Pro-cycling Auckland councillor Julie Fairey has suffered a broken leg after she was knocked off her bicycle in an accident with a car.
The crash happened on the corner of Dominion and Glass Rds in Mt Roskill on Wednesday morning, a statement from Fairey’s electoral ticket City Vision said.
She wrote on her social media that it was a slow-speed collision.
“They didn’t see me, stationary and waiting to turn, and cut the corner – now I have a broken leg,” Fairey claimed.
Auckland councillor Julie Fairey was knocked off her bicycle by a driver on a school drop-off on Wednesday, leaving her with a broken leg. Photo / Alex Burton
“A faster car would have made a much bigger mess - for everyone.
“The driver and their kid were watching this happen, along with me and bystanders, and that’s not nothing for folks to witness and process.”
Fairey said her injury had kept her from the council’s Governing Body meeting this evening and would leave her with “little capacity to do stuff for a little while”.
She would likely need an operation and weeks of recovery, she added.
“The cost of this accident goes beyond the medical too – it held up two bus routes at peak, numerous other road users, and involved police.
“I keep banging on to AT about how accidents reduce network productivity and throughput, to put it in their language. A safer road system, including shifting folks to modes that have fewer crashes and are lower-impact when they do happen, is good economics too!”
Police confirmed to the Herald they responded to a crash involving a car and a pushbike at the scene on Wednesday morning.
Fairey, wife of Labour’s former Member of Parliament for Mt Roskill, Michael Wood, has been a vocal proponent of biking and cycling infrastructure. She was elected to the council in 2022.
“I’ve been advocating for and supporting local cycling investment, in particular through the Puketāpapa Greenways Plan, since I was first elected [to the local board] in 2010,” she told bicycle advocacy group Bike Auckland in 2019.
“I often get around by bicycle myself, when it suits, and frankly it has made me a better driver as I see the road environment quite differently now – somewhere that is a place of importance to others that I share with them, not just a means to an end, something I am moving through alone in my big metal box."
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers business, breaking news and local stories from Tāmaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
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