Don’t say you weren’t warned
One of the top five cyclist offences in NSW is – ‘ride bicycle without workable warning device’. 400 cyclists got done for that last year. Were all these miscreants mute? What is ‘workable warning device’ if not the human voice communicating grammatically at appropriate volume??
A bell or a horn must be pressed or squeezed or otherwise fumbled with in any crisis situation. Sounds come quickly and words get the message across better than a tinny tinkle or a Toadish toot-toot.
That bloke who doored me in King Street could not believe how many cuss-words I spat before hitting the asphalt. I apologised but continued with “but you are a complete… [enough said – ed]”.
Better chosen words avert accidents. The odd muttered “Sorry” to pedestrians or other road users who may imagine themselves inconvenienced does not hurt either.
A cycling mate has a huge curly bugle that resounds like an apoplectic flugelhorn. A sudden burst from behind has a drastic effect on soft-gutted pedestrians. Which is fine if you’re Nostalgic Noel yearning for that ineffable aromatic tang of Southern India – but you get better community response from a polite “Passing to your right! Your right”.
Noel is dealing back karmic reflux accrued over forty years copping the self-absorbed carelessness of bad drivers. Straddling a bike in city traffic is a crash course on vulnerability. Every insecurity about mechanical soundness or riding capabilities is torture when you realise a fall puts your helmeted head under the multiple wheels of a freight-truck. Your life is not worth a jot without actuarially accurate risk assessment.
Or be the Spectre of Death pedal-pushing Cleveland Street for the blithe midnight joy of pot-holes, corrugations and irregular bursts of traffic.
As EM Forster’s A Passage to India concludes – “only connect”. Even on Sydney’s mean streets. It will save our necks.
Say “G’day”. Or whatever. Do avoid the temporary Tourette’s of my moment in Newtown. Don’t lose the lesson of Crocodile Dundee.
by Peter Whitehead
