Page 5342 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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As I have pointed out many times before, Bunda Street in the city and Hibberson Street in Gungahlin are ideal places where this could happen. I am very pleased that the consultant employed by the ACT government to review the ACT’s cycling and pedestrian network has agreed with that conclusion.
Other things I would like to see the government promoting is what is being called second generation traffic calming. Now, we all know what first generation is, but second generation traffic calming is fun, community-based traffic calming. It is finding creative, innovative ways to slow traffic, recognising psychological, social and political factors that influence traffic and speed. It combats the idea held by motorists that traffic environments are meant only to accommodate motorists travelling at high speed, and predictable traffic environments feel like that. Second generation traffic calming creates environments that contain some unpredictability and end up slowing down traffic, and this is something the community can really be involved in.
Another area for the safety of road users, as I think Mr Stanhope mentioned, is lowering vehicle speeds generally. The Greens have advocated this through our parliamentary agreement with the Labor Party where we required the government to investigate introducing 40-kilometre zones around community and shopping centres, although possibly we should be really going for 30 kilometres. Evidence shows that low vehicle speeds make a substantial difference to reducing the risk of injury for cyclists and pedestrians. An example is the city of Kingston-upon-Hull in the UK. It introduced widespread 30-kilometre zones. Between putting in the first 30-kilomtere zone in 1994 and in 2001, Hull saw a 14 per cent decrease in all road casualties compared to a 15 per cent increase in the surrounding shires.
Another area where the Greens are putting a lot of thought is road rules in general. One I would particularly like to highlight is that governing road user liability. The laws of some Northern European countries put a special duty of care on bigger, more dangerous vehicles when it comes to collisions. For example, the laws make cars strictly liable in terms of crashes with cyclists. Equally, a cyclist would be strictly liable in a crash with a pedestrian. Thus, what that means in practice is, the driver of the more dangerous vehicle—that is, the bigger, faster, heavier vehicle—would have to show that they were not negligent. This recognises that vulnerable road users are in a special position and that care is needed to protect them. It also would overcome the evidentiary issues faced by injured pedestrians and cyclists who are in the position at present of having to prove that the person driving the car or truck that hit them was negligent. Interestingly, studies from the world around have shown consistently that cyclists are the cause of less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents. So that shows the sense of this.
I would like to stress that we are not trying to say that cyclists and pedestrians should not have the same responsibilities as other road users. There is clearly the risk and clearly the reality that cyclists and pedestrians sometimes cause serious injuries and fatalities. The Greens strongly support the requirement that cyclists be responsible and for our laws to properly encompass inappropriate behaviours by bike riders and pedestrians.
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