This was recently posted to one of the Ipswich Facebook groups:
“A huge thank you to the very few people who stopped to ask if my daughter and I were okay this afternoon after my car unexpectedly suffered a major mechanical failure which began on the Donald (sic) Trumpy Bridge…
…To the motorists who honked their horns, screamed that I was stupid and yelled that I needed to move my car somewhere else even though my hazard lights were flashing… you should be ashamed of yourselves. Your behaviour was completely unnecessary and you scared my daughter in what was already a frightening situation. My car had suffered a mechanical failure and there was nothing more I could have done (RACQ estimated a 2 hour wait) At least I managed to get it off the main road instead of blocking traffic flow!”
God forbid one block the flow of traffic!
Experiences like this are sadly ‘situation normal’ for those who get around on a bicycle. The only thing that surprises me here is that some motorists even turned on one of their own. What is it about a certain small cohort of drivers that devolve into an emotionally dysregulated child should they be delayed for even a moment?
Do they behave this way in the supermarket? Do they hurl abuse at the checkout if they’re stuck behind someone with a full load of groceries? Do they shove their trolley at the ankles of someone slowly browsing the centre aisle? Probably not, but put them behind the wheel of a car and they turn feral.
This is learned behaviour. We have spent decades training drivers to expect that entire cities will be arranged around their convenience – at virtually any cost, even if that cost is the lives of our own children. Some people have evidently taken the message to heart.
If you’re walking, you need to push a button and wait for permission to cross the street. If you’re in a car, you probably have the green light by default. Cars have priority.
Our intersections are designed with wide sweeping curves to ensure cars don’t even need to slow down. Pedestrians will just have to negotiate a far wider and higher speed crossing. The safety of pedestrians is secondary to the convenience of motorists.
We know that a vehicle collision with a pedestrian or cyclist at 50 km/h will have a 90% chance of being a fatality. At 30 km/h it is a 90% chance of survival. But the streets where our kids play with their bikes and scooters after school are still 50 to 60 km/h. The convenience of motorists takes priority.
Given all this, is it any wonder that some people behave like a spoiled brat when they have to show some consideration for others on the road?
The way to change this is to start designing our streets differently. Pedestrians should not be relegated to second class. Intersections and crossing points can have protected medians. Corners can be a real 90 degree corner that can’t be taken at 70 km/h. It forces cars to slow down and pedestrians only need to cross one lane, not a sweeping wide speedway.
Designated bike lanes indicate that this space is for cyclists. It adds legitimacy to their presence on the road and gives them a place to be – where everyone else expects them to be. And it gets them out of the way of cars.
Everyone pays taxes and everyone is owed safe space on our streets. Governments (particularly local councils) have the responsibility to design them in such a way. It might takes decades to re-train the bad attitude out of some people, but we need to make a start. Ipswich isn’t a little country town any more. It needs to start designing like the major city it is becoming.
