Nope, it never ceases to amaze me how the reporting of cycling incidents in Australia is invariably framed with a whiff of automatic liability on the part of the bicycle user.
So in this example we're told that the unfortunate cyclist ‘was unable to avoid an oncoming car’, but it's done in such stilted prose that there's almost an inference that he alone was the only vehicle required to take avoidance strategies.
Obviously it is in the interests of cyclists to do so...that is to avoid other road users...but perhaps this recurrent 'bike-always-at-fault' theme only contributes further to the car-culture dominance and assumptions that cyclists are merely interlopers on Australian bitumen...sigh...
At the risk of being howled down, I would like to say yet again; if only we had strict liability like the Netherlands do...
"The guy was all over the road, I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him" - Jasper Carrott!
ReplyDeleteFunny guy, and in that same vein I suppose the road user travelling by bicycle could have avoided the accident if he'd travelled by bus!?
DeleteHad a similar observation today when I read an article about a cyclist-bus accident where the cyclist was supposed to have collided with the bus. The article then went on to mention that no one on the bus was injured!!???
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