The other part is the attitude of riders. I have stopped using the ( in theory) excellent bike path along the river because of the ridiculous macho attitude of many of the wankers who use it, who seem to think that being overtaken by other riders or having to slow momentarily in order to overtake safely is somehow beneath their dignity as serious cyclists.

Around a month ago, following any number of near misses, I was finally bought to earth by one of these tools. I was riding around a bend at my usual sedate pace. There were 2 cyclists riding abreast approaching from the other direction, with about 100 metres of clear path behind them. Suddenly, a bearded wonder in lycra swept around from behind me, moving atvspeed, trying to get around and in front of me. He didn’t have room to do, so he wound up clipping my front wheel, bringing himself to the deck, and sending me flying over his bike and landing in the middle of the road.

If this goon slowed down and waited 10 seconds, he could have passed with complete safety, but he preferred to take a bone-headed risk in order to shore up his own self-image as a hard-ass competitive rider.

In every part of Melbourne where cyclists gather, you see this numbskull attitude. It is part of why, in my opinion, our ridership skews heavily in favour of males. Women want to ride for and exercise, not to participate in a pissing contest.

If you live in Australia, you can do something about it by writing to your state member to have these crippling laws repealed.

All it takes is 5 mins to copy, paste and print one of these letters. http://helmetfreedom.org/145/helmet-exemption-for-bike-share/?official=366

There’s plenty there so please please please, do this once a month until the law is repealed and let our pollies know that we like helmets but hate helmet laws.

Slated to be the first major North American city to host a public bike share system, and provide a showcase example to the world during the 2010 winter Olympic games, the scheme has been placed on hold, due in great part to our all ages mandatory helmet law.

During the delay, a number of successful PSB systems have sprung up around North America, including one in Montreal, Canada.

Despite being told by administrators of successful PBS around the world that mandatory helmet use would impact PSB use negatively, the belief that helmet legislation saves lives has led both the city and provincial governments to keep the helmet law in place, in spite of the risk of failure of the initiative.

Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne and now Brisbane, Australia, have been the only examples of PSB with mandatory helmet use, and they haven’t been pretty ones.

It’s possible the experience down under may yet again halt the start of Vancouver’s system. City politicians are up for re-election this year and the opposition would love nothing better than to hold the current administration to task for investing in a system that isn’t being used.

Funny how in places like London or Montreal, the presiding mayor improves his standing through the success of their well used PSB systems, but in Vancouver, the initiative is being handled like a bomb; the Mayor Robinson doesn’t want it to blow up on him and kill his good standing.