Blog entries tagged with "road rules"

A bit over a year ago I took this photo of England Road after it was changed from having no line markings to having a shoulder for parking and a series of painted islands between the traffic lanes:

Since I took that photo I have been varying my route home, but I usually go this way once or twice a week. Earlier in the week work began on the four painted islands and yesterday I took this photo of the result, all four are now actualy traffic islands:

(The photo isn’t the best, it was quite late and there wasn’t much light, and in hindsight I should have recreated the original photo.)

So what does this mean?

Previously when riding home this way cars would simply drive over the painted islands (I still don’t know what the road rule is about that), but now I suppose that they have two choices:

• wait until after the traffic islands where there is space for them to overtake; or
• try to overtake in one of the gaps between the islands.

I sure hope that they choose the first option, there is not space for the second.

Consider this road rule:

215. Using lights when driving at night or in hazardous weather conditions
     (1) A driver must not drive at night, or in hazardous weather
          conditions causing reduced visibility unless -
         (a) the headlights, tail lights and number plate light fitted to
             the driver's vehicle are operating effectively and are clearly
             visible; and
         (b) if the vehicle is fitted with clearance lights or side marker
             lights - those lights are operating effectively and are clearly
             visible.

And the accompanying definition from the dictionary:

night means the period between sunset on one day and sunrise on the next day.

This means that in Melbourne tomorrow you must not drive your car after 5:38PM without turning on your headlights.

The other aspects of this rule is about weather causing reduced visibility. I have yet to find a clear definition of this, but to me this is situtations where fog makes it hard to see, rain (even very light rain) makes it hard to see, heavy cloud cover makes it hard to see, etc.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because as a road user (both as a cyclist and car driver) I see a large proportion of other road users that do not know this rule. This is important because at night in busy traffic, what is the difference between a gap in the traffic and an idiot without their headlights on?

Read the rest of this entry…

I’m annoyed with the Victorian Police at the moment.

Hold on… let me back up a bit…

This woman is a danger to other road users and should not be allowed to drive a vehicle:

Whoops… not far back enough…

On Thursday I was riding to work as usual and had turned into Ivanhoe Street from Waverley Road, my next turn is a right into Leicester Ave. As I was nearing the right turn I heard the car behind me – I had seen it in my mirror – come over the speedhump quite hard (ie quite fast) so I moved a bit more to the right (to be just to the left of the centre of the road) and indicated right in accordance with this road rule:

31.  Starting a right turn from a road (except a multi-lane road)
     (3) If the road does not have a dividing line or median strip
         and is not a one-way road, the driver must approach and
         enter the intersection from the left of, parallel to, and as
         near as practicable to, the centre of the road.

So there I was: riding to the left of the centre of the road and indicating right. So what did the car do?

Read the rest of this entry…