Cyclist in Australia fined 152 dollars for overtaking immobile car

Melbourne: A 65-year-old seasoned cyclist in Australia was fined 152 dollars for passing on the left of an unmoving car, a media report said today.

Laurie Duncan said he was shocked when he was slapped with the 152 Australian dollar ($115) fine for overtaking the stationary car which had its left-turn indicator on but was not going anywhere because pedestrians were crossing the road from both directions.

He said it could have been unsafe to pass the car from the right, The Age reported.

Mr Duncan, a long-time member of a cycling group Bicycle Network (BN), said that he was stunned when he was stopped by a police officer who asked why he had overtaken on the left. "I was unaware I was doing anything wrong. I did not think it was dangerous," Mr Duncan replied to the police officer. Under the rules, "the rider of a bicycle must not ride past, or overtake, to the left of a vehicle that is turning left and is giving a left change of direction signal".

BN hired a lawyer to contest Mr Duncan's infringement but lost the case in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, the daily said.

Mr Duncan said if the law was rigorously enforced it would stop the flow of traffic and hundreds of cyclists would be fined.

"Hundreds of cyclists do exactly what I did every day of the week and the police do nothing about it because they know that if they enforced this interpretation of the law it would cause chaos," he was quoted as saying by the daily. BN's senior policy adviser Garry Brennan said Victoria road and traffic authority was reviewing the left-hand turn rules as it applied to cyclists.