Stop the Madness on Our Roads

November 11, 2015
by Rodney Olsen
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stop

Are you the kind of person who likes to eat a nice, big dinner while watching your favourite television program? It’s OK if you do. I really don’t have a problem with that.

What I have a problem with is if you choose to be chowing down big time and watching episodes of Futurama on your iPad ….. while driving at 90 kilometres per hour down the highway. That’s maximum craziness right there. And in case you think that’s just a strange idea I’ve concocted, let me assure you that I saw this happening while motoring along Reid Highway last night.

A guy in an old gold Mitsubishi was careering along the somewhat busy road, stuffing his face, with a dash mounting bracket securely directing his full sized iPad toward the driver’s seat. I can’t be 100% sure it was Futurama but it was certainly some kind of animated program that had his attention. When I noticed what was going on I chose not to stay in his general vicinity, preferring to get as far away from this impending car crash as soon as possible.

I wrote last year about seeing a young woman being Driven to Distraction as she applied a face full of make up while hurtling down the freeway. I just wonder what goes through some people’s heads. Obviously not a lot in many cases.

It’s time to stop the madness on our roads.

Over the last week there’s been a discussion in the media over whether senior drivers should have to display ‘S’ plates to alert other drivers to the fact that an older driver is on the road. The topic was raised by an insurance company which thinks it’d make our roads safer. I was thinking about it all and came to a very simple conclusion. Either people are fit to drive or they’re not. While some seniors might well need to hand in their licenses there are some young and middle aged people that should be slamming their licenses on the desk down at the local licensing centre saying, “I’m sorry, but I really don’t deserve this. You can keep it.”

No one ‘deserves’ a drivers license unless they are fully capable of doing everything necessary to safely operate a vehicle. If a 99 year old can pass the standard test they should be able to drive without being labelled with an ‘S’ plate. If a guy in his forties thinks that a meal and a show can be enjoyed at the same time as driving in traffic at speed, he doesn’t need special plates, he needs to lose his license.

One of the recommendations coming out of the media discussion this week was that anyone over the age of 49 should be re-tested for their license. I’m 52. I’ve been driving for over 35 years without a road accident. It would be inconvenient having to find time to get tested. But I’d be happy to endure the inconvenience if it meant that fewer people on our roads considered driving an automatic entitlement.

What are some stupid things you’ve seen while driving? What do you think of added testing for drivers? Should seniors be forced to display ‘S’ plates?



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Driven to Distraction

March 12, 2014
by Rodney Olsen
3 Comments

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While many think it was something said by James Dean, “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse.” is actually a line from the 1949 Humphrey Bogart film, Knock On Any Door. And for a bonus point, the actor who said it was John Derek.

I spotted a young lady trying to live out that ‘wisdom’ yesterday morning on the freeway.

It was bumper to bumper and traffic was crawling along, so the woman in the Ford Focus in front of me thought that it was a good time to multi-task. At first her head started bobbing up and down every few seconds, the way that heads do when someone is texting from the driver’s seat.

Next came the hair and make up routine.

Her left hand wrenched the rear-view mirror down. Why worry about what other traffic may be on the road when there’s lipstick to apply. For the next few kilometres it was all about applying a face full of make up and doing a lot of work on her hair. Most of the time this meant that she was travelling on a stop start freeway without her hands on the wheel. I imagine she wanted to look good in the body bag.

You have one job.

Here’s the thing. If you’re driving …. you’re driving. That’s it. I know that we talk about multi-tasking and I know that women are better at it than men, I get that, but when you are behind the wheel you need to be totally absorbed in the driving process and that’s all.

Driving is a matter of life or death.

I don’t care how well you think you drive and how well you think you can multi-task, distracted drivers kill. I don’t care if it’s a boring drive and you think you can manage a few things at once, just do one thing, drive. If you’re so busy that you ‘need’ to do other things while behind the wheel, re-evaluate your schedule. Cancel or postpone something. Learn to say no to people who require that you multi-task while driving. Your life may well depend on it.

Someone else’s life might depend on it too.

Are you prepared to be the one to break the news to the family of the driver of the other car that someone they love isn’t coming home? Do you think they’re going to accept your excuse that their mother, father, child is dead because you had to reply to a text message about where you’re meeting for coffee? Do you think it’ll ease their pain knowing that at the time of impact you were looking fabulous because you’d just finished doing your make up?

I know that this post might seem a little over the top and melodramatic, but I suspect it doesn’t even begin to go far enough for the many, many people who have lost someone to driver distraction.

Please hear one thing. When you’re on the road …. just concentrate on that one thing …. driving.

What’s the dumbest thing you’ve seen someone do behind the wheel?



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The World’s Greatest Car Advertisment

April 14, 2012
by Rodney Olsen
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If advertising is all about standing out and getting noticed, then the advertisement for a used Daihatsu car recently published on classified advertising website Gumtree should win a number of awards.

The Daihatsu Feroza may not be the most exciting car available but a certain South Australian seller has created a real buzz about their old 1990 four wheel drive which has already clocked up 24 000 kilometres since new. Their advertisement for the car is popping up all over the internet. If you want a super tough car this one will only cost you around $2 800.

Let me start off by saying this Feroza is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). If it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o’clock shadow, this Daihatsu would look like Tom Selleck.

It was never intended to drive to Rundle Mall so you can pick up that adorable Abercrombie & Finch shirt that you had your eye on. It wasn’t meant to transport you to yoga class or Home & Garden. That’s what your Prius is for. If that’s the kind of car you’re looking for, then just do us all a favour and stop reading right now.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn’t even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don’t get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn’t let anything warm his butt), or Bluetooth (real men don’t even know what the hell Bluetooth is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 4cylinder 1.6L engine to outrun the cops. It’s got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a fire extinguisher in the back. You know what the fire extinguisher is for? Fire! The Feroza also has a removable roof so if you’re being chased by Libyan terrorists, you’ll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the back and drive with ease. It’s saved my bacon more than once.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $2800, but I’ll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don’t walk up and tell me you’ll give me $200 for it. That’s liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let’s just say you won’t be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There’s only 240000km on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me; it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name.

Rock on.

Let’s hope that the seller’s creative advertising skills turn into a sale very soon. I’m wondering if their next job will be selling ice to Eskimos.



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Cadel Reignites Car versus Bike Debate

December 12, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
1 Comment

If you want to get emotions running hot there’s nothing that works quite as well as talking about cyclists on our roads.

Cycling star, Cadel Evans, has stirred things up by claiming that Australian drivers are far too agressive, especially towards cyclists. He has been quoted by News.com.au in an article titled, Australians drive cyclist star Cadel Evans to despair.

I drive on the road and I don’t like people just not having respect for other road users.

I spend half my year in Europe so I know what the traffic is like there.

It is really strange, to be honest, the way Australian drivers are.

Our roads have much less traffic, are far larger, and the drivers have much more space, but they are much more aggressive and negative to other road users.

When you ride a race in Italy or Switzerland or France, the roads are much narrower and there is much more traffic, but the drivers are much more tolerant and easier to deal with. It is a bit of a shame.

His comments have started a flood of comments on the article with both drivers and cyclists throwing insults.

I see the main problem being the lack of education for road users. Many drivers are unaware that it is perfectly legal for cyclists to ride two abreast. Unfortunately some cyclists will ride two abreast even when it isn’t safe to do so.

I’m currently cycling about 250 km a week and I’d admit that the majority of drivers are courteous but it would only take one errant driver to put me in hospital or a morgue so it concerns me that there are many drivers still don’t get it.

The argument from a lot of drivers is that cyclists break the road rules all the time. Let me tell you something, it not only annoys you, it annoys me. For some reason we all get tarred with the same brush so when some cyclists do the wrong thing, there are motorists who take that as a license to harrass the rest of us.

Common sense tells us that not all cyclists break the rules. Common sense also tells us that even though I’m seeing more and more motorists running red lights and making other dangerous and careless errors on the road, I don’t have the right to make blanket statements about ‘all drivers’.

Some drivers are dangerous. Some cyclists are dangerous.

Some drivers complain that cyclists slow them down. I wonder what those drivers would do with the extra 10 or 20 seconds they would gain if they didn’t have to slow down to pass a cyclist. (And lets face it, you probably don’t even lose that much time. You probably just get to the next red light a little later.) On the other hand, if the thousands of commuter cyclists in each city decided to jump into a car instead each day, could you imagine the extra traffic chaos? Could you imagine how much longer the daily drive to work would take?

Thankfully, most of my new commute is on a well built and well maintained cycle path. I have great joy in whizzing past rows and rows of cars which are stuck in peak hour traffic.



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World Carfree Day

September 22, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
3 Comments

carfree_day_logo.jpgI didn’t know until a very short while ago that today is World Carfree Day.

We’re all supposed to be ditching our cars today in favour of public transport, walking or cycling.

I guess I’ve done my bit by cycling to work as I usually do.

The organisers are very keen for people to get out of their cars not just for the day but forever. I must say that while I love cycling and truly believe that we could use our cars a lot less, I’m not convinced that abandoning all cars is the answer. I think it’s like so many things, we need to find some kind of balance.

I agree that we rely way too much on cars and that a lot of trips would be better suited to walking, cycling or public transport, but cars can make our lives easier if we use them correctly.

I was interested to read some of the information on the World Carfree Network website about the amount of time the average American male pours into his vehicle.

The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering resources for it. And this figure does not take account of the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages: time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles an hour.

Do you find that you’ve become a slave to your car? Do you use other methods of transport when it makes more sense or do you just jump in your car every time?

As for me, I’m happy to stay healthier, reduce pollution, save money, feel more energised and enjoy my daily commute more by staying on my bike.



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