Category: rant’n’rave

Another case of a driver attacking a cyclist with their vehicle… when you consider the number of deaths caused by vehicles compared to other better known ‘offensive weapons’ it is simply nothing short of attempted murder.

The latest report I heard was that police were seeking a late model ford with an EVK or EVQ number plate. What is it about ford? I mean, all generalisations are false, so I’m not pointing the finger at all ford drivers, but there seems to be something about the marque that attracts young men of questionable intellect. I don’t get anywhere near the same level of grief from holden hoons.

Just up the street from where I work is a ford dealership and workshop. I ride my bike past it almost every night and, while I’m cautious, I often see appalling behaviour from the drivers coming to or leaving the dealership. I wonder if the people who leave their cars for service are aware of the ‘testing’ the mechanics seem to do up and down the street? Curious that we don’t see the same behaviour from the Peugeot dealership next door.

I also ride a motorbike, so I’ve got a natural streak of suspicion about Volvos. It’s an old cliche, but I have to say, times have changed (or maybe I have), but Volvo drivers don’t seem to be the problem they used to be. No, they’ve well and truly been replaced by VW Golfs – especially the silver ones! Don’t know what’s going on here, but if you want to find an impatient, pushy, lead-footed lunatic, look no further than your nearest silver Golf. (Actually, there’s one parks in the office car park, so I’d better cover myself by saying that it probably doesn’t apply to all silver golf drivers 😉

Watched a very interesting documentary on SBS the other night: Car of the Future, where two charismatic brothers – one a host of a radio car show, explore future trends in car design in a lighthearted, but well informed way. It was certainly entertaining, but I want to share the two big points that came out of it.

1. Around 1% of the fuel we put in our car is actually used in moving the driver. What? 1%?? are you kidding? So while we’re howling about paying $1.75 per litre for petrol, the way we use it means that we are essentially burning $1.73 of it for nothing? Well, not quite – the waste is in moving the car – friction, heat, and of course, the engine itself cannot perfectly convert petrol to motion. All the same, it’s an incredibly sobering to realise just how far we’ve got to go with fuel efficiency in motoring.

2. We blew our last big chance to build more efficient cars. Yes, back in 1975 the world experienced its first major oil crisis. Legislation was introduced in the US to mandate minimum mileage efficiencies and between 1975 and 1982 the average mileage increased from 13mpg to 22mpg. During this period, the price of oil actually fell!

Unfortunately, instead of continuing with these gains, having achieved the required standards, future efficiency gains were used to increase speed and vehicle size. The average mileage has not increased since 1982, in fact, it’s gone slightly south, to about 20.8mpg, while fuel prices have steadily risen.

So there it was, as clear as day, the correlation between demand and price, and yet we still have brainless, populist fools like the RACV, and the opposition (my favourite targets), as well as many others, who think that cutting fuel taxes to provide a few weeks price relief is a good thing. How stupid and short-sighted can you get?

The lesson to be learned is clear, the only thing that is going to make drivers and manufacturers change their ways is to allow market forces to take their toll. Market forces that include the true cost of fossil fuels, and include a carbon tax. It’s going to hurt, but it must be done.

Does anyone else find the recent debate over petrol tax just a little bit pathetic? 4 cents, 5 cents, myopic politicians taking cheap shots, pretending they can do anything about fuel prices. It’s all such a load of crap.

Firstly, I’m no economist, but as I understand it, the price is high because of the old supply/demand equation. What’s dropping the price going to do? I’ll help: it’ll increase demand, raise the price and before a few weeks have gone by any, gains will have evaporated faster than if you put a match to it.

Obviously the only thing that is going to make any difference is a drop in demand. If you want to save 20% on your petrol bill, try catching the train or riding a bike one day a week.

It’s sunset on the day of the car. When I travel to work, I am just sickened and amazed at the number of cars with only one occupant – these will be the same people whinging about petrol prices – are they completely stupid? They are racing headlong to a future of congestion taxes and greenhouse taxes – five cents is going to look cheap when they start having to pay the real cost of their addiction.

I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the secondary effects of a fuel price crunch – farmers, miners, primary producers and manufacturers everywhere are already dropping out of business. We’re seeing protests across the world in rich and poor countries. What happens when our shops can’t get adequate stock of fresh fruit, fish, and milk? The writing has been on the wall since the first ‘oil shock’ in the ’70s, but little has been done to change course. If not this crunch, maybe the next one, but you know, it’s really going to hurt unless we start making other plans.

And in a perverse little postscript: Our local paper ran a front page story this week about a councilor calling for trams to be banned on Sydney Road… wait for it: because they cause congestion! Hang on a minute, last time I was on Sydney Road, there were about 300 cars for every tram. Wouldn’t that indicate it’s the cars causing the congestion? Bingo! Maths isn’t my strong suit, but I think I nailed that one.

In these days of social networks, recommendations and feedback, how do you give seriously negative feedback?

I would like the world to know how useless a former staff member was, but can’t bring myself to write comments directly on their linkedin profile (christ, we were just glad to get rid of them!), but almost every day at the moment, I am picking up the pieces of this person’s appallingly unprofessional work and cursing that my employer was somehow tricked into paying them twice as much as they pay me! Pity the next poor bastard that has to work with them.

Each month I get the RACV magazine, Royalauto; and almost without fail, I am appalled by their dated, conservative, tunnel-vision approach to problems on our roads.

This month, the cover boasts a “Special Roads Report. Congestion: the solutions“, so I thought I’d see what the 1950’s think tank had come up with this time. Living in an inner suburb that is already suffering under the effects of Citylink and now in the firing line of the new ‘East-West’ proposals – I have a vested interest in a creative solution that works for all.

The article heads off in a predictable manner, mostly just stating the totally bleeding obvious, it’s getting worse (oh, duh!). Then it goes to a series of bullet point ‘solutions‘. For the sake of brevity, I won’t demolish these one by one, but sufffice to say that all, (yes, 100%) of the short term solutions offered are focussed on making driving easier. Getting more people on the road, to their destination etc. In other words, a Growth Model.

Now, any fool with a pocket calculator can see that growth models are unsustainable. If you don’t know what that means (say you’re from the RACV), it means that it might be a solution now, but it’s just delaying the crunch. As if to highlight their stupidity, the article points out that in the 90’s things were better. What’s happened in the interim? – Growth! So, they’ve provided an example of why their own arguments are wrong.

What’s missing from their solutions? Well, things with two wheels for a start, but so much more… I’ve got a few of my own to throw into the mix 🙂

• Aim for zero growth – no new roads. Road spending to be limited to maintenance and safety works. Safety works to be focussed on speed reduction, not fitting more cars onto the road.
• Ban single occupant vehicles from the CBD, except for designated routes to drop-off/pickup points
• Halve the cost of public transport during low use periods – eg: before 6:30am, 10am – 3pm, after 7pm
• Dramatically improve the lot of cyclists and small capacity (<500cc) motorcyclists through provision of on road facilities, adjustments to road use legislation, parking facilities, reduced fees and charges.

OK, so it’s just a few off-the-cuff ideas, but I’m serious about the ‘no growth’. I remember when I got my licence so many years ago, I was told that driving was a privilege, not a right. If our city is to avoid drowning in bitumen, oil and exhaust fumes, we have to realise that it’s a privilege we can no longer afford to indulge on a daily basis. Discretionary car travel is a thing of the past, if there is an alternative, we will soon be forced to use it – whether by economic or legislative forces. It’s as simple as that.