Secondly, low street speeds make for safer bicycle riding in Shanghai.
China has clearly got issues with dangerous driver and rider behaviour. But trauma rates are lower than one might expect as traffic speeds are low on suburban streets; usually around 30km/h.
At this speed, cars, motorcyclists and bike riders have more time to negotiate in traffic. The accidents that might occur at higher speeds just don’t happen, and the collisions that do occur (I’ve seen a couple) are usually benign.
The 50km/h posted street speed limit in local streets in Australia, and 40km/h in school zones, are therefore an international embarrassment, set way higher than norms in cities such as Berlin.
Well said that man! But hang on, we don't think we ever heard such a suggestion from Matthew during our time on the Queensland Bicycle Council with him, when the Minister might have had a shell-like ear ready to hear such a suggestion.
In fact, there were not too many actual 'suggestions' from anyone sitting around that enormous table trying to cook up a whole-of-government approach, although TBUG did try to get some discussions going the few times we were there.
Actually, everything was going swimmingly, until TBUG asked why the previous Queensland Cycle Strategy had failed to get anywhere near its targets for 'cycle journeys', and then we were given a vote-of-thanks and waved 'goodbye'.
Which reminds me, we wrote to the Minister recently, asking her if we can see the detailed analysis of the reasons why the previous QCS failed, but so far, no word back.
Read the rest of the story here:
http://theconversation.edu.au/effortless-cycling-how-do-we-make-riding-a-bike-normal-3670
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