Women drivers are the stuff of legend. But I am not going to write about them.
Instead, I am going to write about female pedestrians. Men have always assumed that some women make bad drivers because they are either mechanically inept ( so they have no feel for machinery), or they have poor spatial management skills (meaning they wander all over the road) or they fear driving (and thus drive like grannies).
I don't subscribe to any of those theories anymore. I have come to the conclusion that some women make bad drivers because they think they can multi task.
I saw a TV show some years ago where they got men and women to attempt to perform 7 tasks in 3 minutes - things like ironing a shirt, making a cup of coffee, answering the front door etc. Men were completely hopeless at doing many things at once, but women managed to get most of the tasks done in the allocated time. The conclusion was that because of babies, women were biologically attuned to multi tasking. Men are more single minded - go out and spear a giraffe for dinner. Do not stop to admire the scenery. Do not stop to pick flowers. Do not stop to make a necklace out of pretty coloured stones. Do not use the hunting trip as an excuse to catch up on fireside gossip. Just go out, find a giraffe and poke it with a sharp stick. Bring back chops for dinner.
Being single minded is pretty important when it comes to getting big jobs done. Men make good bricklayers for instance because they are happy to go to work and just lay bricks all day. That's how houses get built. If you laid 10 bricks, then pottered off to build a door frame, then laid some more bricks, then went and cut some pipes for the bathroom, the house would never get build in time. There are times when a monomaniacal focus is preferable to a multi tasking approach.
Driving is one of them.
You can't drive, chat on the phone, play with the radio, do makeup and expect to get to work everyday without collecting a few dents in the car. The drivers I most hate being a passenger with are those that lack focus on the task at hand - driving the damned car. Getting me from A to B alive is the primary task - everything else is secondary. Some people though treat the driving as secondary and many other tasks take priority - like taking your eyes off the road and chatting with every other passenger in the car, or rummaging through a purse for something whilst driving at 110 km/h.
Enough about driving. I was supposed to be writing about pedestrians.
Most days, my cycle to work takes me around a stretch of Sydney water known as The Bay. For those with a bit of Sydney knowledge, the suburb of Drummoyne is on one side and Lillfield/Rozelle are on the other. The three different councils that butt up against The Bay have managed to agree on something for once, and that is the development of cycle and foot paths around the waterfront. It is a really nice place to get your exercise.
Each council has a different approach to infrastructure. My council has done a great job by building nice, wide separate foot and cycle paths. The pedestrian path is coloured black whilst the bike path is red. The bike path has nice big bike symbols painted on it every so often. There are signs at regular intervals pointing to bicycles riding on the path on the left and pedestrians walking on the path to the right.
Women of course seem oblivious to all of this and they walk wherever they want.
I did a headcount each morning some months ago and found that 9 out of 10 pedestrians in the morning were women, whilst 19 out of 20 cyclists in the area were men. The split was so dramatic that the council should get out the tins of paint and repaint the pedestrian path in pink and the bike path in blue. The other part of the great divide is that most of the cyclists seemed to be heading to work, whilst the pedestrians were out doing a lap of the Bay for exercise, and would presumably go home, shower and then drive to work. Most cyclists are solitary (although you do see the odd couple riding into town together), but many of the pedestrians are doing it in pairs, threesomes or packs of 4 or more. Walking is a social gathering as much as anything.
The trouble with these social gatherings is that they amble along like snails and they walk along the clearly marked bike path and they fill it completely from one side to the other. They leave no room to overtake.
They are rude, blithering idiots. They are anti-social morons. I don't understand why they think they can ignore the "rules of the road" as soon as they step out of their cars. They have the common sense of poodles, which is not a lot. They also have the road sense of emus. Emus are not the best thing to meet out on the open road because they tend to be completely unpredictable. One will be standing in the middle of the road, and as you drive towards it, it will turn and run off the road. Good. Then it will turn around and run back across the road in front of you. Sometimes, they will run alongside your car and then decide to take a short cut across your path. The really stupid ones will turn and run into the side of your car.
Some of these pedestrians are no different. If you call out "Passing on your right" as you come up behind them, they'll jump to their right and force you to brake hard or run into the shrubbery. Others will continue to stroll along blocking your path, with their head swivelling left and right with a puzzled look on their face of "what on earth is a bike doing on this path?" They will of course be walking over a big painted bike symbol as they think this. They seemed to be stunned by the fact that cyclists would actually cycle along a marked cycle path.
They also have the amazing spatial ability to walk in such a way to consume the entire width of the bike path. Men also walk on the bike path, but they tend to walk close together and they hug the left hand side, thus giving you room to pass on their right. Two women though will draw an imaginary line down the middle of the path, and then walk either side of it, leaving no room to pass on either side or down the middle. They seem to unconciously know how to inflict the maximum infuriation on men. It is a finely calibrated ability to be incredibly annoying whilst acting innocent and dumb.
Many also have no idea what the ringing of a bell means. I have come up on many a couple and noticed that the male has spotted or heard me coming and has grabbed his partner and physically hauled her out of the middle of the path and over to the side where he is walking. Most men seem to be taking some notice of their surroundings, and are not just taking an interest in a bubble of space 10 feet in front of them and nothing else. Cripes, the number of people that amble along and don't look where they are going, or noting what is coming towards them makes me wonder how some people have survived into middle age.
To cap it off, I have occasionally pointed to the pedestrian path as I have ridden past these fools - a nonverbal way of saying, "The path is over there, so why don't you walk on it you idiot", and have been roundly abused for my troubles. They know they are doing the wrong thing, but they get absolutely infuriated when it is pointed out to them. They swear and carry on like they own the road, and I have no right to be riding on the cycle path.
They should be strapped into shopping trolleys and pushed into the Bay. They shit me to tears.
I think the problem is caused by multitasking. These women think they can walk and talk at the same time. Unfortunately, they can't.
What they fail to realise is the difference in speed between walking and cycling. They are doing 5-6 km/h. I am doing 30-35 km/h. I am covering about 9 metres per second. With them walking towards me, the closure rate is 10 metres per second. Given that most of them spend all their time looking at each other, or the ground a few feet in front of them, they get 2 seconds warning at most if I am approaching from the front. Especially if they are listening to an iPod or yapping on the phone. I have found that ringing my bell from a distance is useless, as they don't seem to hear it. I've got to get close before yelling or belling a warning. iPod users seem to become aware of me when I am about 5 metres away, which generally gives them a hell of a shock. Even after the shock however, they continue to walk on the cycle path.
Experience teaches them nothing. Will they ever learn?
Don't get me started on the mums with prams though........
Saturday, 6 May 2006
Friday, 5 May 2006
Lazy, useless flatfoots
Back in early April, I was riding to work when a carload of teenagers went past and one of them yelled something out the window at me - probably with the aim of startling me and giving them a case of the jollies. "We scared him - ha ha ha".
Sydney traffic being what it is, I caught up with them at the next set of lights as they went green. I was in the left lane, and had the whole lane to myself. The idiot behind the wheel decided to demonstrate how tough he was to his mates and so he swerved at me from the right hand lane as I went past. He missed, but he annoyed me sufficiently for me to take down his rego number. I decided I was going to teach the little bugger a lesson.
The plod have this wonderful call centre called the Police Assistance Line (PAL - what a catchy TLA - three letter acronym), which was setup for people to report minor offences etc - it's supposed to free up those in uniform and allow them to get out from behind their donut ladened desks in order to fight crime etc etc. When I got to work, I rang the PAL, only to be told that they couldn't take an incident report over the phone - I'd have to front up at a copshop and make a statement in person.
On the way home that afternoon, I dropped in on the local plod. Finding the entrance to the copshop was something of a challenge, and getting in even more so. In the old days, you could actually see into a Police station and see plod at work. These days, the windows are covered in reflective stuff. Either they are worried about drive by shootings, or the Terminator driving a car in through the front entrance, or they don't want the public to see that there is no one at the station half the time. I had to press a buzzer and talk to an intercom before I could get in - as if the cops are afraid of the public outside!
Once inside, I was afforded an insight into the professionalism of a young copper. Or lack thereof. I don't know what they teach them at the Police Academy these days, but it appears that they have dropped station procedures and the taking of statements from the curriculum. Station Procedures 101 has probably been replaced by a unit of instruction called "How to maintain good relations with the gay community", and statements and evidence has been superceded by "The importance of not talking to the media, or doing anything else that will make the Minister look bad".
After a few minutes, I had the feeling that I was dealing with a primary school child - or perhaps someone that failed primary school. Instead of finding the appropriate form to take my statement, he just grabbed a bit of paper and started writing on the back of it. I had to spell my name twice, as he kept getting it wrong. He couldn't get the spelling of my street right. He got the licence plate number wrong when I read it to him - thankfully, I had saved it into my mobile phone - and even then he copied it out wrongly. He didn't know the set of traffic lights that I was talking about, even though they are about 300 metres down the hill from his station, and I was talking about one of the major intersections in the area. I had to get him to pull out his map book so that I could show him the street that I was talking about.
In short, he was bloody hopeless.
After taking my details, he went to his PC and typed in the rego number of the car. He looked at the screen, and then announced that the car was stolen and there was no point in following up my complaint, as the car was no longer at the registered address.
The only thing he got right was that he described the driver as a "dickhead". He also stated that the area was full of dickheads, which seemed to imply that there was no point in taking any action as removing one dickhead from the road would not make a lick of difference.
That weekend, I went for a pedal around the suburb and after about 10 minutes, located the car in question - parked on a quiet suburban street. I figured that as the suburb in question is a peninsular, and there is only one road in and out, and the kids in the car looked like they were going to school, so they probably lived in the suburb and finding them was just a matter of trawling up and down a dozen side streets.
When I got home, I called the coppers again, told them that I had been informed that the car was stolen, and told them the address where they could find it. I was told that a patrol car was going to be sent around immediately.
Since then, I have written to the station commander asking for the COPS event number (COPS is the computer system where they are supposed to record all incidents and offences etc) and prodding them as to what follow up action they've taken about the swerving incident. It's been three weeks, and the lazy sod has not responded.
I have a very strong feeling that I was told the car was stolen as a brush off. I bet it was not stolen - the lazy sod simply didn't want to do any paperwork. It makes me wonder how trustworthy our crime statistics are. The latest crime report stated that lots of crimes were trending down, but is that because there is less crime, or because people can't be shagged reporting it (because nothing is done), or because lazy plods are not putting incidents into the computer system?
The local paper has been running stories lately about hoons hooning up and down a street nearby and when the cops were asked about it, they replied, "We have no records of any complaints about this matter". Ha! There might have been complaints, but none of them made it into the records.
The government has announced that lots more cops are to be recruited. If they recruit and train more clowns like the bloke I dealt with, then more cops will not be an improvement. If anything, the goons will get in the way of the more experienced cops who actually have some idea of what they are doing. In any workplace, you probably have 20% who do most of the work, 70% who glide by doing as little as possible, and 10% who get in the way of those that are trying to get things done. Adding more of the 10% types is not going to help anyone.
The station commander is probably hoping that I am not going to bother following up on my letter. If he ignores me for long enough, the whole problem will go away. I don't think that he has figured out that if I could muster the energy to front up at his station to make a report, and then got annoyed enough to write a follow up letter, then I am probably not going to stop there. I believe in the chain of command, so my next missive is going to the Local Area Commander. I wonder how far up the chain I'll have to go before I get some sense out of these sods.
Sydney traffic being what it is, I caught up with them at the next set of lights as they went green. I was in the left lane, and had the whole lane to myself. The idiot behind the wheel decided to demonstrate how tough he was to his mates and so he swerved at me from the right hand lane as I went past. He missed, but he annoyed me sufficiently for me to take down his rego number. I decided I was going to teach the little bugger a lesson.
The plod have this wonderful call centre called the Police Assistance Line (PAL - what a catchy TLA - three letter acronym), which was setup for people to report minor offences etc - it's supposed to free up those in uniform and allow them to get out from behind their donut ladened desks in order to fight crime etc etc. When I got to work, I rang the PAL, only to be told that they couldn't take an incident report over the phone - I'd have to front up at a copshop and make a statement in person.
On the way home that afternoon, I dropped in on the local plod. Finding the entrance to the copshop was something of a challenge, and getting in even more so. In the old days, you could actually see into a Police station and see plod at work. These days, the windows are covered in reflective stuff. Either they are worried about drive by shootings, or the Terminator driving a car in through the front entrance, or they don't want the public to see that there is no one at the station half the time. I had to press a buzzer and talk to an intercom before I could get in - as if the cops are afraid of the public outside!
Once inside, I was afforded an insight into the professionalism of a young copper. Or lack thereof. I don't know what they teach them at the Police Academy these days, but it appears that they have dropped station procedures and the taking of statements from the curriculum. Station Procedures 101 has probably been replaced by a unit of instruction called "How to maintain good relations with the gay community", and statements and evidence has been superceded by "The importance of not talking to the media, or doing anything else that will make the Minister look bad".
After a few minutes, I had the feeling that I was dealing with a primary school child - or perhaps someone that failed primary school. Instead of finding the appropriate form to take my statement, he just grabbed a bit of paper and started writing on the back of it. I had to spell my name twice, as he kept getting it wrong. He couldn't get the spelling of my street right. He got the licence plate number wrong when I read it to him - thankfully, I had saved it into my mobile phone - and even then he copied it out wrongly. He didn't know the set of traffic lights that I was talking about, even though they are about 300 metres down the hill from his station, and I was talking about one of the major intersections in the area. I had to get him to pull out his map book so that I could show him the street that I was talking about.
In short, he was bloody hopeless.
After taking my details, he went to his PC and typed in the rego number of the car. He looked at the screen, and then announced that the car was stolen and there was no point in following up my complaint, as the car was no longer at the registered address.
The only thing he got right was that he described the driver as a "dickhead". He also stated that the area was full of dickheads, which seemed to imply that there was no point in taking any action as removing one dickhead from the road would not make a lick of difference.
That weekend, I went for a pedal around the suburb and after about 10 minutes, located the car in question - parked on a quiet suburban street. I figured that as the suburb in question is a peninsular, and there is only one road in and out, and the kids in the car looked like they were going to school, so they probably lived in the suburb and finding them was just a matter of trawling up and down a dozen side streets.
When I got home, I called the coppers again, told them that I had been informed that the car was stolen, and told them the address where they could find it. I was told that a patrol car was going to be sent around immediately.
Since then, I have written to the station commander asking for the COPS event number (COPS is the computer system where they are supposed to record all incidents and offences etc) and prodding them as to what follow up action they've taken about the swerving incident. It's been three weeks, and the lazy sod has not responded.
I have a very strong feeling that I was told the car was stolen as a brush off. I bet it was not stolen - the lazy sod simply didn't want to do any paperwork. It makes me wonder how trustworthy our crime statistics are. The latest crime report stated that lots of crimes were trending down, but is that because there is less crime, or because people can't be shagged reporting it (because nothing is done), or because lazy plods are not putting incidents into the computer system?
The local paper has been running stories lately about hoons hooning up and down a street nearby and when the cops were asked about it, they replied, "We have no records of any complaints about this matter". Ha! There might have been complaints, but none of them made it into the records.
The government has announced that lots more cops are to be recruited. If they recruit and train more clowns like the bloke I dealt with, then more cops will not be an improvement. If anything, the goons will get in the way of the more experienced cops who actually have some idea of what they are doing. In any workplace, you probably have 20% who do most of the work, 70% who glide by doing as little as possible, and 10% who get in the way of those that are trying to get things done. Adding more of the 10% types is not going to help anyone.
The station commander is probably hoping that I am not going to bother following up on my letter. If he ignores me for long enough, the whole problem will go away. I don't think that he has figured out that if I could muster the energy to front up at his station to make a report, and then got annoyed enough to write a follow up letter, then I am probably not going to stop there. I believe in the chain of command, so my next missive is going to the Local Area Commander. I wonder how far up the chain I'll have to go before I get some sense out of these sods.
Idiots
I'm still waiting for a reply to this letter. It will be interesting to see what the Fire Brigade has to say.
Mr Greg Mullins
Commissioner
NSW Fire Brigades
Dear Commissioner:
At approximately 0730hrs on Friday 7 April 2006, myself and another cyclist almost became road death statistics when one of your big, red shiny trucks failed to give way at a roundabout behind 
Thankfully, I managed to get around your big red appliance – otherwise, your crew would have been hosing my blood and skin off this lovely green paint. The Darling Harbour Authority has put a lot of time and effort into painting the road this lovely green colour, and I would prefer to leave it (and my skin) in pristine condition. Personally, I am not in favour of the shade, as it does not match the surrounding trees, but then I guess that’s the point. Unless you are completely colour blind, it should stick out like dogs balls to the average driver. It should stand out even more to the driver of a big, red shiny bike-squasher who is seated at least a metre higher than your average car, and thus has a much better view of the road ahead.
That is, unless you have been implementing some sort of gender balanced, height unrestricted, non-discriminatory hiring policy and you have been appointing short sighted, colour blind dwarves as engine drivers. If so, might I suggest that you dip into your budget and fund some cushions for them to sit on and a few pair of glasses.
If you aren’t employing dwarves, there could be some other explanations for why your driver decided it was time to take out some non-motorised commuters.
1. Given that it was 0730hrs, the boys were probably feeling a big peckish and had heard over the radio that the hot cross buns had just come out of the oven back at the station. I’d have to agree that there is nothing worse than a hot cross bun that has gone cold – they’re just not the same if the butter can’t melt into the bun. Re-heating a hot cross bun once it has been heated once is just not on. Personally, I’d be driving like Sandra Bullock in “Speed” if I had a crew of guys in the back with the munchies and we’d just heard that the buns were on. Obviously, you have not employed Sandra Bullock, and a deranged maniac had not planted a bomb on this particular appliance as it did not explode when it came to a halt. Otherwise, I would be writing this covered in hairy gibbets of macerated dwarf.
2. Maybe the boys just aren’t getting enough play time with the jaws of life and all the other fun “scrap the car,
3. The driver had the sun in his eyes. Sorry, the sun rises in the east, and he was driving west. Yes I know that the time change with daylight saving has messed with a lot of peoples heads, but the delayed changeover after the Commonwealth Games has not reversed the rotation of the Earth. Nor have we moved our clocks forward 10 hours so that 0730hrs is actually dusk, in which case the sun would have been setting in the eyes of your driver.
4. Your driver is a flaming idiot that should not have been given the keys to a Tonka truck, let alone a big expensive shiny red appliance. He might be very good at running up stairs with a hose over his shoulder and kicking in doors and kissing plastic dummies, but he seems to have collected his license from a Weeties packet. Either that, or Coles are handing them out with the hot cross buns this year. If he wants to go blasting through roundabouts without giving way, by all means do so, but turn on the shiny red spinning disco lights on the roof, and crank up the thing that goes ‘woo-woo-woo’ really loudly. I’m sure you know what I am talking about – I just can’t think of the technical term at the moment as I am still in complete shock at how fortunate I am to have missed the Grim Reaper on this occasion.
That being said, I guess if you are going to get hit by something large and heavy, the two best alternatives are an Ambulance and then a fire truck. Hopefully, there will be someone on board who would know what to do next. However, given the way you lot drive, the crew would probably leap out and go, “Look he is all red – he must be on fire. Pull out the 2 inch nozzle and hose him down”.
Sincerely,
PS – would you have to space the rungs on your ladders more closely together if you employed dwarves?
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