The new cycling road rule which could see you fined $1600
sraj
Victoria has introduced a road rule for motorists sharing the road with cyclists which could see drivers slapped with a $1652 fine.
From Monday, motorists must give riders at least one-metre clearance when overtaking on roads up to 60km/h, and 1.5 metres on roads with speed limits above 60km/h.
It means Victoria now has the same rule for passing cyclists as every other state and territory in Australia.
Roads Minister Ben Carroll said 13 cyclists lost their lives on Victoria's roads in 2020, an increase on the five-year average of 10 deaths.
sraj
The German government on Wednesday, April 21, agreed to a new national cycling strategy to boost bike use and safety by 2030. The plan, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer said, would “make Germany a bicycle country.”
It aims to increase the average number of bike journeys each German makes by half—from 120 a year at present to 180 in 10 years’ time. Compared to driving, this would result in greenhouse gas emissions savings equivalent to 3–4 million tons of carbon dioxide, government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said.
Concerns about climate change have figured large in the polls in recent years, boosting Germany’s Greens, who were for the first time leading an opinion survey this week asking who people would vote for in September’s national election.
To make cycling more attractive, officials want to expand the number of “cycling highways” in the country, create more dedicated bike lanes and parking facilities, and factor in the needs of the growing number of cargo bike users.
The plan also hopes to cut the number of cyclists killed on German roads by 40 percent in the coming decade compared to 2019, when 445 bike users died in traffic accidents.
The federal government wants to spend almost 1.5 billion euros (US$1.8 billion) on the cycling plan in the coming two years.