http:\/\/www.tattooeasily.com\/bicycle-tattoo-ideas\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut it does bring me back to our pedestrians. I’m not usually terribly sympathetic to text walkers. They stagger zombie-like along the shared bike\/pedestrian ways I use. They’re a menace to bicycles and other pedestrians alike. Sometimes, they look up startled\u00a0when I glide past them (having double-guess their weaving passage\u00a0three times) and yell abuse at me. It’s this kind of behaviour that has become the source of the pleasure I now take in scaring these useless lost wandering souls. Also, it’s hard to have any respect for people who can’t even walk in public, when cycling on and off roads requires all my attention to do it right and do it safely. I now take great pleasure in startling them and look forward to their reactions. I did even, on a day when I was feeling a bit too mean, drop a big skid in front of a young man texting on his phone. His iPhone nearly shot out of his hands. Credit to his friends, I think they enjoyed it as much as I did.\u00a0It’s mean I know, but I’m probably a more effective deterrent against text walking than some lights set into the road. And if I kept count I’d have some verifiable stats.<\/p>\n
Putting aside my delight in abusing their distraction for my own enjoyment, I have to admit that deep down I care about our text walkers. Far be it for me to push them under the wheels of a car. Or you know, watch\u00a0and laugh as they step off the curb. No! That would be a bit mean wouldn’t it. I’m glad that the NSW government has seen fit to spend $250,000 on them without any proof either way that the problem exists or will be helped by lights. What are statistics anyway? Apart from the only way to\u00a0measure the efficacy of such campaigns? I mean, when they proved that the bicycle lanes of Sydney increased road use, they still wanted to rip them up. So why bother counting?<\/p>\n
According to a friend of mine, who quite likes statistics, enough to use them quite comprehensively in his working life, the statistics from NSW prove the laws aren’t working. To his logical\u00a0way of thinking, if laws were a deterrent, then a 56% increase in the amount of fines would indicate they hadn’t altered behaviour. In fact, they indicate quite the opposite. We’re assuming, in this analysis, that the pigs who make and administer these laws haven’t gone out of their way to target cyclists. We’re assuming that no-one is that mean, beant of discrimination and hateful of cyclists. If this is true, then the laws are actually encouraging cyclists to misbehave. So there you have it, either the laws and the people who administer them are discriminatory, or we’re a bunch of idiots and we’re getting worse. In my case at least, no doubt the latter.<\/p>\n
You might expect a government that had proper goals to reduce cycling injuries and fatalities (and not just reduce cycling) would come out with a campaign to inform and warn cyclists first. You might imagine, especially in the first month of the new fines, that the police might catch\u00a0and release a lot of cyclist with warnings instead of\u00a0fines. (Like we do with lower lifeforms, such as fish and small children.) At least for the first month or so. Until word got out that the jackbooted fucktards in parliament had forced us\u00a0to carry ID and wear a helmet even when you’re rolling along a bike track at 10km\/hr.<\/p>\n
It was kind of the opposite. Apparently the police were so keen to roll out the new laws they jumped the gun. A woman in the sprawling metropolis of Kingscliff (officially described as a “coastal town” in wiki<\/a>\u00a0but don’t be fooled, it’s a dog eat dog urban hell where cars rule and everyone is rushing about recklessly godammit!) was pulled over for not wearing a helmet and not carrying ID<\/a>. Her defense, that the laws hadn’t been formally enacted by parliament yet, was looked down upon as a poor excuse for her crazy dangerous behaviour. I mean, if you excuse the fact that she was riding along an empty footpath at 5am to attend the ANZAC day memorial, you’ll excuse just about any type of reckless behaviour.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au\/lifestyle\/kingscliff-cyclist-slapped-with-fine-for-law-that-hasnt-come-into-effect\/news-story\/aa1b3927af9fdadaaed2f50f93c234a6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut it does bring me to some ideas of mine. How about we approach petextrians with the all the same love and respect\u00a0we have cyclist? If harsh laws and steep fines are protecting cyclists, then surely we’re not protecting our petextrians \u00a0enough if we don’t fine them enough also. I propose we mandate helmets for\u00a0petextrians and all adults using mobile phones in public should do so only after they’re passed stringent tests and obtained a license (and tattoos). Fines for texting while walking should increase to $319 so they’re in line with laws against texting while driving. Texting while walking, like not wearing a helmet while cycling, is at least as dangerous as texting while driving. I can’t remember the last time I read about a pedestrian veered out of control and killed a whole cafe load of people<\/a> but I’m sure it happens all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ain’t harm minimization a wonderful\u00a0thing? Me, I never discipline my children with a baseball bat unless it’s a Nerf one.\u00a0And when I’m abusing drugs, I do it Hackett style, with prescription drugs. That way there are known side-effects when I’m hospitalized. That’s why I’m so happy\u00a0to see the morons who can’t look up from their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Mobile Phone Lights For Sydney Pedestrians A Contrast To New Cycling Laws - SSGC<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n