Driving Kills & Silences Dissenters

Image credit: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize

By maiming and poisoning, driving kills ... everything ... people, fauna, flora.

Yet this detrimental habit continues unchecked with political appetite for more roads, motorways and bypasses growing greedier by the day.

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, Arwen Birch highlights the pervasive connection between promotion and human gullibility, and posits that just as we did with cigarette ads, so we have fallen for yet another product that detrimentally affects our health.

"A ban on car advertising may seem far-fetched, but if you compare the automotive and the tobacco industries, the similarities may be closer than you think. Smoking and car use have comparable health costs, yet while we have the strictest tobacco promotion laws in the world, we allow car companies to promote themselves unbridled." 

 Would our politicians be open to banning car ads?

Right now, I doubt it!

As the Big Oil puppets that they are, in my opinion it would take a seismic jolt to wean New South Wales politicians off their auto-mobile pap and onto the solid act of minimising car advertising.

New South Wales Police working with the community to reduce violence, crime and fear

 By way of illustration, cycling in Australia is seen as a direct threat to the automobile industry, and in NSW, State opposition to cycling is extreme.

With cycle paths ripped up and helmet fines increased by 349% over the last two years, cycling numbers in NSW have plummeted so when news filtered across political and media spheres that synchronised helmet optional rides were to happen across Australia and New Zealand last Saturday, the Sydney Oil patriachy set about nipping the Sydney ride in the bud.

Voila the excessive over-reach of the NSW Police Force witnessed when seven police vehicles were despatched to quash our implied right to political communication at our peaceful protest last Saturday in Centennial Park - the very strong arm of the law in action indeed, helping the community keep #BigOil centre stage of our lives ...

Freedom of policitcal communication via a peaceful protest

... but we will not be silenced, and the law may find for us yet ... 

... and with champions like this former governor of California, car ads will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future, of that I am sure.

What about finger helmets

 Our youngest one's beloved took a tumble from his bicycle last week, and if he'd been wearing a finger helmet it would have saved him from this broken finger!

$$$ C'mon, Australia, ... there's not a moment to lose!

Freestyle Cyclists Antipodean Protest Rides

This coming Saturday will see synchronised bicycle protest rides being held across Australia and New Zealand.

In Sydney, the Freestyle Cyclists Sydney Chapter have had enough of academic overstated scaremongering of cycling and will be doing a couple of leisurely laps of Centennial Park in protest, some with helmets and some without; your choice, or should be.

"We do not support the promotion of helmet wearing for everyday cycling," says Kathy Francis, founding member of Freestyle Cyclists and one of the co-organisers for Saturday’s Melbourne Protest Ride. "We categorically oppose laws requiring adults to wear helmets … bicycle helmets present a significant barrier to everyday cycling."

Compared to other countries in the world, Australia is an outlier in terms of active transport, and with our mandatory bicycle helmet compulsion, attempts at building up cycling as a mode of transport in Australian towns and cities have been well and truly stymied.

"Cycling must become the easy choice," says Kathy Francis, "which means changes to legislation, and community attitudes, and changes to the way roads are designed."

Bicycle helmet law is a uniquely Antipodean law of oppression and privilege, and Antipodean Freestyle Cyclists have had enough of this political nonsense.

Media Contact - for more information, images or interviews please contact:
Rudy Botha, Freestyle Cyclists Sydney Ride organiser, 0488 497 484
What: Stop Fining Healthy Transport
When: Saturday, 17th March 2018
Where: Centennial Homestead, Centennial Park, Sydney
Time: 11:00AM start

Further Info: Visit the Freestyle Cyclists facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FreestyleCyclists/)

♩ ♪ Don't be too polite, girls, don't be too polite ♫ ♬

Notwithstanding my respectfully submitting that using a bicycle precludes bicycle helmets being termed excluded goods, and instead allows a bicycle to come under the provision of section 41 BD (1)(a)(iii) of the Therapuetic Goods Act 1989 defining bicycle helmets as medical devices, the judge in the Newcastle District Court last Thursday just could not uphold my appeal ... sigh.

I tried my damnedest but could not get over the line.

I tried so hard in the respectfully submitting department to make the case that the Therapeutic Goods Act, if it had been properly considered might have found that whilst the Therapeutic Goods Act was not intedend to apply to the exclusion of Regulation 256 (NSW Road Rules 2014) to the extent that Regulation 256 (Road Rules 2014) is capable of operating concurrently with the Theraueputic Goods Act, in relation to bicycle helmets it does exclude Regulation 256, and therefore I ought not to be compelled to wear a medical device withouth my informed consent ... but all to no avail.

The whole process seems so very dated and backward looking ... and extremely long-winded.

There was the housekeeping session in the morning with the housekeeping judge working out everybodies' diaries followed by the actual appeal after lunch, where I was assigned a court room all to myself containing:

1 judge
1 judge's associate
1 clerk
1 court officer
1 DPP solicitor
+
me

How much simpler (and cheaper) would it be to relinquish the notion that helmets proffer protection from B-doubles et al, and get on with the business of actually providing bicycle safety by actually providing us with proper bicycle infrastructure that separates us from aforementioned vehicles.

So check ✔, that one is done and dusted ...

Next bicycle saga, and last one too I might add now that I've removed myself from Scone roads due to intense police targeting, is set for 20 April 2018 and I'm thinking of going back to the good old defence of necessity - talk about full circle!