Truck safety improvements – Barangaroo Metro station site on Hickson Road

I have edited this description after talking to a site Project Manager. I will say right now that I am happy with the outcome.
I cycle to work along here 2-5 times a week. I’m used to the truck traffic going to and from the construction sites along Hickson Road. I’ve been riding up and down here for 10 years, and I’ve seen a lot of changes to the road layout to accommodate the construction needs of the Barangaroo offices and now the Metro station.
For me, this was a pretty scary moment. The lights go green, you hit the pedals and you’re making good time down the hill. You’ve got a truck beside you – a semi towing a dog trailer. You know that last week, a cyclist was killed in Melbourne after being dragged under this sort of truck.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-20/cyclist-killed-by-truck-punt-road-south-yarra/10515942
You’ve got a car in front of you, and the driver appears to be hesitating – to avoid the embarrassment of rear ending them, you hang back a bit and give them space – just in case they brake suddenly. Which is exactly what they do – they brake and pull over to let a passenger offload outside an office building.
The car braking and pulling over in front of me means the truck driver sees their opportunity to change out of the right turn lane into the straight through lane – but you’re alongside them. You’re in this lane because you’ve been riding through here for years, and you know the road layout, and you’ve planned ahead and gotten into the correct lane back at the last set of lights. Six months ago, the road layout was different, and I would have been in the right hand lane because the left hand lane pinched out. It was safer to be in the right hand lane at the lights and to roll down the hill with the traffic, rather than trying to change lanes at the bottom of the hill when the lane suddenly finished.
You hear the revs go up on the truck engine – this means the driver has decided to punch it into the newly opened gap. But this means a big, long, heavy truck is about to come into your lane and you need to get out of the way right now. If I was on a motorbike, I could have cracked the throttle and accelerated hard and gotten in front of the truck. But I’m on a push bike, and there is no way my legs can get me out of this situation. It’s time to brake hard. This would have been a lot closer, but I had a funny feeling that the driver was going to do something like this, so I was ready to brake hard as soon as the truck started entering my lane. A less experienced cyclist might have delayed braking and gone under the wheels of the dog trailer.
The irony is that on the back of the trailer, there was a NSW Road Safety sticker telling cyclists to not ride up the inside of the truck – sound advice.
I was a truck driver in the Army Reserve for 5 years, so I know what it’s like to sit in the cab of a truck that size. I mostly drove Unimogs or the ACCO F1, but I did get a bit of time in the Mack MC1 – and there is no way anyone could do gear changes that fast in the Mack. My years in a truck taught me that you have to be extra careful and be really, really aware of everything around you. You also need to plan ahead and know your route – getting into the correct lane at the last moment is a really bad idea.
The feedback from the trucking company was that the driver wasn’t aware of the changes to the road layout. Fair enough – that means it needs to be part of the site briefing for new drivers. Simple little things like this can save lives. Detailed route planning is something we did all the time when I was in the Reserves – it’s critical for convoy work. If you’ve got 5-10 vehicles in a convoy, and you need to keep the convoy together, you don’t want it getting split up – or fouled up – because of simple things like missing a turn due to late lane changing.
I’m told the trucking company has also reiterated cyclist awareness for their drivers, using material supplied by NSW Road Safety. That’s a good thing, and I’m happy.