Bicycle safety – A reflection.

It is nearly thirty years since Don Hurnall and his team set up the Geelong Bike Plan. It was a definitive moment in road safety and an “on-the-ground” implementation of the systems approach to traffic safety as advocated for many years earlier by Dr Bob Marshall of the Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, United States of America. Its visibility becomes its strategic advantage. The strategy developed into what became known as the four “E’s” of bicycle safety: engineering, education, enforcement and encouragement. This number has since increased to encompass also the “E’s” of evaluation, equipment, evacuation and the environment. The basic thrust of this approach is that no one arm of the strategy is effective without adequate support from the others as, for example, education may only work within a framework of consistent enforcement, appropriate engineering, available equipment and sensible encouragement.