Mature approach to cycling needed

Anna Wallis PHOTO/FILE

Self-proclaimed outspoken road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson has spoken out over the latest advertising campaign to make roads a gentler, safer place for cyclists.

He of the Dog and Lemon guide thinks the ad campaign is nuts. And he has a point. Did anyone take notice of the billboards on roads that put cyclists in a bubble and asked motorists to pretend it was real?

Mr Matthew-Wilson says the major problem is that road planners tend to see cyclists as a nuisance rather than legitimate road users. The comments come after another cycling death and discussion about how to improve road safety.

Most cyclists have had at least one serious run in with a vehicle. Mine was with a truck and trailer unit in Taupo after the round-the-lake cycle race. I didn't go round the whole lake and I didn't race but I was buggered. Cycling home afterwards I was squeezed off the road and eventually toppled off my bike - to the left fortunately - but there was nothing I could do. Shouting, screaming, banging on the side of the trailer unit was useless.

And you know, to this day I suspect the truck driver never saw me and never heard me. And it's no fault of truck drivers who remain the most courteous people on the road. Cyclists are just not that visible.

Other cyclists have had bad experiences with motorists in general - as two Swiss tourists attested to in yesterday's Chronicle. They loved the Whanganui River Road - sealed or unsealed - for its lack of traffic. After five weeks touring New Zealand they sounded fed up with our motorists and labelled New Zealand the worst when it came to sharing roads. You don't need a particularly vivid imagination to understand what kind of treatment has been dished out to them.

Cycling any New Zealand road leaves you open to anything from the deliberate: the verbal abuse and being hit with items thrown from cars, to the unintentional actions of motorists that are dangerous.

There is little point in motorists countering that cyclists can be reckless and don't observe the rules. Cyclists will always come off second best in an argument with a vehicle and the antics of a minority of bike riders is no reason not to make the lives of the vast majority safer.

Mr Matthew-Wilson is right that much of the responsibility for working out how cyclists and motorists can share the road lies with planners. But they need a heads up from the country that more needs to be done to stop the death and injury of the most vulnerable road users.

It's not enough to ask, in the words of Rodney King, can't we all just get along? Cycling has to be part of thinking when it comes to roads from the inception.