Swing wide, large chariot, this summer

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 15

Swing wide, large chariot, this summer

Motoring'

When you see cyclists making their quiet way along the highway during your summer motoring holiday, don’t fix them with a steely eye and try to shower them with stones or send them sprawling with your car's slipstream. Cycling is. becoming a popular way of seeing the countryside — as opposed to roaring past many interesting places at 80 km/h or more in an automobile — and the motorist should be glad that someone is prepared to substitute unrepiaceable fossil fuel with musclepower.

Unfortunately for cyclists, they must share New Zealand’s wide network of public roads with the million or so cars in this country.

Peter McDonald, the cycling campaigner of Friends of the Earth, the

non-profit organisation committed to the conservation. restoration and rational use of the geosphere,” has laid down some basic rules for motorists who encounter cyclists on the highway, in an effort to make the cyclists' way a little easier and safer. He says that cycle is a road vehicle and is part of traffic, not separate from it, and that any special treatment of cyclists is "not a favour to be doled out but behaviour In accordance with the road safety rules allowing for the characteristics of the bicycle as a vehicle." Friends of the Earth want motorists to give cyclists plenty of clearance when overtaking them. “Cyclists do not proceed in a straight line, but a sort of controlled wobble. Thev also swerve to avoid

bumps, stones and dead opossums, etc. Also, sour slipstream may affect ehm. Bear in mind the extra width or sssav of a trailer at caravan, 4 they advise Other advice tor motorists includes slowing down when meeting cyclists on gravel roads or at road works. They also advise motorists to dtp their lights for oncoming cyclists at night, as "undipped headlights not only blind the cyclist, but ehy may conceal him or her from following motor traffic.” Friends of the Earth ask motorists not to overtake cyclists in the face of oncoming traffic and also not to overtake a vehicle that is about to overtake a cyclist. They say that the slipstream produced by such manoeuvres can make life very tdfficult for cyclists.