A car-load of hoons ploughed into a group of 13 cyclists who were on their way to the starting point for yesterday’s Around the Bay in a Day ride.

Police said the riders were north-bound on the Nepean Highway at Mount Eliza about 4am when the car, said to be a burgundy EB Falcon, drove past the cyclists before the driver doubled back and deliberately swerved into them.

Words cannot describe the kind of imbecile that would do something like that. If this knob gets caught he should be barred from driving for life because he’s clearly incapable of accepting the serious responsibility of controlling a motor vehicle.

From the cyclists’ point of view, this was clearly a terrifying experience:

Mr Oxford said the group first knew of the carload of hoons when they drove past and yelled abuse through some kind of loudspeaker.

“They yelled out ‘wankers’. They said ‘bloody bike riders, we’re going to kill you bastards’,” he said.

They threatened the riders. They carried out the threat. Premeditated. That’s not a hit-and-run “accident”, that’s assault with a deadly weapon and should be prosecuted as attemtped murder. I bet it won’t be though.

Other weird stuff

A couple of other worrying things cropped up following this incident. Firstly, note the comments attributed to Senior Constable Danny Lean of Mornington Police

“People do get frustrated with cyclists on the road, there are cyclists out there who don’t obey the road rules, don’t stay in their designated lanes.

“We all bloody get jacked off with it because the cyclists are on the road and they are travelling two or three or four abreast chatting away to each other, but it doesn’t justify the behaviour that’s happened in the early hours of Sunday morning.”

Gee, thanks Senior. Is that really the best way you can do to endorse cyclists as legitimate road users? Is there any suggestion whatsoever that the cyclists who were targetted by this moron were doing anything wrong at all? Talk about avoiding the real problem.

And on a related matter, where the hell does the Herald Sun get off? At the bottom of their coverage of this story, they tacked on a survey question: Are cyclists responsible road users? Excuse me?!? Just who in this situation was acting irresponsibly? Clearly in the addled mind of some News Corp hack, the brain-impaired yobbos lobbing beer bottles and insults from a moving vehicle were just quietly on their way to church when they were assaulted by a marauding band of cyclists (no doubt travelling three or four abreast and chatting away to each other).

As Neil Kearney put it in the same august journal:

If those hooligans had bowled over a bunch of grannies going to church, would readers be having their say on whether senior citizens are responsible road users?

Well put, as is his key message to all road users:

If this culture of intolerance continues, people will die because of it. And other people will have blood on their hands.

What we need is an understanding between road users. We need everyone to realise that the global popularity of cycling is here to stay, and that bikes and cars must safely coexist.

Everyone just relax and share the road. Sheesh, it’s not that hard.

1800-JASON

But I’d just like to add my few cents worth on the laughable explanation “Jason” offered on talkback radio last week:

1. If his engine misfired/stalled as he claims, he would have been in the middle lane, as he accelerated “to kick it back a gear”. When you have engine trouble, your first instinct is not to veer into another lane or to brake heavily—how much more dangerous is it for you if you become stranded across two lanes? No, when your engine fails you coast as far as you can and pull in safely.

2. He claims to have been stationary for “a good 20 seconds” before the first bike hit him. If that’s the case, there is absolutely no way that he had just overtaken the group as he described. Measure it for yourself: 20 seconds is a long time. The cyclists claim to have been travelling at 60 km/h, not unreasonable for an elite pack but let’s be conservative and say they were doing 40 km/h: in 20 seconds they would have travelled well in excess of 200 metres—that just does not fit with Jason’s claim that he was accelerating to get past the cyclists when his car stalled. Even if he had been several car lengths in front, the whole pack would have still be well past him in 20 seconds.

3. It might be possible to argue that being in genuine fear of your personal safety may be legitimate grounds for leaving the scene of a collision, but being distrustful or intimidated by the police is nonsense. Why didn’t he call the police? And for that matter, why didn’t he call an ambulance?

4. At no point does Jason express any concern or remorse over the injuries to the other road users, but we hear several times that there is no significant damage to his car. Such nice priorities aside, this lack of concern doesn’t reasonably fit with someone who has innocently and accidentally caused injury. I’d suggest that it does, however, fit with someone who has deliberately tried to maim other people and is doing a bad job of covering his tracks.

5. The statement that the driver in front was “more interested in what was going on around him than doing the speed limit” speaks volumes. Every driver should be more interested in what’s going on around them than doggedly doing the speed limit—if conditions dictate slowing down then so be it. If Jason was able to be concerned about travelling at or near the speed limit, how does that jell with claims made elsewhere (e.g. by NSW Roads Minister Roozendaal) that the pack was out riding in heavy peak hour traffic? Clearly they were not.

OK, that’s all pretty speculative but then I understand that civil actions are settled on the balance of probabilities not beyond a reasonable doubt. Better get a lawyer, Jason. And if your brief thought it was a good idea for you to go on radio, start looking for a good lawyer.

Blog commentary

Many of the responses to this crazy incident in the newspaper trollfests and from various talking heads have been unintentionally comic (and therefore rather tragic), but I’ll leave discussion of that topic to other bloggers who sum it up better than I could; among them (in no particular order):

• pedaller, and again, and again

• giant chimney

• cfsmtb

• Surly Dave

• Cycling the Yellow Brick Road

• Dave Moulton

Laugh

Oh yeah, and I fell off my chair laughing when I saw that Alan Odds had been quoted by The Age. Keep up the good work, that man.

tough sentencing guidelines will be introduced later this year for excessive speeding, racing, speed trialling and hit-and-run offences.

That’s good to hear. The current maximum penalty of three years in jail for dangerous driving (or five years if intoxicated) will be increased:

Mr Beattie said under the proposed amendments the dangerous driving category would be widened and a five-year penalty also would apply to cases of excessive speeding, racing or speed trialling.

Dangerous driving causing death or grievous bodily harm, which currently carries a maximum seven-year penalty, will increase to 10 years.

In addition, the offence, which currently carries a 10 year penalty if the offender is adversely affected by alcohol, will increase to 14 years and also takes in excessive speeding, speed trialling or leaving the scene of an accident.

If I read this right, it means failing to stop at the scene of an accident could carry a penalty of up to 14 years imprisonment. That’s got to be a good thing, provided there is a realistic chance of it being imposed.

Wishlist

But I wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective to make the penalty for hit-and-run even more severe than the other penalties. Aside from the basic “failure of humanity” that leaving the scene entails, all matters are resolved much faster if the police don’t have to track down the offender. If someone has little to gain by running away — because of harsher penalties that arise if they do — then they may be more likely to stick around and face the consequences of their action.

And while he’s at it, Mr Beattie ought to consider permanent license cancellations for hit-and-run offenders.

To my mind, part of the solution seems to be to make the consequences of running away noticeably more severe than those for staying and accepting one’s responsibilities.