I am speaking specifically about minimum safe passing legislation and lack thereof in Vic. You are correct with respect to the lack of legislation in Vic. We need to do that and go around BN(V).Thoglette wrote:
If it is policy you need to address the politics: your two local members; the minister; the shadow minister and the press.
Our major cycling "advocacy" organisation in BN(V) is on record as resisting safe minimum distance legislation;
While the Amy Gillett Foundation is busy trying to get a minimum passing distance into Australian law, there are many countries around the world in which such legislation already exists. Twenty-three states in the US require drivers to leave at least three feet (roughly 90cm) when passing, Pennsylvanian drivers are required to leave four feet (1.2m) and drivers in Virginia must leave two feet (60cm). Belgium, France, Portugal and the Canadian province of Nova Scotia all have minimum passing distance laws as well.
But according to Garry Brennan from Government & External Relations at Bicycle Network, the fact these international precedents exist doesn’t mean they’ve been shown to work. While Garry acknowledges that the ‘safe passing distance’ law isn’t working, he says Bicycle Network won’t support the push to introduce a minimum passing distance into law because there’s no evidence such a law will work; that is, that it will increase cyclist safety and, ultimately, reduce the number of cyclists injured and killed on the roads.
“We never really had any problems with the Amy Gillett Foundation’s one-metre campaign but suddenly, one day, it metamorphosed and we’d learned it was now a fixed distance law campaign. We looked at the evidence and we found there were no benefits where [a minimum passing distance law] had been introduced — there’d been no benefits for bike safety.”
I put this apparent lack of evidence to Marilyn Johnson who, in addition to her role at AGF, is a cycling safety researcher at Monash University.
“I think a focus on the lack of evidence doesn’t recognise the lack of funded research in injury prevention to begin with. This is a poorly researched space and drilling down further, cycling is itself under-researched in terms of evaluating road safety programs.
The idea that the idea that there’s going to be a body of evidence we can point to is less likely because cycling safety issues are under-researched.”
To Marilyn it’s less about evidence and more about common sense.
“Evaluation or not, giving that extra bit of space, and drivers knowing that it’s not some space or a little bit of space, but it’s a metre […] is really going to help stop crashes, stop bike riders getting killed and stop them being seriously injured.”
Garry Brennan remains unconvinced:
“Giving cyclists more room is definitely better but [Marilyn Johnson] has missed the critical link: there’s no link between a law and giving cyclists more room. Where the law has been introduced and research has been done, the vehicles are not giving cyclists more room.”
Garry believes that a minimum passing distance law won’t only be ineffective, supporting it would actually be ethically dubious for Bicycle Network.
“For Bicycle Network to support a law which we know is not beneficial would be improper for us to do because we want our members and bike riders to know that if we recommend a change then it’s going to provide the benefits that are claimed. In this case it would be improper for us to pretend that a fixed one-metre law would be beneficial for bike riders when we know that it wouldn’t.”
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They are still at it;
Under the cosh in Queensland
15 July 2014. Bike riders in the Sunshine State are baffled as they come under intensive heat from the police who are said to be 'throwing the book’ at riders at every opportunity.
Evidence has emerged of a major crack-down by police, who racked up 1344 fines for riders in just three months since Queensland’s new bike safety legislation came into force.
The police have even issued multiple fines to riders for exceeding the speed limit.
The crackdown was apparently orchestrated to coincide with the controversial introduction of the one-metre passing laws.
The Queensland Government introduction of the one metre and one point five metre safe distance passing rules attracted huge publicity, but at the same time the government boosted the fines relating to bike rider offences, in some cases making them three times the previous level.
While the police got busy booking riders, the one metre laws for drivers have hardly been enforced.
In the three months since the rule changes, only four drivers have been fined for breaching the one metre law, and it is understood these drivers could have been fined for overtaking too closely even without the new law in place.
In the same period, four bike riders died on Queensland roads.
Queensland police have defended their actions, saying that that they have conducted major operations to detect one metre law offences, but none were observed.
Riders have accused the government of using the introduction of the one metre law as a smokescreen for a crackdown on cyclists' behaviour.
Ben Wilson, Bicycle Queensland CEO, described the statistics as “bordering on alarming”.
“I don’t know of any other State jurisdiction where police bother to fine riders for going too fast on a short, rural downhill. Police resources are scarce and they should be used where they can deliver a safety benefit to road users."
He said Bicycle Queensland was working with police on the enforcement of the passing rules.
“Evidence from around the world shows that enforcing passing distance laws is a difficult challenge, and Queensland is proving no different”, Mr Wilson said.
https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/gener ... igns/2904/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
They have the ear of government and act in concert with the RACV in this matter. They need to be shown to be wrong. Outonabike's evidence does that.
Hard to believe.