Yes, many more people are killed in cars than on bicycles – but many more people do many more kilometres in cars. And most of them are not doing it for their sport – they need to go somewhere. In the end, we all make our choices, take the risks we choose and bear the consequences. What’s curious from the point of view of policy and the economic cost is the wildly different attitudes our governments and lobby groups have to different types of risk. For example, our financial markets’ supposed watchpuppy, ASIC, forever retreats into the defence of disclosure: It’s fine for con artists to rip off mugs as long as the cons disclosure that whatever they’re selling isn’t 100 per cent guaranteed. The idea is that we should all be informed individuals responsible for taking whatever risks we like. Remember that ASIC gave Storm Financial a tick of approval just before it failed. Oh well, people should have known. Such laissez faire attitudes don’t apply to the Chery. If ASIC was running vehicle safety, an importer would be covered by putting a note in the sales contract stating: “This vehicle doesn’t have ESC, so it might not be as safe in some circumstances as cars with ESC, but that’s also why it’s cheap as chips. You should weigh up the risk/reward ratio for yourself.” A reasonable person only has to look at a motorbike to understand that it’s a much riskier form of transport than a car – and that’s without riding in Queensland with friends. The safety campaigns for bikers go a small way to acknowledge that: in recommending the rider wear protective gear, the leathers and boots and pads and such, it is implicit that the rider may come off and be sent sliding and spinning into what fate physics and luck decide.

Motorbike riders will come off. Every rider I’ve known has put his or her machine down at some stage with varying degrees of inconvenience, frequency and pain. (As an aside, I sometimes wonder how the typical Harley buyer these days – a 40-year-old accountant – ever manages to pick up the bigger machines. Do they come with a jack?) And they’ve been the lucky ones, the ones spared catastrophe, not sliding into on-coming traffic, not having backs snapped by roadside poles. As a cadet journalist assigned to the Brisbane Coroner’s Court, I had etched into my mind the evidence of a motorcycle policeman describing the scene of a fatal motorbike accident, his detailed description of road markings and human tissue. I’ll spare you the details I still clearly remember. But they make their choices, motorbike riders, they take their risks. I get the impression some of the reason for riding is that risk – a belief that it’s a personal choice, that the person on the motorbike on the highway isn’t inconveniencing anyone else and therefore should be allowed the alleged “freedom” of riding. The reaction of bicyclists to intimations of their mortality seems somewhat different. For a start, the average pushbike rider doesn’t wear clothing that concedes the possibility of coming off as they hit top speed down a hill. The nanny state has decreed the little helmets, but beyond that, well, lycra goes better than leather with physical exertion. Some roads are inherently safer to ride on than others – wider, quieter, in better condition – and thus relatively safe for pursuing their chosen sport. There seems to be an attitude among the more evangelical cyclists though that all roads should be made safe for them to play or exercise on, that it’s someone else’s fault that their chosen sport is very dangerous and that they have a right to make motorised vehicles play by their rules.

There is no place for road rage, the driver and the cyclist should be friends, but there are roads where cycling is unsafe, where it creates hazards for the cyclist and the motorist and inconveniences traffic that tends to already be inconvenienced enough. Every cluster of deaths provokes an examination of attitudes, generally with an inference that it’s all the horseless carriage’s fault. No, a cyclist should not be allowed to struggle up a hill in the T3 lane. The one-metre passing rule is entirely sensible and necessary, but having to swing into another lane to overtake a cyclist creates its own risks. There’s a case to be made for minimum as well as maximum speeds on major roads, conditions permitting. There’s a case here for a Productivity Commission investigation – a risk/reward, efficiency/cost comparison of the Chery J1 and the pushbike. Similarly, some clarity on the value of bicycle lanes would be helpful. It strikes me that many of the lanes in Sydney’s CBD are only of use while not many cyclists use them – they’re not wide enough to handle the sort of bike traffic numbers that would justify them. A look at why cycling works in some cities and not in others and London’s cycling evangelists’ desire for a greater role in city transport (as opposed to sport and fitness regimes) by the Economist came to the conclusion that it would only take off where motorised traffic congestion become intolerable. There’s irony in too many cars becoming the cycling fanatics’ friends. The bike works best in old European cities that weren’t designed for cars in the first place. But such a Productivity Commission exercise would have to also include public transport – and a strong finding in favour of concentrating investment on buses, trains, trams and ferries would offend too many vested interests in both the road building and cycling fraternities. So it won’t happen.

Which leaves cyclists with the terrible truth that theirs is a dangerous sport and will remain so, even without motorists. And with the best will in the world from motorists, the reality of cars is that they are forever coming into contact with each other, so it can’t be a surprise that they also will accidentally collide with less visible and much more vulnerable cyclists. Without checking the numbers, I’d guess cycling overtook rock fishing as our most dangerous sport last year. On a mortality count, it’s certainly more dangerous than all the football codes – but we don’t let people play rugby on the road, generally. The bicycle is more dangerous than Australia’s most dangerous animal, the horse. Loading Beyond the angst and sorrow every death causes, it would be nice to have some consistency in policy. Allow freedom of choice with disclosure of risks across the board – and therefore readmit the Chery J1 and welcome innovative quadricycles such as the Twizy – or extend the culture of enforced safety to greater regulation of where and when people are allowed to cycle, run or play cricket on public roads. Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay Contributing Editor, who has friends who ride bikes, or that he did have until now.