Thousands of cyclists converged on Sydney Road last March to pay tribute to Alberto Paulon who was killed in a tragic dooring incident. Credit:Jason South Two years of Victoria Police incident reports reveal just 40 per cent of Sydney Road vehicle-bike collisions that were reported to police in 2014-15 resulted in the offender being fined. Police made 30 reports into vehicle-bike collisions between January 2014 and October 2015, and issued an infringement notice on 12 occasions. Among those 30 incidents were 11 car doorings. It is an offence to open a car door in a cyclist's path, but just five of these incidents led to a fine, including for the woman who fatally knocked Alberto Paulon into the path of a passing truck. The incident reports were obtained by the Victorian Greens using freedom-of-information laws.

They included an incident in which four women in a car rear-ended a cyclist, knocked the rider off their bike, and then drove away laughing. Greens leader Greg Barber said Victoria Police needed to do a better job of enforcing road rules to protect cyclists. "The government say they want to get the road toll down to zero, but that won't happen if the police fail to prosecute," Mr Barber said. "Even when cyclists make a report, the police often fail to investigate or issue a fine. It's a serious matter to hit somebody with your car. The police should make motorists more accountable for crashes they cause." In some of the 30 cases, police did not pursue a charge because of a lack of evidence.

Among those were an alleged hit-and-run where a motorist turned left into the path of a rider, stopped, then drove away, in the presence of witnesses. Police dropped the case because there was no CCTV footage. And a motorist who rear-ended a right-turning cyclist was not charged because of conflicting stories between him and the cyclist and a lack of other witnesses. Two incidents were found to be the cyclist's fault, including a rider who tried to overtake a truck on the left while the heavy vehicle was turning left, and a man who was hit by a car while riding on the footpath against the direction of traffic. Police and VicRoads launched a three-month enforcement blitz against rule-breaking cyclists on Sydney Road in December, 2014. The Age requested the total number of infringement notice issued against cyclists, motorists and pedestrians during Operation Aware but it was not available at the time of publication. Ross Millward, deputy convener of the Moreland BUG (Bicycle User Group), said police blitzes were an inadequate solution to the problem of a high number of bike crashes on Sydney Road.

Sydney Road is Melbourne's longest continuous shopping strip, with hundreds of shopfronts, peak-hour clearways and a chaotic mix of cars, trams, cyclists and pedestrians. "Car parks turn over a lot which means statistically as a cyclist you're quite likely to encounter a door, it's such a long stretch of cars coming and going," Mr Millward said. "We really need to … engineer it so it's safe, not rely on people to remember to look every time they get in and out of the car because it's very hard to do."