Magda does lycra a favour
Poor, dear Magda Szubanski – one moment she’s spluttering hysterically about lycra-clad bums and the next she’s being widely lambasted for declaring a fatwah against cyclists.
I have not been in the same room as Magda since 1981 when we studied Drama at the University of Melboring and the star-to-be of Babe and Pig in the City was an agitprop, street-theatrical, radical feminist. A little of that angry young woman resurfaced recently, egged on by the laughter of the Good News Week studio audience.
The weight-loss spokes-model has since profusely apologised for what she said, retracted her would-be comic comments, regretted any murders committed on her say-so and pledged to get on her bike for National Ride to Work Day on Wednesday, October 14.
But the worry is – in our wide brown land so pridefully surviving the GFC on a tsunami of coal sales – that cyclists are still seen as fair game for motorists. Literally.
We don’t expect a Nobel prize for pursuing a healthy solution to the unfunny conundrum of contemporary urban transport. And I regret the aesthetic atrocities wrought in lycra worn by too many on two wheels. But we would like to live.
Twenty years ago almost 100 cyclists died each year on Australian roads. In recent years the figure has come down to about 40.
Compulsory wearing of helmets has reduced the mortality rate and the increasing number of riders has heightened driver awareness – the critical factor in safety.
Maybe Magda has done us all a favour by venting her spleen and stirring the possum. There is every reason to hope cycling will continue to become less dangerous.
And the sooner we quit this us-and-them bickering, and realise that all of us are someone’s children travelling together on the public thoroughfares, the sooner we can start solving real problems like the proliferation of treacly homilies.
Don’t forget, readers, next Wednesday, grab that bicycle by the handlebars and join the pushbike push to work!
by Peter Whitehead
