If the safety information below was important, would you already know it? Or would the roads already be made safe for you? No, and No, the roads in Newcastle are not safe for pedestrians, motorists or cyclists. A lot of the safety information below is not known. So 15 minutes of reading might save your life later. So relax on the quick scrolling down through the below text, because we have compiled information to make your Newcastle experience awesome.
Top 5 happy cycling tips
1: Never ride close to parked cars (even when bike pictures on roads confuse you). Unseen children can open car doors and push you into traffic. NSW Road Rules 153, 144 & 247 advise to ride the safe way (usually 1.5m away from parked cars).
2: Bicycle seats too low cause knees to hurt, slower cycling, and less enjoyment. Leg rotation too slow causes you to tire quickly. Learn cycle skill of hopping forward off your bike seat every time you stop. Do not set your bike seat height for when you are stopped.
3: Discover safer routes (Google maps do not always give the safest way) and extra info at newcastle.edu.au/activetravel
3: Discover safer routes (Google maps do not always give the safest way) and extra info at newcastle.edu.au/activetravel
4: Lock your bike up inside after dark (never leave locked up overnight in the public (trains stations, main roads, at Uni, etc), too high a risk of it being stolen). Report thefts to 131444
5. Report bad bus driving to transportnsw.info, they have cameras on board to prove they were dangerous. Buses require a 4 second safety gap to the car in front of them (about 60 metres at 60km/hr). Anything less than 4 seconds and they are tailgating. Be happy to know that you can have good safety on pushbikes, and not tailgate like 99% of cars do.
Why Bike Love Corral?
When you get used to cycling, the car becomes less convenient. Pushbikes are the missing link in our city for a happy, safe, fast transport mix . We try to Corral (bring) together appropriate solutions/groups to have world's best practice involving these issues: Happiness, faster travel, better jobs, obesity epidemic, negative indirect effects, road rage (congestion), active and healthy lifestyle, affordable housing, causing less danger, urban sprawl, etc. For less road congestion, we need to get more people on buses, trains, and pushbikes.
When you get used to cycling, the car becomes less convenient. Pushbikes are the missing link in our city for a happy, safe, fast transport mix . We try to Corral (bring) together appropriate solutions/groups to have world's best practice involving these issues: Happiness, faster travel, better jobs, obesity epidemic, negative indirect effects, road rage (congestion), active and healthy lifestyle, affordable housing, causing less danger, urban sprawl, etc. For less road congestion, we need to get more people on buses, trains, and pushbikes.
Pushbikes are faster, safer and more needed than you think.For more affordable housing, more jobs and happier society, we need pushbikes for transport. We will eventually get a safe pushbike network, but we can discover safer cycling skills to be safer than cars now (all cars dangerously tailgating – see below). Door-to-door on a bike (and finding shortcuts in backstreets) can be faster than finding car parking/waiting for buses. Combine transport with exercise (needed for body and mind happiness every day) you save time.
More dense cities are faster (spread out suburbs are inefficient) and cost benefit ratios for bike paths show increase in society health and increase in business/shops near them.
All excuses can be solved for why you don’t pushbike more (with all the information on the internet there is no excuse for you not to find it)
The only negative to pushbikes is the same as learning to ride for the 1st time, very frightening, but very rewarding when you gain the “1st world skill” of “learning to ride a bike”. With robot automated cars in the future (invented to mainly save millions of lives from car crashes), the “rite of passage” of learning to “drive a car” will no longer be the modern day “you are now grown up for going out into the world”. The next “rite of passage” will be learning to ride a pushbike skillfully and safely (seat height / stopping skills / leg rotation speed for faster more efficient riding. Learning shortcuts, learning the actual safety of cars and lane position). The RMS (state authority) recommends a 3 second safety gap between a car following another car, but most people leave only 1 to 2 seconds. This is why many safety conscious people give up on the car because they cannot control the car dangerously following them. You can gain much more safety and control on a pushbike by learning better skills and back streets. Pushbike advocates love to help people find better backstreets, and to make submissions many government things because pushbikes are a critical part of a happy and ethical society.
Bike Love Corral links to groups:NUBUG.wordpress.com Uni bike club
Critical Mass (bike ride to celebrate cycling)
Local Peak Push Bike Advocacy group: NewcastleCycleways.org.au
Cycle Safe Network for NCC & LMCC proposal csn.org.au
BicycleNSW.org.au
Newcastle Bike Ecology Centre (radical advocacy group)
World Naykd Bike Ride (Misunderstood World Protest Bike Ride)
EVERYONE CONFUSED ABOUT BIKE PICTURES ON ROADS
