Like many, WestCycle CEO Wayne Bradshaw questioned the three year, three month prison sentence handed down to Paul Mulligan last week, after the 65-year-old truck driver in January 2025 struck and killed a bike rider in a drunken hit-and-run incident.

Mulligan will be eligible for parole in under two years, and eligible to drive again three years after his release.

“Like most of the community I think that it’s really an inadequate penalty for someone who drank to excess, killed a person, and then took off and took no responsibility and tried to hide the incident,” Bradshaw told ABC Perth Mornings host Nadia Mitsopolous, whose phone and text lines filled with outraged citizens.

“It’s really alarming…we really need to look at penalties associated with incidents of this nature,” Bradshaw said, adding it was time WA lawmakers considered ‘assumed liability’ whereby the evidential onus shifted from riders to drivers in road incidents between vehicles and riders or pedestrians.

Invest in bike lanes and save lives: John Carey, Member for Perth

Later in the day John Carey MLA, the Member for Perth and Minister for Planning and Lands, took up the issue at a press conference.

“If we want more people to cycle, then we need to make it safe, and we need dedicated cycling infrastructure,” the Minister Assisting the Minister for Transport and Major Infrastructure said.

“And the problem is where we see the conflicts is where there is no infrastructure. So if there was a dedicated bike lane, we would be avoiding many more accidents. So my main message to every local government is this: get your ass in gear, invest in bike lanes because it will save lives.”

The full ruling in Mulligan’s case has not yet been made public.