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15 days agoSo what practical measures do you suggest to stop this from happening again?
People aren’t reading Lemmy as they are driving from Armidale to heed your warning. What I was doing was suggesting some practical steps to protect cyclists. So that if perhaps someone was thinking of doing an event like this they wouldn’t be relying on motorists ‘just slowing down’ cos it’s not gonna happen. And will likely result in another tragic accident.
I’m not excusing the behaviour as you claim, I’m saying we need to do more to protect cyclists, cos motorists won’t ‘just slow down’ (even moreso on country roads such as this)
We circulate the ‘slow down and give cyclists space’, and ‘cyclists belong on the road’ on every second bus and billboard. Everyone knows it they just don’t do it.
I think defensive driving courses are a good idea for all drivers however they still won’t stop this. The issue is complacancy and as you said, culture. Getting people to slow down on a quiet corner on a quiet road is near impossible in todays environment. To be clear they should do it, I just know they won’t.
Driver education doesn’t work, cos it’s a cultural issue, youre right on the habits being passed from parent to child including the “just overtake this cyclist now” habits. This culture will be passed down irrespective of who does the driver training. And I’d also like to say on a sidenote, some consistency in driver training across states would be friggin amazing.
As a motocyclist (youre braver than i, for me driver behaviour will keep me off all motorbikes not on a farm) you would have experienced first hand bad driver behaviours even though motorbike messaging and education has been around for yonks.
That’s why we need to take more proactive measures now like the escort cars (wilst maintaining the exisiting messaging), until that cultural shift occurs, which unfortunately in this country could be decades.