REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN FRIDAY MAY 7, 2004

IF you still think it is OK to ride your bike while talking on your mobile phone, you’re wrong. And it’s nothing new. More than a decade ago, the Bulletin wrote a story about a Labrador cleaning contractor being fined $225 for using his mobile phone while riding his bicycle home.

Michael Dailey, 44, said he was “just gobsmacked” after a Brisbane-based state traffic taskforce officer booked him as he was pedalling home for breakfast. “I answered a call on my mobile from work and I just said ‘yes’ three times and that was it,’’ he said at the time.

Those three words cost $75 each.

He was riding home from work in Marine Pde, Southport, after completing the early morning part of his job in cleaning and maintenance at an apartment complex, when he was booked in April 2004.

“I have never had a car licence but I knew about how it’s illegal to use the mobile phone in the car,’’ he said.

“I never thought of it being the same for a bike although I realised a bike was a vehicle.’’

Senior Sergeant Michael Gollschewski, of the state traffic support branch, told the Bulletin at the time that it became an offence to use a mobile phone in a vehicle in December 1999.

“And, of course a bicycle is a vehicle,’’ he said. “We would prefer our cyclists to have both hands on their handlebars for obvious safety reasons and they could always use an earpiece like people do in cars and that would not be an offence.”