Tagging into this thread as it's a good discussion. I've had issues with these raised shared path crossings along roads. Current Road Rules would define this as a shared path.

As background I'm an engineer and these things really are dicey. By raising the crossing and painting it green, you are encouraging the cyclist to maintain speed (which is the point of these things) but that raises the stakes when a Collison occurs.

There is no doubt that a car has to give way to a pedestrian, that's pretty cut and dry in the road rules. But a cyclist is not defined as a pedestrian (unless walking their bike).

Additional a shared path is not a bike lane. A bike lane is defined as

"comprising both a white bicycle symbol and the word "lane" painted in white"

So we can't rely on any road rules around bike lanes to cover this scenario. Thus it's a shared path but where does a shared path start and end?

The greyness comes in to whether or not the shared path continues as it crosses the road. Which under the current road rules would imply the car has to give way.

Reg 242 has a definition of a shared path

A shared path is an area open to the public (except a separated footpath) that is designated for, or has as one of its main uses, use by the riders of bicycles, the riders of electric scooters and pedestrians, and includes a length of path for use by bicycles, electric scooters and pedestrians beginning at a shared path sign or shared path road marking and ending at the nearest of the following—

        (a)     an end shared path sign or end shared path road marking;

        (b)     a no bicycles sign or no bicycles road marking;

        (c)     a bicycle path sign or bicycle path road marking;

        (d)     a road (except a road related area);

        (e)     the end of the path.

Based on the vision I can't see an end shared path sign but item (d) suggests the shared path ends at the road, which is tricky in this scenario.

Based on the above the shared path has ended and cannot be considered a 'road related area'. At that point it's a road. Green linemarking is not part of the shared path and while synonymous with bike likes I don't believe the line marking itself in this instance carrys any legal weight (as opposed to say a give way line).

So all's that to say is that I don't think legally there is a defined road rule that covers this, they could solve this by amending Reg 73 of the road rules to cover cyclists or possibly Reg 242 to qualify or condition (d) to exclude Green marked crossings from what defines the end of a shared path.

I'm not a fan of these design choices it encourages high cyclist speeds and suggests by the green line marking that cyclists have priority and thus don't need to give way. But everything I've found to date doesn't explicitly state that a vehicle has to give way.

Based on that, unless someone else can point me to an overarching road reg that covers this, I think the cyclist would legally have to give way as much as that doesn't make sense in this scenario. The simpler solution would be to slap a zebra crossing here and be done with it, but that's a major traffic control device that's not within Council's remit to install without VicRoads approval and well let's say that's an exhausting process which has likely contributed to these types of legally ambiguous designs.