Being critical of inconsiderate Australian cyclists is "hate speech"?

A cycling boss has been publicly ridiculed after claiming some of the 100,000 furious Australians calling for a single-lane bike road law were fake 'bots'.

Anne Savage, CEO of Bicycle Queensland, claimed some of the 101,700 campaigners demanding cyclists are made to ride single file on Australian roads are not real people.

Drivers For Registration of Cyclists launched the Change.org petition to protest the current law which allows cyclists to ride two abreast while on the roads, as long as they are no further than 1.5m apart.

The petition, titled 'Compulsory Single File for Cyclists', says cyclists are presenting safety hazards by riding two or more abreast and flowing into the traffic lanes.

Ms Savage said she had evidence that 'the majority of names on that petition are false names',The Courier Mail reported.  Many of the names - now exceeding 101,000 - were created by electronic 'bots', she said.

'We don't expect the government or anyone else to take this petition seriously. It's disappointing to see hate speech on social media taken this far,' she said.

'We would like to see this person pursued for hate speech and vilification on social media with content that is graphic and deeply hurtful to all in the community.'

Ms Savage has so far not provided any evidence relating to her assertion that many of the names were created by electronic 'bots'.

A spokesman for Change.org said all of the signatures were real.  'Our team puts significant effort into ensuring the legitimacy of signatures on Change.org.,' he said.  'Our spam systems automatically detect patterns, such as multiple signatures coming in from the same IP address and any signatures that prove to be fake are removed between 28-48 hours.'

At 9.30am on Thursday the petition had 101,700 signatures and said it was aiming to reach 150,000. 

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