Anyone riding a bicycle on the same road as cars is a hazard to motorists and either an idiot or a very brave person. The nong riding on the white line of the so-called bike lane on a busy highway is a dead man riding. If he does it 5 days a week for 48 weeks of the year, he doesn’t have long to live.

The people responsible for "Cycling. Getting Australia Moving", and anyone else encouraging people to ride bikes on roads could eventually find themselves charged with crimes against humanity as the injuries and deaths mount.

Bike-riders are also a menace to pedestrians when they illegally ride on footpaths or ride along ‘shared’ paths in parks without bells or without the intelligence to use their bells.

Parents on bikes towing tiny tots in pink plastic covered ‘trailers’ should have the children removed from them.

Ideally, to prevent deaths, scares to motorists and removal of children from cyclists with trailers, all bikes should be banned

@Leigh: Anyone riding a bicycle on the same road as cars is a hazard to motorists and either an idiot or a very brave person. The nong riding on the white line of the so-called bike lane on a busy highway is a dead man riding. If he does it 5 days a week for 48 weeks of the year, he doesn’t have long to live.

I have been doing for 5 days a week, for 20 years, around 40 kms per day, in peak hour Brisbane Traffic. It comes as no surprise to learn I am an idiot. But I have never considered myself "lucky", yet apparently I am amazingly lucky.

All joking aside, Holden is probably right when he says riding is a dangerous exercise - if you ride amongst 2 ton chunks of metal travelling at speed being controlled by someone like Leigh who considers you to be both an idiot and a menace to all car drivers. Downhill mountain bike riders are even more likely to seriously injure themselves.

But to equate the danger of those extremes to a normal commute on quiet street is stretching things a fair bit. If you are wearing a helmet, it is pretty hard to do more than loose a bit of bark at 30 km/hr. Considering the health benefits of regular exercise, loosing some skin a few times in your life is a fair exchange.

Being physically able to ride a bike isn't really an excuse either, if you can ride a bike at all. There are all sorts of electronic motors and other gadgets that can change the amount of effort involved pretty uniformly from literally none to normal riding to "lets pretend it is up a steep hill".

So in the end it is often just a case of wanting the benefits enough to put in the effort. And so it is for bike paths in our cities. Are we willing to spend the money to make riding to work a realistic and safe option for most?

An interesting and well written article (though the last couple of paragraphs let it down) that tries to be fair minded and constructive on this momentous issue. Indeed I can't see why the article was about bicyles, and the expense of bikeways--good grief! Surely the elephant in the room is CARS! and the expense of maintaining them and the comforts their narcissistic occupants have become accustomed to. It's cars and their arrogant, impatient and dangerous drivers (I'll bet there are more psychotics in motor cars than mental hospitals!) that are the biggest threat to cyclists, especially at the absurd speeds they're permitted to rocket around suburbs and CBD's!
As the author says, rubbish on the roads is a prime danger (I once hit a house brick and went sprawling), and inexpensive, sturdy, light and all terrain bikes would be optimum. Certainly Scooters too are a great idea, and better, cleaner public transport generally. But the most pressing need, for the planet and public health, is to get people out of cars and cars off the road. Once the (I'd guess) ten percent of crazed motorists come out of therapy, they might even be ready to rejoin the human community.
Cars and buses and scooters and bikes and pedestrians can cohabit on suburban and city roads, once its accepted that they all have equal rights, and the road rules reflect that. Instead of the odd cycleway for bikes, there should be the odd main road for cars trucks and sociopaths! CBD's and suburbs should be civilised COMMUNITIES, but cars ride roughshod over customary rights.
This will excite the petrol heads' indignation, but that's because it's never occurred to them to consider the ethics of their behaviour on the roads. That mindset has to change!

rstuart... I think Leigh is a petrol head troller...barely worth rsvp-ing to.

We meet them every day, hurling abuse, opening car doors as they pass, chucking glass, plastic, food, trying to cut riders off when turning left, crashing into bike lanes when they drive their cars to the right of the 'shoreline' instead of left of the while line where they should be driving, and knowing absolutely nothing at all about leaving a clear space, at least one metre, between the left side of their vehicles and the cyclists they try to kill/maim.

If the roads are dangerous, it's because of the blockheads who are too irresponsible to ever have been given a licence.

While I would not ride 'on' the white line, far too slippery, especially in the wet, Leigh does not seem to understand the Amy Gillet Foundation mantra...'a metre matters'.

Mind you, Leigh is not alone, there's millions just the same.

Here's a WA councillor that might be related to Leigh:
http://btawa.org.au/2010/04/12/bradley-wants-bikes-off-roads/

Of course bikes should have to be registered, to help pay for rhe roads they use. They should also have a mandatory third party property insurance system, with the datails on display.

After all, bikes can do quite a bit of damage to the underside of your car when they get in the way.

From the health point of view they should be kept off the road at peak periods. We don't want to have excessive medical costs because these dills are developing respiratory problems, riding around in all those exhaust emissions.

In fact we should definately not ever give them access to any public health system. If we let the Darwin principle apply, we should be rid of these trouble makers soon enough.

The savings accrued should fund a nice safe Ford V8 for each of us to enjoy.