Keep kid cyclists safe
SOME 43 years ago children were mistreated on our Townsville streets and conflict between cars and pushbikes was an everyday event.
My children said, “what can we do, because I was pushed of the street and into the gutter?”
My reply, “I would join the PCA Heatley group”.
I was an engineer and I volunteered to write a report to the Townsville City Council.
Mike Reynolds, a councillor, agreed to form a committee to investigate the problem and I was on the committee for 27 years as a volunteer.
The scheme was to build bike lanes throughout the city and encourage the children to use these lanes.
There was another scheme available in the city where people raised money to buy a bus to pick children up at their school and take them to a training area next door to the ambulance to teach them road rules as a bike rider and a car driver.
We encouraged schools to set up training sessions at their school and accidents between children and cars dropped.
Unfortunately, the scheme failed when Brisbane demanded the Townsville bus and this caused a complete knockout.
The training area was removed along with a building that was handed over to the museum. This has left a big hole for young people who are no longer trained in road rules and means people are now being killed on the streets.
This is typical of people in Brisbane not realising the consequence of their decisions and how it affected the regions.
Officials there could be blamed for deaths instead of accepting the overall scheme for towns throughout Queensland. I am now 90 and I hope I did not waste my time helping the council fix this problem.
GARTH HARRIGAN, Aitkenvale.