This photo accompanied an article on the Australian website www.cairns.com.au. The subject is riding down the wrong side of the street no-handed, carrying a young child and not wearing a helmet.
This photo accompanied an article on the Australian website www.cairns.com.au. The subject is riding down the wrong side of the street no-handed, carrying a young child and not wearing a helmet.
if only car drivers could look in the mirror and see their contribution to the problem
this is dangerous
yes…
but why?
there is the slight risk of her falling and dropping her child
there is a greater risk of an unaware driver crashing into her and her child
because that driver was not focused on the task at hand
Agree to the rest but “she’s on the wrong side of the street”? It’s Australia.
darwinism in action.
Yet if the photo was taken in the Netherlands, we would be stoked!
Bakfiets!
The lady does seem kind of ridiculous, but the response of the others in the article is pretty sad… They bitch about cyclists “blatantly breaking the law…” How many drivers per week do you think drive with kids without seatbelts or take their hands off the wheel? What makes them any better?
I’m tired of the arguement that because some car drivers break a law, it should be okay to do it on my bike.
John:
I wasn’t saying that what this lady’s doing is okay. I just think that stuff like this is a “movie threat:” It’s memorable, so people think of it as a major problem, even though it constitutes a tiny percentage of the behaviours that cause accidents in traffic.
In other words, it bothers me that people are outraged when bikes do this while they don’t bat an eye at similarly risky car driver behaviour, even when the consequences of driver behaviour are often much more severe. Bikes should be held to a standard of behaviour, to be sure, but cars should be held to an equal, if not stricter standard.
what if she was seeking medical attention for her sick child?
I still think cars are the problem. I will grant she is on the wrong side of the street, but if she gets hit, it’s not because she’s not wearing a styrofoam hat. If cars are posing the threat, why are cyclists expected to wear the helmets. I’d be much happier both in a car and on a bike if everybody just shared the public roads.