a shame & they should do something about safety and drivers attitude... though, it is not all doom and gloom with cycling as we know
i know people get killed/injured from cycling but also there are many benefits too
rarely do you see news stories about the positive benefits of cycling.
i read this interesting article
Sydney and Cycling
Saturday July 23rd 2005, 10:54 PM (PDT)
Filed under:
Sport
Sometimes insignificant things produce a totally inexplicable feeling of elation.
Many years ago when I was riding my bike to work through the Sydney CBD, very early one Saturday morning, avoiding the stumbling Friday night drunks, the vomit and the broken glass, I heard a trumpeter taking the opportunity to practice before a day's busking. He or she (I couldn't tell) stood on the footpath of Elizabeth Street near the entrance to St. James Station, opposite David Jones. It was a freezing morning, totally still and slightly damp, and the notes echoed across Hyde Park, up and down Elizabeth Street, across hundreds of metres of the city. First major and minor scales—pap-ap-ap-ap-ap!—then some other more complicated musical exercises for which I have no name.
Then, just as I rode past on the rusty, broken-down bike I used to abuse (pictured above) the trumpeter played the grand triumphal march from
Aïda, and made my morning. To ride at five o'clock in the morning, alone, through empty city streets, imagining yourself on the back of an elephant, is a glorious feeling. I've never forgotten it.
There's a fascinating thread by Phil Gomez up right now at
Larvatus Prodeo. Is bike riding more dangerous than riding the bus, are you more likely to be run over or knocked down than blown up? I've been riding bicycles around Sydney for over ten years and never been run over yet. To ride through a city is one of the things that carries its own mythology. Bicycle couriers are blessed and cursed for the necessary job they do and the ridiculously dangerous way they do it. Ride to work as a non-courier civilian, and you'll find yourself commented upon. Notice the shaken heads.
It is dangerous, no doubt of that. In Sydney I've had doors opened on me from parked cars, catching me behind the left knee and knocking me flat into traffic. I've crashed into the back of taxis braking fast to a stop to pick up fares. I've had close encounters of the impactual kind with buses, trucks, poles, signs, bins, all kinds of things. I've slid my rear wheel out on gravel or glass more times than I can count. I've left bits of blood and skin across the Inner West, the CBD and odd places further off.
Undoubtedly I could have reduced the pain by being a bit smarter. I learned modern life's most important lesson, about
never being drunk in charge of a moving vehicle, thanks to a parked ute on the wrong side of the road that I clipped going downhill at 40-50km/h, at 2am one morning. I've still got the scar on my shoulder to show for it.
Getting from point A to point B is only half of the attraction of cycling, I feel. Some people, I understand, ride for convenience, because their destination is close enough to make any other kind of transport pointless. Some ride for
politics, like Greens upper-house member Lee Rhiannon, who, as I found out the one Critical Mass ride I went on, needs to learn how the brake levers work (ouch). Some people ride because they're trying to lose weight or get fit. Some people reverse the concept, and don't ride even if they'd like to, because they don't think it's safe.
To my mind all of these reasons miss the point entirely. I don't think I'd bother riding if I didn't live in Sydney. Unlikes the fit freaks, it's not the monotonous pushing of the pedals that keeps me riding. Unlike the politicals, I don't mind that there are cars on the road, and in fact I quite appreciate large trucks for their slipstream. Riding a bicycle is not the social solution to end traffic problems; not everyone can do it. It's certainly, in my experience, far less safe than riding public transport, on which I've never been injured.
The glorious thing about being on a bicycle in the city of Sydney is not the riding, but being entirely surrounded by one of the more beautiful cities in Australia. Like a twenty-year old movie star, it's young, selfish, overpaid, stupid, greedy, petulant, self-obsessed, mean and inevitably bound for the gutter, but still—despite all that—keeps you breathless with sheer good looks. Nasty, distasteful and not at all suited for riding, Sydney still amazes me every time I get on the pedals.
To ride a bicycle in Sydney is not fun. But it can be sublime.
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