WalkSydney

Content warning for road violence and credulous reporting.

Yesterday, a person died near Central after being hit by a garbage truck. They were on a speed-limited e-bike at the time, which prompted an awful lot of media outlets to play the hits and blame kids on e-motorbikes for, as a reminder, this approx 13 tonne garbage truck being driven into this person.

The same morning, Chris Minns took to the airwaves to re-announce what appears to be sensible reform on the power of e-bikes that can be sold in NSW, and maybe undertake some light victim blaming live on air.

The good people at the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board mulled it over and this morning unveiled their latest “Herald view“, which unfortunately sucks very badly. After re-running the ubiquitous NSW Police press release ‘begging’ parents to only buy compliant e-bikes for kids at Christmas, they delve into the fact-free zone of the e-bike panic.

Here’s a quote:

“It is unclear how fast the rider and garbage truck were travelling, or who was at fault – the Herald has sympathy for the terrible grief the family of the rider must now be going through.

But this tragedy clearly illustrates the safety risks of this type of bicycle.”

Now, it’s Christmas, and the defining feature of Christmas is listening to some horrific opinions which you’d rather not entertain. But this isn’t your bigoted relative, this is the pedigree newspaper for a city of five million.

This tragedy does not illustrate the safety risks of this type of bicycle. With the facts undetermined, it seems very strange for the Herald to claim it illustrates anything just yet. But what we do know is that motorised vehicles hitting people’s bodies is the cause of the overwhelming majority of road deaths, and is very likely the cause here.

As non-voters, kids are a useful group to deflect blame onto for any politician. Quite why the Herald is willing to join in and divert scrutiny from our elected officials is not clear.

Perhaps it’s the spirit of Christmas.