Posts by Tom Semmens
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…One last note: The road rules, like the road design, are made entirely for vehicle users, with a few small concessions to other users, principally pedestrians. These rules, again like the form of the roads, take almost no account of the peculiar halfway house of vulnerability yet increased speed of people using bikes. Every person choosing to ride on our unsafe streets is completely crazy if they don’t take responsibility for their own safety over slavishly following the rules designed for vehicle drivers….
Amen to that. Going through a roundabout using the method proscribed by the ministry in the current road code –
When you are on the roundabout, try to continue indicating right if you are able, or indicate occasionally while you ride around the roundabout – this will let drivers waiting to enter the roundabout know your intentions. Ride in the middle of the lane, not around the inner or outer edge.
Will give you a life expectancy similar to that enjoyed by the last group of recklessly dashing young adventurers who took the relevant ministries word for it - WW1 fighter pilots.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to George Darroch,
Facing forward, you can only have one visible flashing light.
I’d rather people saw my mobile disco.
I am not sure about much safer you are.
If you have ever navigated a boat at night, you would realise how confusing lights can be when you have no spatial clues.
At night (especially in bad weather) the additional flashing light can dangerously affect the ability of a driver to work out how far away you are. Motorists have to see you, but they also have to work out what you are and what direction you are going in. By being a mobile disco, all they can see is a pile of flashing lights that give no spatial information.
But my point isn't about this particular piece of detail, my point is I am sure hardly a single cyclist actually has a clue if their lights are legal or not per the road code, and that ignorance is general across the entire driving population as well.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to izogi,
Don't know about trucks.
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http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/roadcode/cyclist-code/
"...Compulsory equipment
A red or yellow rear reflector that is visible from a distance of 100 metres when light shines on it.
Good brakes on the front and back wheels (or, if the cycle was made before 1 January 1988, a good brake on the back wheel).When cycling at night or when visibility is poor, cycles must have the following:
One or more steady or flashing rear-facing red lights that can be seen at night from a distance of 100 metres.
One or two white or yellow headlights that can be seen at night from a distance of 100 metres. Only one of these headlights may flash.Pedal retroreflectors on the forward and rearward facing surfaces of each pedal. If the cycle does not have these, you must wear reflective material..."
Note (for that guy on the Northwestern cycleway) you can't have a lighthouse stuck on your helmet throwing out ten million un-dimmed candle power in a continuous beam AND two bright flashing lights that look like you are lauching a salvo of photon torpedoes from all tubes.
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The thing here is that usually it is the ignorant abusing the ill-informed. Most people on the road (cyclists and motorists) would not be able to pass a test about cycling based on on the road code. I took the trouble of downloading and reading it, there was stuff in there I didn’t even know was the law pertaining to cyclists. For example, in winter many cyclists (for understandable reasons) don all sorts of high vis reflector gear and then festoon themselves with so many flashing, pulsing and static lights in orange, red and white that they look like a Hindu festival on acid. Much of that light show is probably illegal if you read the road code.
When you’ve got two groups of people on the road who are both starting from an understanding of the road code that they’ve largely made up in their own imaginations, it is no wonder there is so much ill-tempered bluster.
Maybe bicycles operated on the road need to be regularly checked and have to comply with the road code and a set of basic safety requirements. Call it a bike WoF.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Tom Semmens comes from a world where the rich vote Labour and the poor National.
You have no idea what world I come from, you patronising prat.
You now, so far I’ve had about five replies, all of which have sought to belittle me personally, patronise me, or bully me into silence by trying to pretend I somehow think child rape is a trivial matter. What a bunch of smug arseholes, but thanks for proving my point so well.
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I personally think child rape is much that same as opening a hardware store.
</sarcasm>Thanks for so fulsomely proving my point.
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I suppose that if you think using elite opinion to threaten a boycott to shut down Wille and JT is fine, then that is great and hunky dory – if that is what you wanted then you’ve got it.
The whole Roastbusters story may turn out to be to be of much less substance than it has being portrayed or is currently supposed – I note that no one has been able to find JT & Willies now famous Amy, and nor have the police yet laid any charges despite the fact that the bosses upstairs will now be making sure no stone remains unturned. None of this lack of actual concrete evidence however has prevented our liberal elites engaging in an hysterical moral panic and a determined witch hunt against it’s enemies like Wille and JT.
You know, I’ve been looking at how the NIMBYs of Grey Lynn have been handling criticism of their attempts to stop the Bunnings store in Great North road. Same sort of people as post on here, same sort of comments. Patronising, smug and condescending are words that come up time and time again when people talk about how liberal elites dismiss those that disagree with them.
Let’s draw a longish bow, and go to a land far, far away (well, Canada) where Toronto Mayor Rob Ford still, it seems, commands considerable support. An article just now in Toronto Life examines this –
…The anti-Ford camp tends to explain this stubborn refusal to accept mounting evidence as a symptom of the culture war between downtown and the suburbs. On one side are the elitist downtown progressives who favour transit, walkability, cycling, densification, lattes and street festivals; on the other side are the suburbanites, who prefer private space, low-density living, commuting by car, Tim Hortons and backyard barbecues.
This narrative doesn’t tell a true story about Toronto. There is a deep divide in the city, but it’s a class-based conflict between haves and have-nots—or, more precisely, between neighbourhoods with improving prospects and neighbourhoods on the decline. And Ford Nation hails largely from the latter…
What the people on this site don’t seem to be able to grasp is that are elitist and (largely) part of the elite; Wealth disparity is huge in NZ and when the liberal elite speak they are speaking with the voice of the rich, and more often than not talking down to the poor. This goes to the heart of this “free speech” argument. Free speech to shut down JT and Willie is easy when you are an articulate part of the educated elite with access to the media.
But what if you not from the elite? What if you are low paid, struggling and not so good with the grammar and feel bullied by the cruel words of the well-off clever clogs? If your “free speech” is drowned out in a barrage of sneering comments from people smarter than you? What if JT and Willie talk in your accent and in your words? When I look at Rob Ford I see an electoral reflection in the mirror of the patronising liberal elites of Toronto, a symbol of the resentment generated when economic winners lecture economic losers about how they should think. A majority of Toronto’s voters would rather have an obscene, obese, crack smoking drunkard and criminal as mayor than another smug liberal. What should that tell us about the universality of liberal values? What should that tell us about what most people in Toronto think of the opinions of what to them are snobby university lecturers and stuck up journalists telling what is and isn’t acceptable on the radio?
So what is good for the goose is sauce for the gander, so don’t come whining when the greater voting power of the whatever form the local version of the Ford Nation will take (Slater Town?) sees our very own Rob Ford approving a chicken rendering plant in Hakanoa Street as much because he knows it’ll have his supporters in Papakura chortling into their beers around the BBQ at the comeuppance of those smug pricks in their flash two million villas as anything else.
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If my Facebook feed is any guide, it is day two and we are already in a full Mazengarb event.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, it is what I would do, and I could guarantee I could get 100 people to say i was with them the whole time.
Sometimes relying on the system doesn't work.