Wow!

This is an eye opener ...

I'm an Aussie living in Connecticut in the US and I only got into cycling the last 4 years since I've been here. I'm moving home this year and Sydney is an option my wife and I have been discussing .. but given some of these attitudes in this article we may well have to reconsider ...

Is there just so much more agro in Sydney because of the traffic?

My wife and I want to be able to commute and not rely on the car so much but some of the reasonings I read in this article are similar to conversations you'd have with monster truck driving, nascar watching types in the outer suburbs here.

Pretty scary.

Damo

The agro is there in lumps, but its just general agro. Cyclists only become a target for vexatious morons while they're in sight, at other times they have other things to yell and scream at, like each other. :lol:

I regularly ride down the pacific hwy on the North Shore side of Sydney in peak hour and it's probably the safest ride I do. All the traffic is riding in the same direction at a reasonable speed with almost no cross traffic. If you're on your bike and you're slow you get lots of abuse. If you're on your bike and you're not quite up to pace you cop at least one verbal per ride. But if you keep up with (or go faster than) traffic things are mostly quiet, with just the odd run in.

And people seem to get used to things with enough exposure. There's an old guy who has ridden the same run for the last twenty odd years. Pretty quick and smooth for a 75yo. Doesn't cop much flak at all.

There are now plenty of bikes doing that run and drivers have started to adapt so that traffic keeps flowing around them. Another year or two and they'll have it completely sorted out :)

Nasty crash at track last night. Young Jacko caught his elbow on another riders shoulder and somehow crossed his handlebars up - at 60kmh!!! Instant tacoed wheel. Never seen anyone go down so fast. Dunno how noone ran over him in sympathy.

That's good to hear... do you think all the cities would be much the same?

Damo, do you commute/ride in CT ? I used to do it in NJ and Sydney (and Australia) seems no worse, in fact, probably better because commuters on bikes in NJ were such low numbers that there is not much consideration for any bike out on the road at all from motorists. These news articles jusy hype it up a bit, make it look horrible but it's not really that bad.

anything broken? I assume an arm or collarbone?

12:49 PST
The UCI judges have held back Gilberto Simoni due to his bike being too light. They are still weighing it.

12:49 PST
They held him back a minute and let Jason McCartney start in front of him and now they're starting him. That means that he loses over a minute.

LOL :)

I've had a thyroid problem for a cupla years (nodules) which has slowly gotten worse and my doc strongly suggested a biopsy. $#!+ myself for a while till I got the results yesty morn'n.
Na, never get crook from eatn lobbies. :D

Yep, frustrated drivers need something to focus their rage on and cyclists are easy prey. It amazes me how, every day they expect it to get better :rolleyes: . Usually the worst ones have gotten up late (again) and then get angry they can't speed to save being late (again). Like you wouldn't think to leave a half hour earlier.

Jock, what's the story with the RR circuit at Somersby? I'm supposing out and back. Is it flat or hilly and what's the road surface like?
Can I pick up 3 minutes between now and May 4th??? :rolleyes:

woo hoo, after 20 odd minutes in the anerobic hurt box picked up 2nd in C grade at the dirt crits last night. actually thought id won it, but it turns out the guy i overtook was going a lap down and the winner was no where in sight. some great hadle bar to handle bar racing. im still pretty happy, 1st podium and hopefully not the last!

I havent copped too much flack from riding in Newcastle, Maybe I havent heard too much of it.
I dont think I would ride in the Western Suburbs though. Maybe you guys need to watch the Brunelle videos again and ride like that? Then they can abuse you for beating them everywhere

Climbo, face plant: cheekbone & eye took a beating

berny, the somersby RR course is a dog. Nasty, teeth-rattling, and slow tar and throw paving coupled with an endless series of longish little rises that will hurt like hell after the umpteenth lap.

kotter, riding in Newcastle is hell fun. Just beware the bus driver, for they are all evil

and slow, Ive had to get them yesterday and today because its raining, and I dont have a wet weather bike

Hows that guy saying that cyclist should have to pay rego. What a cop out.

Boo Hoo.. You pay tax on your fuel and pay rego for road maintenance... So What!

We have to breath this polluted air and pay taxes that go to help save the environment.

Grrr.

hay cmon, regos a weight tax, so if they want me to pay an equivilent ratio to the few hundred they pay for their 1 tonne car for my 8 kilo road bike, then ill be glad to hand over the 50 cents i owe :D

Rego would be ok as long as the money cyclists pay goes directly to bike related improvements.

I think the governments just chuck all the money into a pile any use it for whatever anyways. Their fuel tax goes to some guys dole check.

It's a facetious argument. Many cyclists have vehicles, have a drivers licence, pay rego and pay fuel tax anyway. In any case, state and federal constitiutions do not allow for taxes to be earmarked like that. It all goes into consoldiated revenue.

The problem can be boiled down to this. People who are dickheads loose all sense of time, reason and reality when they get behind the wheel. 'Oh no, that bike rider caused me to scrub 5km/h off my speed and delay me three seconds. I'll kill him or teach him a lesson by scaring or hurting him'. And they are serious. It's a worry.

Driving a car at a group of twenty bike riders and trying to hurt them is far and away a more serious issue than a few bike riders running the odd stop sign.

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this is what makes hockey a forkin' great game :)

Canada out without a medal - forkin' hey !!!

http://foxsports.news.com.au/common/...5112748,00.jpg

maybee they are a little rusty after sitting on their collective assos on strike last season.

my mum had a benign enlargement of her thyroid for a bazillion years, and it disappeared when she started eating a small amount of ground flax seed every day

The problem is very deep - it's a social sickness. Every night (on TV) children can see realistic re-enactments of people being shot. They are bombarded by news of violence by the media - every hour these days on TV. Shooting another person is essentially the ultimate act of cowardice. You terminate life using a machine designed purposely for that purpose, and from the ultimate position of strength - you cannot be stopped - a simple finger operated switch turns off a life like extinguishing a light.

An entire generation has been made immune to the the reality and consequences of this, and similar actions (many people are scared of needles - 1/10th mm diameter and sharp - oh how pathetic!! - they rarely think of a bullet as a needle, 10mm diameter, blunt, and doing Mach 2!!!!).

How much of a leap does it take to tranfer this into a car - to sit completely enclosed and unassailable in a steel cocoon, a position of absolute power, the decider of life and death, at least for those weaker than you like cyclists. To buzz a cyclist in a car is a demonstration of power - "see, I can kill you or let you live - my choice - and you can't stop me". **** is a crime of power. Assault is a crime of power. Firearm murder is a crime of power. Buzzing cyclists is a crime of power. What they all have in common is that they are done from a position of absolute safety - the coward's position.

50 cents or 50,000 dollars, they'd still rant and rage at us. They do it to each other and they all pay rego. There's a lot of anger in the world, most of it in the developed countries which is difficult to understand. I think many feel ripped off and don't know where or how to vent so they take it out on each other and anyone else they can get within intimidation sistance of. We've had it too good for too long me thinks. :(