Monash uni study says: Major injuries to cyclists continue to rise in Victoria despite road toll falling

[fat and old]

No one wants to admit that cycling is/can be dangerous. No one should want to apply worksite OH&S values and methods to cycling today. To do so would mean that we should not be doing it, or at least be admitting of undertaking a dangerous activity which allows the greater population to see us for the fools they think we are.

Huh?

The same logic can and does apply to driving...
The same logic can and does apply to eating...
The same logic can and does apply to swimming at a beach...

Yes, I agree with you.

The bulk of posters hereabouts (forum wise) do believe that car drivers are fools as a rule. They do believe that car drivers would be better off cycling; for themselves and the greater good. They are also in a minority, and are subject to the pressures bought about by car drivers and their lobbyists. Vehicles are seen as an essential part of transport and a representation of personal freedom. Bicycles are not (regardless of the beliefs of this board. We are in the minority, as are our advocates). We will not achieve removal of motor vehicles from the roads in our (mine anyway ) lifetime. Society does recognise the adverse effects of motor vehicles, and makes what are deemed to be acceptable limits on their use....license restrictions, banning of certain vehicles in certain areas, usage taxes in some areas, mandating safety improvements such as stability control or EBC in recent vehicles. All of these are designed to allow the continued use of those. Not the restriction.

The bulk of posters here have pride in their health and well being and look down on fat, lazy slobs. Society has introduced measures to help those people achieve an improvement in their health. There are wholesale information campaigns on eating disorders and an entire industry built around the weight loss. We are either fat shamed or called anorexic. All of these measures are designed to improve the life those affected.

Swimming at the beach is an Australian institution. Not only does any danger present itself to the individual solely the use of the beach is shared and used in a common way by almost everyone there. Any use of the beach...swimming, sports such as volleyball, tanning.....are seen as our god given right and sacrosanct as Australians. The only outliers are jetskis, and they are heavily regulated and banned in many areas.

None of those activities have a situation where the minority impacts on the majority that has not been addressed and regulated to the point of the least possible interaction (such as the removal of H/V traffic in areas that were once transport corridors and now are residential areas...think Yarraville in Melb.). None of them will be deemed unacceptable risks......they are either socially ingrained or considered too essential to be removed.

Cycling is not considered essential by society in Australia. Not yet. As such, I struggle to understand why any enthusiast would want to make it harder to justify our existence on the road.

Lots of things are dangerous and lots of things don't meet worksite OH&S value. While we are at it most worksites don't meet worksite OH&S values. (The expectations are often impossible.)

EG; Reading some government endorsed safety documentation recently which mentioned a "safety management plan". In the safety management plan "ALL" potential risks need to be listed and addressed. This is an impossibility.

And I still agree with you.

YOU called for a Sensible Risk Assessment. Not me. Many here have called for Worksafe (or their respective state OH&S authority) to be involved. Not me. You are no doubt aware that to compile any "safety management plan" is an exercise in minimising not only the risk but the work required to do so. It's a compromise bought about by the commercial realities of any subject it is applied to. Why would we want this applied to cycling? I absolutely agree with Thoglette when he states that

As usual, there's a spectrum of responses. The choice is not "transport as we have it now" or "everyone walks".

We already have a huge range of well understood and effective mechanisms for reducing the use of our hospitals and rehab facilities due to motor vehicle use.

By and large, these are ignored by government, both politicians and public servants.

We just as a society don't have the will. Until we do, I don't want to make it any easier for the bastards to outlaw me.

[fat and old]

Driver behaviour is the cause and that is the thing that monetarily, is easily corrected. Cultural change doesn't need a huge infrastructure fix.
Politically it is a different story which is the source of the problem now and into the future.

Yeah, good luck with that. After reading the NRSS paper I figure we have no hope. It spouts on about the 4 "Cornerstone" areas of intervention...you know, the important ones. #4 is Safe People

Safe People
Encourage safe, consistent and compliant behaviour
through well-informed and educated road users.
Licensing, education, road rules, enforcement and
sanctions are all part of the Safe System.

Sounds good, aye? Further into Sec. 5, we have this nugget

Developing interventions to address the most important
road safety issues
To guide the development of a combination of initiatives which are likely
to help reach the ten-year casualty reduction targets, first the major crash
risk issues were identified (see Chapter 3) and then the types of intervention
most likely to be effective in tackling these issues. These broad areas for
improvement became the focus for developing more detailed measures
in each cornerstone area. They need to:

•have considerable potential to yield benefits based on available
evidence, and

•not present the community with a potentially unreasonable burden

OK, this is starting to go south. Can you imagine just this forum trying to agree on a "potentially unreasonable burden", let alone a car driver? Finally we reach Table 7: Crash problem areas mapped to the strategy cornerstone areas. A nice matrix colour coded which takes the 4 cornerstone strategy initiatives...Safe Roads, Safe Speeds, Safe Vehicles and Safe People and applys a benefit these will give to each Road User Group (among others).

Apparently the Safe People initiative....the one that will "encourage safe, consistent and compliant behaviour through well-informed and educated road users" is deemed to have "some or indirect benefit only"

See? We were wrong. It IS safe out there, because educating other road users is a waste of time.

[warthog1]

Very dry F&O
It reads like an episode of yes minister.

Presumed liability would go a long way to correcting dangerous driving behaviour around cyclists.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/c ... le/8613858

Political suicide to try and implement that though.
We've been over this numerous times in this forum previously, I can't see it happening in my life time