More discouragement of cycling in Australia

[Shut Up Legs]

Throwing building tacks over a popular cycling route (see other thread: https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/t...14-in-inner-melbourne-no-end-in-sight.156092/) is bad enough, but then this :
https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=28697&start=15

The latest news is that a cyclist has (apparently) ended up in hospital because of the deliberate oil spill, and now police are calling for witnesses with any information.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

A motorist apparently deliberately aimed a car at a cyclist in Melbourne a month ago, and now I'm wondering why it took so long for the media to report it (anti-cyclist bias, perhaps?).
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...t/news-story/0f12c56081185a5d4b62cf2fa7bd77f1

 

[Banjo]

Strange how cyclists pose no threat to motor vehicle drivers yet we must be seen as a challenge to them in some way .

I liked the analogy that if you separated a room full of people by the toss of a coin ,heads sat at one end of the room tails at the other it wouldn't take long for heads and tails to start hating each other.

 

[simongt]

we're at the bottom of the pecking order, which is: motorists with big cars or trucks, then motorists with smaller cars, then motorcyclists, then pedestrians, and then cyclists. This won't change in my lifetime.

Maybe the smugness that is suggested among the motoring fraternity is partly inverted because when they are sitting in a logjam caused by too many motor vehicles on the roads, many cyclists will, quite legally, get to the front of a queue / go onto a cycle lane / slip down a cycle only side street / get off and walk the bike to the front of the queue etc., etc.. Whilst the motorist sits and fumes in a situation of their own making.

 

[jefmcg]

[QUOTE 4845457, member: 259"]My daughter's spending a year in Melbourne, and while she's not normally very sensitive to things like this, she was pretty shocked at first at the kind of casual racism she came across a few times when out in a mixed race group. She says she's never seen anything so overt before, certainly not in the UK or Belgium.[/QUOTE]
Fascinating. I have a story that absolutely mirrors that. I was with a friend in Australia, when she got a late night (UK time) call from her daughter at the University Kent, who'd just moved into a shared house, and was shocked and distressed because she'd never confronted such racism in her 18 years in Melbourne.

What do we learn from this? That we don't recognise our own racism? That we misread other societies' behaviours as racist when they aren't? I am not sure, but it's not as simple as everyone here seems to think it is.

 

[jefmcg]

A motorist apparently deliberately aimed a car at a cyclist in Melbourne a month ago, and now I'm wondering why it took so long for the media to report it (anti-cyclist bias, perhaps?).
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...t/news-story/0f12c56081185a5d4b62cf2fa7bd77f1

Right on my old manor!


I wouldn't read anything in it not being reported for a month. No one was injured, so it might not have appeared that important in the scheme of things. It's well reported now the victim has stepped forward, so that all seems fine to me.

The BTL comments are another matter all together. The number of them who think there is something a young woman on a bike could do to a driver to warrant attempted murder is disturbing, equally those who think she probably made it up.

 

[growingvegetables]

... What do we learn from this? That we don't recognise our own racism? That we misread other societies' behaviours as racist when they aren't? I am not sure, but it's not as simple as everyone here seems to think it is.

Seconded - both. As in I'm not sure, plus it ain't anything like simple.

Just a throw-away fwiw from an older guy, finding himself challenged to expand his understanding, based on his daughter's experience of studying in the US.

With a bottom line? Anybody "making it simple" is probably trying to hide summat unpleasant! Just a tuppenyworth .

 

[Randy Butternubs]

Since there are spectra of opinions and attitudes across a society perhaps one person's experience doesn't really mean much. That is to say, if you find a shocking number of racists in your life it might just be bad luck rather than an indication of a deeper social malaise.

For example: anti-semitism in London was mentioned earlier in this thread by jefmcg. I find this astonishing as I have never heard the barest hint of it in some 20 odd years there. I lived in a very Jewish area though and was fairly immersed in the culture growing up. Is it my experience or jefmcg's that is invalid? Probably both.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

View: https://www.facebook.com/SafeCyclingAustralia/videos/vb.220197534694324/1656631387717591/?type=2&theater


This time, the discouragement, and arguably also harassment, is from the police. That's how toxic the anti-cyclist culture is in Australia.

 

[jarlrmai]

jesus christ, driving around like the bloody hells angels.

 

[Milkfloat]

The victim should call the police. Oh, wait a minute, erm, as you were.