Never-ending stories

If you've been around the traps for a while observing the to-ing and fro-ing of cycling discourse you'll find two kinds of stories that never seem to die.

One is the hard to take seriously big media blowhard banging on about Lycra louts on either the AM airwaves or in the pages of one of the big city tabloids.

Stepping into the breach yesterday for one of those yarns was failed shock jock Steve Price, who threw the entire bag of hammers in his head at, wait for it, "Cycle Nazis".

Now Internet lore has it that "given enough time, in any online discussion, regardless of topic or scope, someone inevitably criticises some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis".

But usually you have to wait until the 20th comment or so below any article before someone decides to compare some perceived outrage or other to Adolf and his jackbooted acolytes, or mention Nazis.

Unfortunately for Price he Godwinned himself before the caterpillar tracks of his brain gained any traction, but that didn't stop our failed megaphone megalomaniac from dropping all sorts of newly (to him) imagined bon mots.

"Melbourne isn't Amsterdam and doesn't want to be," he thundered. "They (cyclists) don't pay registration fees, are probably not city ratepayers, and add nothing to the local city economy aside from buying coffee and those ludicrous Lycra shorts," he asserted without proof.

The much-maligned Middle Aged Men in Lycra (MAMiL's) also copped a spray of Price's brainless buckshot. "Bike riding might be the new jogging and it has become trendy as a way of exercise, especially for older, overweight men who can't run and love Cadel Evans."

As if a desire to be a healthy middle aged man who admires a truly gifted athlete and all round nice guy, is a bad thing. This from a man who spends his weekends singing the praises of those sporting role models plying their trade on the fields of the National Rugby League (NRL).

Price closed his thankfully paywalled diatribe, designed to stir the masses (white van men and the over 60 crowd who listen to right-wing talkback) into open revolt over the horrible fate that awaits Melbourne, with the only true thing in his piece.

"It (cycling) will never be a mass transport solution for Melbourne and should be funded accordingly." Which of course it isn't, because it isn't.

The second never-ending story is really more of a distraction to the main game of making cycling safe and plentiful in Australia than it is a Pricean sledge at Melbourne's cycling hordes.

Usually dissent on the issue of helmet legislation comes from libertarian types and some cycling activists, probably more disturbed by the sight of helmet head than reality, but this time the source is a bit different, the Mayor of Fremantle Brad Pettitt and Independent Fremantle MP Adele Carles.

The good mayor and his sidekick want to give a two-year no-helmet trial in the West Australian city a run in an attempt to boost cycling numbers. The proposal will make helmets optional for adults riding on separated cycleways, dual-use paths and roads with a speed limit of 50km/h or less.

This idea I like because it should clarify thinking about a wrongly perceived objection to riding a bicycle.

"I think a trial is a very good idea and anything that collects data on cycling is good for future policies but the alliance will not be formally campaigning to have the law lifted," said the somewhat ironically named Bicycle Transport Alliance spokesperson Heinrich Benz.

"Removing helmet legislation may lead to increased cycle numbers but it is not something we will be pushing. There are more important things we are worried about. This topic is a bit of a red herring, it is a distraction from the lack of spending on cycling infrastructure that Perth cyclists desperately want and need."

A "red herring" it is because bicycle sales in Australia remain strong at more than one million sold each year, almost all of them with helmets. The buying public now know a 'skid lid' is part and parcel of riding a bike and are voting with their wallets in vast numbers.

The real issue here is not fashion but infrastructure, as Benz noted, "We need to invest money and time into making roads safer for cyclists and look into things like more cycle paths, safe passing distances and lower speed limits, above things like helmet laws."

All things that ought to make Steve Price's head really explode.

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