Page 1516 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 2021
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through their concerns about road safety around the shopping precinct for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and, particularly, students and teachers from the nearby Florey Primary School.
Of particular concern was the difficulty faced by delivery vehicles due to the lack of proper loading zone facilities at the back of the shops. The safety issues with delivery trucks are made more concerning, as I mentioned, by the nearby and adjacent primary school. I raised these issues with the minister and am pleased to say that—though several months later—the minister has agreed to have Transport Canberra and City Services undertake a seven-day traffic survey to analyse delivery vehicle movements.
I bring this up today to emphasise the importance of persistence by the community and by MLAs in this house and to let the people of Ginninderra know that I plan to continue to listen to and act for them during this term of government. Unfortunately, my action is often required, because of Labor-Greens indifference to basic services.
I remain committed to the residents of Ginninderra to ensure that they get the best services and infrastructure, which they thoroughly deserve.
Roads—safety
MS CLAY (Ginninderra) (5.46): I wanted to say a few words about our vulnerable road users and road safety. Now, there was a really interesting article in Sydney news yesterday by Ian Ross of Pedal Power about this issue and it was sparked by a very serious accident in which a car towing a trailer slammed into a person riding a bike and it was pretty horrifying to have a look at that footage. And I would really like to say that that almost never happens but that is actually not true. There are a lot of people in this town who feel like they take their life in their hands simply getting to work or popping down the shops. Now, we would not find that acceptable for people driving cars but for some reason we find that acceptable for our vulnerable road users, for those who are walking around, riding bikes, riding motorcycles.
In this particular incident that was highlighted by Pedal Power, the driver was penalised. They received a $393 fine. For the driver to walk away and receive such a small fine and for that person who was injured to receive lifetime injuries is absolutely not right. We would be outraged again if that were happening to people in cars regularly, but we are apparently okay with it happening to people riding bikes.
In Australia in 2020, 42 cyclists died and that figure is increasing. The deaths are tragic but the deaths are also a very, very small part of the puzzle. Typically what happens when a car crashes into a vulnerable road user, to somebody on a bike or somebody walking or somebody in a wheelchair, the person driving the car will be fine. That person who has been crashed into will not necessarily die but they are probably going to have lifetime injuries. They might have PTSD. They might need surgery. There can be some very serious consequences and not many people walk away from that kind of VRU accident without suffering damage.
Only last week one of my constituents sent me some really horrific photos of their elderly mother who had tripped on a badly maintained footpath, and she suffered a lot
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