Are cyclists fair game in Australia?
One cyclist's plea to drivers
Cuts both ways: cyclists need to respect other road users, too. Picture: Tim Hunter
Clues: the scene of the Southern Cross Drive incident. Picture: Justin Lloyd
Shock: Paul and Michelle Haber. Picture Craig Greenhill
- GREG BEARUP
- TheAustralian
- 12:00AM April 19, 2014
ON THE morning of March 16 Professor Michelle Haber, the head of the Children’s Cancer Institute, was at her home in Coogee, in Sydney’s east, wading through unanswered work emails while her husband was out on his regular Sunday ride. Paul, 55, a professor of medicine at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, took up cycling six years ago for the Tour de Cure, raising money for his wife’s institute. “And for the obvious health benefits for himself,” Michelle adds. “He lost 10kg, his cholesterol went down, he had more energy and it was great stress reliever. He loved it.”
On this particular morning Michelle had not long dropped off their 16-year-old daughter at the hairdressers – Paul’s brother was getting married that afternoon and the teenager was getting dolled-up – when the phone rang. “It was Paul, he’d had an accident. He said, ‘I’m not dead. I’ve hurt my back and I’m about to have a scan’.”
Michelle rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital and soon after Paul’s father Richard, a physician, and his brother Mark, an orthopedic surgeon and the groom, ran into the emergency ward, both dressed in their wedding tuxedos. They checked on Paul and then went straight to the scans, as doctors do. “They could both see there was this big fragment of bone in the spinal canal that was in a terrible position,” Michelle recalls. “I thought, ‘This isn’t good but I have to keep it together’.” His father burst into tears. They spoke to the neurosurgical registrar and Mark put it bluntly: “Look, I am an orthopedic surgeon. I am getting married in an hour. Just tell me, is there a good surgeon on today – and if this was your brother, would you have him operate on him?’ He said, ‘This guy is the best.’ ”
They wheeled Paul Haber off to emergency surgery while Michelle sat in the waiting room, terrified her husband may never walk again.
Just before 6am that morning, Paul Haber had met up with his mates from the Eastern Suburbs Cycling Club. A group of fast riders set off for a 90km ride, to Waterfall and back. The medium bunch set off at a more leisurely pace for a 70km scenic ride to Watsons Bay, at the mouth of the harbour, then down the coast to La Perouse and around Botany Bay to Dolls Point. It was a beautiful riding day with no wind and a smattering of cloud to take the sting from the sun. They picked up and dropped off a couple of riders along the way and when they made their way north through the tunnel on Southern Cross Drive, just 15 minutes away from finishing with a morning coffee, there were seven of them.
Along with Haber were a retired pharmacist, Tony Anderson, 67, and his partner of 16 years, Gillian McDonald, 59, a retired company manager. Since retiring, Gillian had helped organise the Tour de Femme, a women’s cycling event that raises money for endometriosis research. Hans Dean, a 48-year-old quantity surveyor, was riding with his son Bryce, 16. They were training for the 850km Sydney to Surfers ride for the charity Youth Off the Streets; it was to be a father-son bonding experience. Also riding was Bharat Mistry, 39, a banker, and Gus Desousa, 46, a construction industry executive; both men had toddlers at home who they planned to spend the day with.
They were a conservative bunch, sticklers for the road rules. Gillian, the sole female rider, set the pace and the men followed. All seven of them had powerful, pulsating red lights on the rear of their bikes as they cruised along at about 35km/h. They were lit up like a Christmas tree as they made their way two-abreast along the left-hand lane of the three-lane road. It was 8.30 Sunday morning, the traffic was light, it was a long, straight stretch of road and motorists weren’t being held up. “We were chatting about how wonderful it was to be out riding on such a stunning day,” says Gus Desousa.
Then a black Nissan X-Trail seemed to come from nowhere. There was no honking, no screech of tyres.
Bang! The car slammed into Tony Anderson, at the back of the pack, at around 80km/h; he was smashed into the windscreen (broken back in two places; fractured skull, sternum, clavicle and ribs; severe cuts).
Bang! Bharat Mistry, who was in front of Anderson, was next – he went skittling along the road, rasping the skin from one side of his body (severe lacerations to the body and face).
Bang!Hans Dean was hit next (broken back).
Bang! Paul Haber (broken back in two places). The riders nearest the kerb were luckier: they were ploughed into the breakdown lane like the wake from a boat. Gillian McDonald suffered a severe cut to her arm and nerve damage in her hand. Bryce Dean had a fractured elbow. “There was no warning,” says Gus Desousa, “all I remember is, ‘F..k, something’s hit me,’ and I was in this whirlpool of trying to protect myself.”
The car finally came to a halt, some distance from the pack of riders strewn along the road, and as it did, Tony Anderson rolled off the bonnet and onto the road. The traffic slowed to a halt, and then came the deep, horrible moans of people in severe pain. The red bike lights continued their incessant blinking.
“It was like a war scene,” says Paul Haber. “There was blood everywhere.” He remembers walking in a daze before realising he’d seriously damaged his back, and so he lay down flat on the road to await help. A doctor in a passing car got out to help. Teenager Bryce Dean was pacing about in a panic, trying to find his dad. “One guy [Bharat Mistry] was just lying there unconscious,” Gus Desousa says. “He’d had half his skin shaved off.”
Desousa, who was the least injured, tells me that after making sure everyone was being attended to he went looking for the driver. “All I wanted to know was who hit us and why. I found the car and the driver. The bloke was in denial. He just kept saying, ‘What are you guys doing on the road?’ Then he walked up and down saying to everyone who was injured, ‘What were you doing on the road?’ After a while I just said, ‘Go away mate. I don’t want to talk you’.”
The retribution was as vicious as it was swift – towards the injured cyclists, that is. That afternoon, as soon as news of the crash was broadcast, Facebook was abuzz. “Sucked in,” wrote Dixon on a motoring Facebook page. “I see these cyclists riding every Saturday and Sunday and was wondering when they’d get hit.” Luke, of Newcastle, boasted: “I swerve to hit cyclists.” Nick reckoned it was a great shot: “Got seven in one hit.” Normie stated he will “never give way to a bicycle rider, I really don’t care what the law state, you have no rights in my book, and if you are in my way I will definitely give you a helping hand… stay the f..k off our road you leotard wearing faggots.”
There were hundreds of posts of this nature and the same sentiments were being expressed on the NSW Police Facebook page as well as in the comments section of major news organisations. The attitude from these motorists, be it a minority, was clear. As one wrote: “Yeah no one gives a f..k about cyclists if they are on the road mow the c..ts down.” They were echoing the tone set by the broadcaster Derryn Hinch, who described cyclists as “cockroaches on wheels”. Who wouldn’t want to squish them?
And squish them they do. In 2013 there was an alarming spike in deaths across Australia with 50 cyclists killed in accidents (not all involving cars) – a 40 per cent increase on the 10-year average of 35 deaths. In NSW, the figure doubled in one year from seven to 14. Many hundreds more were seriously injured. Experts are generally at a loss to explain this increase – some put it down to more motorists texting or updating Facebook while driving, or simply to an increase in the number of cyclists. And while some motorists believe it is renegade cyclists who are generally at fault in their own downfall – disobeying the road rules, running red lights and riding where they shouldn’t – this appears, generally, not to be the case.
The Centre for Automotive Safety Research at the University of Adelaide examined the circumstances of every cyclist who’d come into contact with a car and been admitted to Royal Adelaide Hospital over a three-year period, from the start of 2008 to the end of 2010. Using police data, they found that in 79 per cent of cases the driver was at fault, with cyclists being responsible in 21 per cent of the accidents. The study found young drivers under the age of 25, particularly young female drivers, were responsible for the most accidents (texting, perhaps?). The most common accident was a motorist turning right into the path of an oncoming cyclist.
The consequences for the cyclists are often dire – 16 per cent in the Adelaide study required hospitalisation for longer than a week. And yet, the consequences for drivers who kill and maim them are often no worse than a minor traffic violation. Sean Sampson, from the cycling safety advocacy group the Amy Gillett Foundation, tells me he doesn’t know of a single incident in Australia where a motorist has been jailed, or received a significant fine, for killing or injuring a cyclist where the motorist was at fault – not one.
“If you talk to cyclists,” Sampson says, “they certainly don’t think the penalties fit the crimes. We are pushing police to be more thorough in their investigations into cycle accidents and to charge motorists at fault appropriately.” At the moment, he says, this is not happening. What this means is that if a 15-year-old schoolgirl is riding perfectly legally down a road on her way to school, and you slam into her from a side lane, smashing her brain to a pulp, resulting in her having to drink food through a straw for the rest of her days, you are unlikely to face serious charges – unless you are drunk, or flee the scene. It is likely to be treated in the same manner as if you’d had a bingle at an intersection and dented a couple of bumpers.
Among the examples Sampson cites is the case of Brisbane cyclist Craig Cowled. Cowled, 38, was riding to work last year when the side-mirror of a Jeep clipped him and sent him tumbling from his bike. He lost 1.5 litres of blood and spent seven hours on the operating table as surgeons inserted a titanium rod in his femur and reattached his leg to his hip joint. The horrific accident was captured on his helmet camera (a device that’s becoming more popular as cyclists seek to obtain evidence against offending drivers). However the police, who interviewed the driver at the scene, didn’t take a statement from Cowled or view his video footage of the incident, which later went viral on the internet.
The investigating officer told Cowled he didn’t have to make a statement as police had found in his favour. Cowled pushed, through his solicitor, to get a copy of the police report. He was disturbed to find that the police officer had apparently written his statement for him. His doctored “statement” was pretty much the same as the driver’s account. The driver was issued with a small fine for “unsafe lane change” and lost one point. Cowled faced intense pain, a 12-month recovery and has been told his hip may need replacing. He lodged an official complaint about the matter with Queensland Police last September. Police told The Weekend Australian Magazine that, as a result of the complaint, the officers involved had been ordered to undertake “education and training” and that the matter was finalised. The minor infringement the motorist received will stand.
It is one of numerous incidents involving cyclists where police, or the courts, have seemingly not taken accidents involving cyclists seriously. In one case, Adrian Emilsen, a cycling instructor, was unhappy when no action was taken against a motorist who’d run into the back of his bike in a Sydney street, flinging him over the vehicle. The motorist told police Emilsen had swerved in front of her and no charges were laid. Emilsen complained to the police ombudsman and an independent crash investigator was appointed who confirmed the cyclist’s version. The motorist was issued with an infringement notice for failing to keep a safe distance.
And then there was the Coluzzi crash. In July 2008, an elite group of 50 cyclists known as the Coluzzi Bunch – named after the Sydney cafe where they meet for coffee – was returning from a ride out of Sydney. Included in the bunch was Kate Nichols, a member of the Australian road cycling team who’d been injured in Germany in 2005 when a young driver crashed into them, killing her team-mate, Amy Gillett. Nichols’ father, Kevin, a gold medal-winning cyclist from the 1984 Olympics, was also on the ride that day along with Ben Kersten, who was vying for a place in the Australian team at the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
A driver came up behind their peloton in a Ford Falcon and became agitated when he was unable to pass, honking his horn and driving aggressively. “The car came past and squished us into our lane,” Kate Nichols said at the time. “He then went in front of us and slammed his brakes on. It was malicious. He knew exactly what he was doing. That’s the scary part.” The peloton smashed into the back of his car. The driver then sped off. More than 20 cyclists were injured, and there was $45,000 damage to the bikes. It was lucky no one was killed.
Police later found the driver, Hassan Bakr, then 34, an unemployed bouncer from Claymore, and charged him with not supplying particulars, negligent driving, cutting in front of a vehicle and travelling in a transit lane. There were many witnesses who were willing to testify that Bakr seemed to have deliberately slammed his brakes on in front of the cyclists, endangering their lives. However, when the matter finally made it to court – Bakr failed to show up on several occasions – the magistrate, Roger Clisdell, seemed to accept his story that his car had backfired, which caused him to stop abruptly in front of the cyclists. Bakr was found guilty of three charges, including negligent driving, but was fined just $1200; Clisdell rejected the cyclists’ claim for $45,000 in damages.
The message is clear. Punch someone in the head outside a nightclub and it’s likely you’ll face jail. Endanger the lives of 50 cyclists, and you might get a fine.
On the wall of Marg Prendergast’s office overlooking Sydney’s Central Station hangs a gruesome picture – an aerial photo of the collision between two buses on the Pacific Highway near Kempsey in 1989, which killed 35 people. Prendergast, the head of the NSW Centre for Road Safety, admits it is a little ghoulish but says it marked a turning point for road safety in Australia, coming two months after the Grafton bus crash in which 21 people died. “It was when we started to get serious,” she says. “Our key dates are ’71 for seat belts, ’82 for random breath testing – that was the absolute turning point – but 1989, when those 56 people lost their lives in two crashes, it totally changed the whole regime in and around heavy vehicle safety. It woke everyone up about road safety in general.”
Cyclists are hoping that a cultural shift in attitude towards cyclists and their safety doesn’t require a picture of a smashed peloton on her wall. Prendergast says the most effective safety measure for cyclists is separated infrastructure. State governments are spending millions building new cycleways, but there will always be a degree of shared use. “Motorists are going to have to realise that the only way we can tackle congestion is to make better use of our road space,” she insists. “And that means more cyclists and motorcyclists. Your demand as a motorist to get somewhere quicker, just because you are in a car and are held up by a cyclist for 20 seconds – well, too bad. People have to get used to the idea that life is about sharing the road.” That also goes for cyclists being courteous and slowing down for pedestrians. This is a genuine concern, she says – in 2011, a court in Bathurst awarded a pedestrian $541,000 after he was seriously injured by a speeding cyclist.
Prendergast’s organisation has been involved in the “It’s a Two-Way Street” program, with the Amy Gillett Foundation, reminding motorists and cyclists that they both have responsibilities. For motorists, the message is to expect to see cyclists on the road, always leave a one-metre gap, avoid distractions (mobile phones) and give way to cyclists as you would to motorists. Cyclists are told they must obey the road rules and stop at red lights, indicate their intentions, ride predictably and be visible with bright clothing and lights. “To get cut-through it needs to be a two-way message,” Prendergast says. “We are at the beginning of that journey to make those cultural changes.”
These are sound intentions; however, it wasn’t only public education that caused those great cultural changes with seatbelts, drink-driving and heavy vehicle safety – it was the follow-up with rigorous police enforcement and legislative muscle, something cycling groups say is not happening with bike safety. In most states, it is all carrot and no stick. Motorists don’t head out to intentionally kill cyclists but there is very little in the way of penalties to encourage them to focus. The motoring body NRMA says it advocates better education for motorists and cyclists and the building of separate cycle paths where possible. “But it has to be done in the right way,” says spokesman Peter Khoury, “and not in a way that disrupts the ability of getting large quantities of people from A to B.”
Cycling is not a fringe activity – the 2013 National Cycling Participation Survey revealed that 16.6 per cent of Australians, about 3.6 million people, had ridden a bike in the week prior to the survey and almost 40 per cent of the population at least once in the previous year. State governments are now actively promoting cycling to ease congestion and for its public health benefits. Bike sales are outstripping car sales. The country’s biggest urban development, Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour, will have a very small allocation of car-parking spaces; the 20,000 people who will eventually work there will either have to come by public transport or cycle.
Emlyn Keane, from AMP Capital, which owns dozens of commercial high-rise rental properties around Australia, says the number one request from potential tenants last year was for “end of trip facilities” – good showers, change rooms and lock-up facilities for bikes. “Across our properties we’ve had a 10-20 per cent drop in the demand for car spaces,” he explains. “There is now a commercial imperative for landlords to provide these good services for cyclists.” AMP Capital is now embarking on a program of reducing car spaces in its buildings to provide showers, change rooms and lock-up cages for cyclists.
In Melbourne, according to Garry Brennan from the Bicycle Network, the “cultural change” that is yet to occur in most of Australia is well under way. “Victoria is 10 to 15 years ahead of the rest of Australia when it comes to the provision of cycling infrastructure,” Brennan says. “There are so many cyclists now that motorists have adapted – they drive expecting to see a cyclist. Everyone now knows someone who cycles regularly – it might be your kid’s school teacher, or the guy you met at a barbecue at the weekend, and that too has changed the attitudes of motorists.” In Melbourne, 13 per cent of traffic into the city each day is now bicycles.
It also helps that senior police, including the chief commissioner, Ken Lay, are keen cyclists and have encouraged officers to ride to work for health reasons. Lay was on a training ride in Gippsland recently with colleagues, in their civvies, when a motorist started abusing him for riding two-abreast. The motorist was not charged but “police educated the man on his responsibilities to share the road with other users”. Lay has made a YouTube video clip to remind motorists that “bikes are classified as vehicles, and like cars, they have a right to use our roads,” as he says in the clip. “The vulnerability of cyclists does put the responsibility on motorists to drive safely and in a way that doesn’t risk the life of cyclists.”
“Police in Victoria are well ahead of their counterparts in other states when it comes to policing for vulnerable road users,” Brennan says. “Every day there are police out on bikes – they are highly effective as police; they are not there just to enforce laws with bikes and motorists.” It is something he says other states should adopt as the results, he believes, can be measured in lives – in 2013 there were 14 cycling deaths in NSW, 13 in Queensland and six in Victoria. Queensland has just introduced a trial of minimum safe passing distances for cyclists – one metre in 60km zones and 1.5m for speed limits above 60km.
Brennan says one of the answers is simply to have more police out riding, enforcing laws. Cyclists are less likely to run a red light if they think the guy on the bike beside them may be a cop; motorists are also less likely to play cat and mouse and abuse cyclists for the same reason.
And cat and mouse is deadly game that some idiot motorists like to play, particularly, it seems, in Sydney – a city that is widely acknowledged to have the most aggressive attitude towards cyclists. Kevin Nichols says in the days after the recent crash on Southern Cross Drive involving the seven cyclists, some motorists seemed to have been “spurred on by talkback radio” to harass cyclists. “In the following two days I was twice targeted by trucks, driving right up behind me to within a metre or two of my back wheel, blowing their horns and revving their motors. It was incredibly dangerous and I can only assume they’d been listening to those dickheads on the radio, winding them up.” If something had happened and he’d come off his bike, there’s no way the trucks could have stopped in time.
A few days later, he was riding to work along the cycleway in Kent St, Sydney, when a courier truck turned left across the bike lane in front of him. Nichols slammed on his brakes but collided with the truck. He’d had enough and called the police. He also had a witness who’d seen it happen. “The driver said, ‘Mate, I had my blinker on’ – he was simply unaware that you can’t just pull across a bike lane.” When the police arrived, Nichols says they were completely disinterested. “The cop just kept saying, ‘Accidents happen’. He wanted us to kiss and make up. He didn’t even pull the driver aside and say, ‘Mate, you’ve done the wrong thing – be careful’.”
On the day I visit the injured Tony Anderson in St Vincent’s Hospital he is in good spirits, especially for a man who has had his spine broken in two places and his skull fractured. It will be a long, slow rehabilitation for him, Hans Dean and Paul Haber, the three who suffered broken backs, but remarkably all three are up and walking – and vow they’ll get back on their bikes again. Police are “continuing their investigations” into the crash and have, as yet, not laid any charges against the driver who hit them.
Anderson is remarkably forgiving and both he and his partner Gillian McDonald say they would be willing to meet with the driver, because they believe he too would be suffering great pain after what happened. “We’ve got to reach out to each other – tolerance is the key word,” Anderson says from his hospital bed. “We are more fragile than motorists and walkers are more fragile than cyclists – everyone has to be aware of that. We have got talkback radio and Facebook with all these angry people – we don’t want that. If people could be a little more tolerant and courteous a lot of these problems could be solved. There’s just too much aggro on the roads.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/li...a/news-story/d94e7906d59b6afdb5e2cef7a6d5607b
