Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Maz,
He now says it’s a joke, and that cyclists need to have a better sense of humour.
Because it's just totally hilarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrious when a cager call for open warfare on people whose protection is their lightweight clothing and hopefully a helmet, especially when those people have been killed so often that the Chief Coroner has taken note. My sides are splitting from laughing so hard at his joke.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Islander,
But you’d be stupid not to
You said it, not us. And the vast majority of people who learned to drive prior to National's first round of licensing changes are, according to you, stupid, because as I just said above there's a predominate attitude in this country that driving is easy, any muppet can do it, ergo any muppet can teach another muppet to drive. There's no acknowledgement that driving is a privilege, not a right, and that includes some of the commenters in this forum based on previous occasions where this topic has arisen. Until drivers accept that they're behind the wheel because society has granted them the privilege, our driving behaviour will remain on the south side of globally average.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Maz,
Maybe one reason is that you don’t have to take driving lessons from a professional. If your dad/mum/uncle Ted/friend don’t know how to drive, how can they teach you?
But they do know how to drive. They learned from their Uncle Ted, who learned from his Uncle Ted, and his Uncle Ted was the first person in New Zealand to own a car. Don't know how to drive? Don't be so bloody stupid, any muppet can drive!
I've ranted on this topic before. Our standard of driver education is woeful. It's finally, finally being addressed with the latest changes to the requirements for progressing through the gradations of the licensing system, but it'll take at least 60 years before everyone who came through under the earlier systems has shuffled off. People only a very few years older than me (I'm early 30s) could get a licence by driving to the end of the road, doing a three-point turn, and then safely depositing the testing officer back at the office. Not too much before those onerous requirements came into force people pretty much could get their licence from a cornflakes packet, and those people will be driving for at least another 20 years before they start to get to the point of having to be reassessed in order to keep hold of their licence. In the interim they frequently have no fucking idea what the road rules are, and they've got the generations of bad habits that they learned from the friends and family from whom they learned to drive; they've often taught those same bad habits to their children, many of whom have passed those habits on to their children. Until it's mandatory to learn from a professional, and only a professional, the bad driving will continue. It'll be muted somewhat by the requirements of the stricter testing, but it will still be haphazard indication, treating following distances as a suggestion, and not really acknowledging that others have an equal right to be on the road.
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Just saw this. Sadly a not-atypical attitude, but rather a higher profile on the part of the utterer. I hope it costs his company some business.
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I got abused by a motorist this morning for having the temerity to go straight ahead through an intersection where the signals were in my favour while he was wanting to take advantage of a Give Way (not even "free"!) left turn. Bairds/GSR intersection for the curious; I was heading south.
Was quite bizarre. I was utterly in the right, but he still honked and gave me a rude hand gesture when he got around the corner and passed me. Would've been in his 60s, too. Maybe he took offence at my hi-viz shirt?
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Moz,
Most of us in here aren't in Australia, we're in NZ. The attitudes of the police here are different, the rules of acceptable evidence are different.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
And very, very few people cycle-commute 20km daily. Most actual NZ cycle commutes are a fraction of that, if only because riding 10km on city streets at commuter hour takes a fair bit of time.
Interesting. I guess being a recreational cyclist my concepts of what's a "normal" distance are a bit out of whack. I don't even consider 10km to be much of a ride.
When I was a cycle commuter I was doing 5km in 10-11 minutes, too, so expanding it out to a 10km ride would've still given me a commute time a fraction of what many people endure which I guess also throws out my perspective. -
Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
The average distance ridden per week among the 2469 people who responded to the once-only questionnaire (44% of the 2006 entrants) was 130km a week!
That's actually not very much. A commuter who has a 10km ride to work does 100km/week, and 10km is nothing. A serious cyclist will be pushing down over 200km a week. I've only been out twice this week and my total is already nearly 70km. If I manage to do a double airport circuit I'll double that, and I'm just doing it for exercise. People who ride Taupo are doing a 160km ride in a single hit. You don't just up and do that kind of distance, you work up to triple-figure rides as a regular thing before you start.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Moz,
your own camera footage will generally be regarded as irrelevant, even after your death. Definitely not evidence that could be used to prosecute, but commonly not even as a means to substantiate your complaint.
[citation needed]
If the police took custody of the camera immediately they attended the scene, it would be entirely admissible as evidence. It would only be if the footage was obtained after the fact that they might face questions as to its authenticity.As for sustaining a complaint, provided that the videographer is prepared to testify under oath as to the veracity of the footage the police will happily bring charges for things like "boy racer" offences based entirely on home video. They're even on record in the media as saying that neighbourhoods where there are plagues of hoons should break out the video cameras and keep notes of times and dates so that prosecutions can be brought.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Ross Mason,
advocate retroreflective bits on pedals and wheels.
It's an unchallenged fact of human physiology that our eyes are drawn to movement, especially when light levels are diminished. That moving reflective material is more effective as a protective device than the same material in a static configuration makes intuitive sense. The challenge is how to get that retrofitted to bicycles. My clipless pedals have no reflectors, for example, and really no way to install them because of the tiny surface area. I could, in theory, apply reflective tape, but it'd only be a very few mm^2 so the value would be negligible. My shoes have a reflective strip up the heel which is probably more use.