Bruce Bisset: Time drivers got on their bikes

Seems to me we've a tendency to let our infatuation with automobiles overshadow our basic humanity when it comes to other road users.
Put an average chap or chapette behind the wheel and chances are they'll become something between Stirling Moss and Jeremy Clarkson - thinking they're good enough to take risks and mad enough to try them.
Of course, most people are neither. But that doesn't stop them getting uptight and provocative should any other user dare to "interfere" with their self-assumed ownership of the road.
Which perhaps explains the extraordinary vilification of cyclists, as evidenced regularly in this paper's Letters column - though this attitude is not exclusive to Hawke's Bay.
Despite cyclists having as much right to the road as any vehicle, many drivers regard a bicycle as either a nuisance or a moving target - and, sadly, statistics reflect that.
On average, 10 cyclists die and more than 300 are hospitalised in New Zealand each year. Compared with the number of users and kilometres travelled, cyclists are second only to motorcyclists in terms of risk.
Note that topping those accident statistics are the 10-14 age group - kids going to and from school.
Decriers make a case that cyclists are "accidents waiting to happen" - ignoring that in only 25 per cent of crashes it is the cyclist who is primarily to blame.
Fact is, cyclists are vulnerable not just because they're exposed but because as drivers Kiwis have a long way to go to be considered aware and considerate of other road users.
Users who, it's worth repeating, have just as much right to the road as cars, vans, trucks or buses.
And no, they can't ride on the footpath; that's illegal.
So all this hoo-hah about the new cycle lanes and cycle paths around Hastings and the district is bosh. If you can't drive safely down a narrowed urban carriageway without knocking someone for six, you shouldn't be driving at all.
Studies show cycle lanes reduce accidents involving cyclists by about 10 per cent. At current rates, that's potentially one death and 30 serious injuries, and maybe 100 minor ones, prevented each year.
Perhaps more to the point, dedicated lanes encourage more folk to get on their bikes. And a bicycle isn't coughing out noxious gases to add to global warming.
Not only is it clean and green, it's damn good solo exercise. Which, in these faddish and increasingly self-conscious times, is probably why three-quarters of those who bike to work are men and job-wise one-fifth of the total are described as professionals.
Yep, it's the smart, chic way to show you're switched on.
So I applaud the iWay project and the new Share the Road campaign, and the burgeoning network of cycle paths to help showcase our district to the world. If it was just a bit of tinkering the sceptics could rightfully claim it as glorified PR, but the scale and promotion of these schemes suggests the good intent is genuine.
Mind you, the revamped Duke St is a confusion of mixed signals. Instead of marking the whole carriageway as a cycle lane - presumably to indicate priority - council could have incorporated a dedicated off-road path into the reconstruction and removed any conflict.
Also, creating widened berms that make it impossible to stay on the correct side of the road when turning left from a side street into the main thoroughfare truly does make for an accident-in-waiting.
Nor am I happy with citizens having been sold a new sports park with a velodrome as a central feature, but when push comes to crunch that facility suddenly becomes unaffordable.
Pardon? It was the only half-supportable part of the project - because a velodrome is something the Bay does not have.
And one might think that in this pro-cycle mood it would get more funding, not none.
However, while lack of a track might hamper locals from emulating Sarah Ulmer's golden feats, the new road lanes and off-road paths may encourage production of another Julian Dean, the hard man of New Zealand cycling now competing in his seventh Tour de France.
In France, cyclists can become legends. And there, for a month at least, it is they who own the road. That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.