By: Mike Hosking | Thursday, July 26, 2012 11:47 AM

Hasn’t it been a week for the coroners! Yesterday the Kahui case and a display of courage and bluntness rarely seen, and today the suggestion from another that cyclists should be made to wear fluorescent clothing and use cycle lanes.

I raise this because yet another coroner came up with the idea earlier this year that coroners aren’t listened to and the rules should be changed so that their recommendations were acted upon. Part of the rationale behind the suggestion was that they more than anyone see the results of not listening to what they say. Accident after accident, disaster after disaster that they argue could have been avoided if only the findings of the previous accident had been listened to. So on the surface there seems some merit in their request.

But then if we had reacted and changed the law, we’d now be faced this morning with having to wear orange plastic clothing on bikes and head directly to the cycle lane. Now the problem with that is there aren’t any cycle lanes. Not really. There are a few but not many and often they’re linked in with bus lanes. Often they start and then they stop. The whole thing is widely confusing and largely incomplete. So you can immediately see compliance would be an issue.

I mean, who’s monitoring all this? The police? Fat chance! And does bright clothing really save your life? Are people not knocked off bikes because they’re wearing orange? And then how long before you have to wear a flashing light on your head? I feel I can mention all of this due to the fact I am a cyclist, I have done thousands of kilometres on all sorts of roads and in a cycle lane or not, fluorescent clothing or not, my sense of danger or safety doesn’t really change the same way that lights, stop signs and speed cameras don’t necessarily stop you being hit or hitting someone yourself. Sometimes accidents are just that. There’s nothing you could do and no amount of regulation and change is going to stop them happening.

And then you get to the cost and hassle of enforcement and change if everything the coroner says needs to be acted upon. And then once all that’s done and we’re regulated up the wazoo, what happens when the next accident happens? What do you do when you’re wearing armour, a crash helmet, high-visibility body suits in your cycle lanes protected by a crash barrier and still it goes wrong? You can’t put everyone in cotton wool and trying is futile.

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