Eleventh day of the eleventh month and I didn’t notice. So much for armistice day, or for Aussies, Gough day. There seems to be a growing disquiet that Melbourne’s motorists — indeed Australia’s motorists — just don’t give a damn about the laws regarding driving and using a mobile phone, and that the police don’t give a damn about policing these laws. $135 fine and three points off your license — who cares. Endangering other road users — who cares. The woman who killed a cyclist near Geelong while she was sending an SMS has been let off by the courts — a suspended two year sentence. Even Bicycle Victoria, famous for not doing anything that would seem to remotely offend anyone in the government or VicRoads, is calling for tougher penalties and a public “dob-in an illegal motorist” hotline.
I don’t think that tougher penalties are the answer — its a knee-jerk Aussie reaction — call for tougher penalties. What’s the point when the existing laws aren’t being enforced? You can increase the penalty up to ludicrous extremes of having the death penalty for speeding, but if it’s not enforced, still nobody will obey it.
Amazingly though, no life-threatening mobile-phone wielding motorists today — only the dogs on the bike path to contend with… and one particular rabid old lady who is too important to keep to the left, is too important to keep her four dogs on leads, under control, or even on one side of the path, and is sanctimonious enough to claim that a loud voice shouting BIKE! cannot be heard because I didn’t ring a bell bike… Refused to answer any queries as too why she didn’t use a lead or keep left, just walked off saying over and over again “tra-la-la I can’t hear you…” Absolutely infuriating, but I shouldn’t let these idiots get to me! Hopefully sometime soon their idiot dogs will run in front of a truck rather than a bike.
Then they wonder why Melbourne’s taxi drivers have such a poor reputation — ten to nine on a Tuesday morning, taxi stopped with its hazard lights on in the left-hand lane of a main road. The driver hopped out, walked around to the rear door and pissed on the road, then zipped up and drove off! Maybe its acceptable in whatever third-world country our taxi-drivers get their licenses, but surely he could have driven to the petrol station two blocks away!