Thursday, 15 August 2024

Cyclist safety

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:10): The coroner’s report into the tragic death of Angus Collins has been released, and it has revealed that Labor and developers ignored multiple safety warnings about the intersection where he was killed on his bike. It is heartbreaking to think that Angus could still be alive today if those warnings had not been ignored. I send my sincere condolences to Angus’s family and friends. There are several other deadly intersections across Melbourne where trucks and cars are put on a dangerous collision course for people on bikes, including some on the Footscray and Dynon roads corridor near where Angus was killed. The community is urging Labor to fix these intersections, and the Greens back those calls. The coroner’s report must be a wake-up call. In Australia a person on a bike is killed nearly every nine days, and the death of Angus Collins shows how non-existent or poorly designed infrastructure can contribute to those deaths. Meanwhile the UN recommends governments dedicate 20 per cent of transport funding to active transport like cycling, but Victoria spends only about 1 per cent. Both in funding and design, the government must stop prioritising the movement of trucks and cars over the lives of people on bikes. I call on the government to urgently fix the intersections on Footscray and Dynon roads, audit all intersections across Melbourne with similar conflicts and commit to serious investment in safe bike infrastructure across the city. The government must act now to prevent more deaths of those of us who ride.