Adrian Tritschler's stuff
My website, an agglomerative mess, probably half-eaten by a grue
© 1984 - 2024 Adrian Tritschler
Day 1254 ☀️ around some trails
15.40km / 44:56 / 112m / 12.0°C
Adrian Tritschler's stuff
My website, an agglomerative mess, probably half-eaten by a grue
© 1984 - 2024 Adrian Tritschler
Melbourne motorists going that extra mile to be dangerously unpredictable
Thursday, riding alone day, as distinct from Monday to Wednesday which are “riding with the five yr old” days. Thursday’s traffic is more hazardous, but at least it’s more predictable!
Riding with a small child in Melbourne it is amazing how much more polite drivers seem to be, they pass safely, they tend to (not always, but tend to) stop at stop signs rather than shoot across our bows after “slowing down a bit… maybe… it’s only a pushbike.
Those funny black and white stripes on the road
After a long day out yesterday we came home by train, getting out at the station Jo and Cam went one way to the house while I went to the shops to get some take-away noodles for dinner. A five minute wait and dinner is ready, then back down Station street and two pedestrian crossings to the station. Half way across the road and I leap backwards to the sound of squealing tyres and an acccelerating engine, as per usual one of the local drivers has decided to plant his foot going around the roundabout to race for the crossing to get there before the pedestrian.
First roadie commute, two road-ragers in one day
Bah, Friday, who needs it.
Family circumstances altered, toddler sleep requires a no show at Goat. Normal commute home, hopefully avoiding the wind and rain.
First ride home on the new road bike. First ride on a road bike for about a year. First ride in Shimano road cleats for about five years. East Oakleigh: approaching little roundabout down a gentle hill, there’s a Falcon coming down the street from my right but he’s way back and I’ll be across the roundabout before he’s even got there.
Evolution in action
What happens when you combine stupid people with cars? Here’s a local genius who may have spent too much time watching Hollywood movies and lost track of reality just a wee touch. Courtesy of my favourite fish-wrapper, the Herald Sun:
Man in hospital with head injuries after jumping from car at 90km/h
A 21-YEAR-OLD man who jumped out of a moving car while he was driving it at nearly 90km/h is in hospital with serious head injuries.
Once, an accident; twice, a coincidence
Trundling home on the mountain bike towing the trailer and toddler, today I decided to go the slightly longer way via Huntingdale station and the full length of the bottle-strewn bike path to Oakleigh. Making my way carefully through the Huntingdale station car-park in case of idiots I had to suddenly slam on the brakes and stop to avoid an idiot reversing at speed out of a parking space without looking.
More Melbourne Motorists
Riding home today I think it must be the day of the d@ckhead and that I missed the announcement.
Heading towards Clayton road in the Dandenong road service lane a courier car comes out of Clayton primary and goes screaming past me and the trailer the wrong way up the service lane heading for the McDonalds or to a shortcut across Dandenong road to head east.
Passing the Oakleigh motel there’s a large tattooed arm hanging out the window of a parked crappy commodore and a hand holding a cigarette… or so I thought.
More idiots parking blocking the path
Around and around we go; Connex and Monash City Council, Monash City Council and Connex….
Every couple of weeks someone decides to ignore the no parking signs, to ignore the huge white markings on the ground, to ignore the fact that they’re blocking the footpath and bike path, and decides to park illegally at the end of the Oakleigh station car-park. Anyone on foot who is skinny enough can squeeze past, anyone on a bike, with a pram or shopping trolley or who is fatter than average either cannot get past at all, or has to scrape along the side of the idiot’s car.
Ride to Work day + 1 — a bus, again
Bloody typical! Yesterday was “Ride to Work day” and I rode from home — Oakleigh — to Federation square then back to Monash and had a near perfect ride. Maybe it was all the publicity about the cyclist’s death last month but everyone seemed to be pretty well behaved (which I always find a miracle on St Kilda road, whether they’re on bikes, on foot, or in cars). Had my coffee and roll and made it back for a slightly latish 9.
Victoria, Gardenstate or road-rage state?
There I was riding to work along North road, same as I always do. Obeying the law and riding in the lane adjacent to the bus-lane, same as a I always do. Nearly every other person using the road seems to be able to safely and legally pass me, same as the always do.
But there’s always one…
The driver of a tow-truck from Gardenstate towing, registration TOW-###, was somehow unable to pass me and instead drove along for 400-500m blasting on the horn, yelling abuse and gesticulating wildly for me to get off the road and into the bus lane.
Abused by motorists for not breaking the law!
Twice in two days, given a mouthful of abuse while riding to work … for not breaking the law! This morning the driver of Subaru (Forester probably) Victorian registration ###-### felt he couldn’t overtake me legally and safely in my lane or the lane to my right, so he swerved into the bus-lane to overtake on the left, meanwhile blasting on the horn and screaming at me to “Bloody move over”, then swerved into my lane when he was only half-way past.
Cycling things in the news
“Bumper stickers reveal link to road rage”: Hardly earth shattering, but their research shows that people who most strongly identify with their cars are the ones that get the angriest and are most prone to road rage. “Hating cyclists: some preliminary findings”: Not much in the way of interpretation, but a large body of analysis of the feedback to any media stories on cyclist-motorist interaction in Australia. “Road Safety and perceived risk of cycle tracks and lanes in Copenhagen” (pdf) :: Fascinating reading, a safety report from Copenhagen, home of those “Copenhagen lanes” that Bicycle (paths) Victoria are obsessed with — when they’re not obsessed with other bicycle paths.
North road and Grenda buses … again and again
There must be something about their “professional training”, I really can’t think of anything else to explain it.
Every day I ride up North road, usually with no problems
Every day I am passed by several hundred cars, usually with no problems.
Every day I am passed by one or two buses from other bus lines, usually with no problems.
About once a month some maniac in a Grendas bus seems to want to kill me.
North road, bus lanes and road-raging bus drivers
How odd… as I was riding along North road this morning I was thinking that I really should write back to VicRoads and thank them for their clarification of the use of the bus lanes. Less than a minute later I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing as a VicRoads maintenance vehicle drove out of a side-street, safety orange light busy spinning around on the roof, assorted warning signs all sitting in the back… and the driver chatting away on THE MOBILE PHONE.
Amazing, a religious document I agree with!
Very rare I’ll admit, but the Vatican on Tuesday 19-Jun-2007 issued a set of “Ten Commandments” for drivers. I saw a couple of newspaper articles about them, but none of these seemed to print the list out. Finally I found a copy.
The “Drivers’ Ten Commandments,” as listed by the document, are:
You shall not kill. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
BMW, 4WD, SMS, IDIOT
Quite amazingly, the TAC has finally decided that their 100% obsession with speed being the cause of all collisions is not the be-all and end-all of road safety. There’s a new campaign telling motorists to — shock horror — pay attention and put the phone down, stop fiddling with the radio, stop playing with the children and DRIVE THE BLOODY CAR WITHOUT KILLING PEOPLE.
A good start, but sadly reality intrudes.
Morons with their mobiles
Dear selfish bastards… PUT THE PHONE DOWN BEFORE YOU KILL SOMEONE!
You’d think that with all the recent media focus on idiots who insist on breaking the law, that maybe, just maybe some drivers would actually STOP USING THEIR BLOODY PHONES. Obviously not, they just can’t resist their mobile phone addiction. I’m not really looking for them and in my fifteen minute ride to work I’m still seeing four or five a day, every single day.
Rain turns motorists minds to mush
Must be international idiot on the roads day, or maybe just Melbourne Motorised Morons…. A few drops of rain on the way home and two idiots try to hit me, one successfully.
Major idiot number one was the one that missed; traffic was banked up all the way back from the roundabout on Haughton road to North road in the right lane by people wanting to go around and turn right, so what does our hero do?
The knee jerks, and having jerked, moves on….
OK, so there was a bad collision in the Burnley tunnel last Friday. Yes, there are no emergency lanes or emergency bays in the tunnel, and yes, the speed limit is 80km/hr — except for the majority of the time when I seem to go through and its been reduced to 60 or even 40.
But come on people, the amount of crap we’ve seen in the papers for the last few days about “a disaster waiting to happen” is complete bollocks.
More of Victoria's finest road users
At the moment, Thursdays seem to be crap days.
Woken — yet again — at 5 am by garbage trucks then while riding to work I was hit by a truck at a set of traffic lights.
At the corner of North road and Clayton road I know that there’s usually a left-turn arrow, so I’d stopped at the far right-hand side of the lane to let traffic turn with the arrow, five or six cars turned through with plenty of room, then the small tow-truck pulled up on my left, the driver yelled out the window “Fucken idiot get out of the way” and with that promptly drove left around the corner — striking me with the tray of the truck as it went around and pushing me half a metre over into the car next to me!
What the?
from The Age News Headlines:
Freeway crash leaves one dead
One person dies and three others injured after a car strikes a tree on the Tullamarine Freeway.
What the? Bloody dangerous roads those freeways, trees sticking out the middle of them for motorists to just drive into. Is there going to be an investigation into why there is a tree on the freeway? I guess its a change from people driving into each other, picking on the trees for a change….
Bad Friday
Something is getting me down today. Either I ate too much last night, or Christmas is bugging me, or I didn’t sleep well or something. I know I ate too much, the Chicken Parmagiana from Groove Train was a ridiculous size, I’ve never seen a chicken that size….
It didn’t help that when I went out for a ride this morning before work some idiot drove into me in the last kilometre before I got to work — he thought he could squeeze his Hyundai Excel between the stationary row of traffic and me, it didn’t fit.
Phone ph*ckwits
Aaaarrrg! Every day I ride to work. It’s only five kilometres and it only takes fifteen minutes. Every day I see a couple of idiots on the roads on their phones in the morning, and another couple in the evening. Every week once or twice I have to take some evasive action from the antics of one of these idiots.
The local papers state that the police had “a massive crackdown” on motorists on the Monash freeway with “round the clock staffing” for an entire month.
Ow, that's my leg!
Another bloody motorist who can’t be bloody bothered to watch where they’re bloody going and obey the bloody give-way signs. Idiot old builder in crappy old white Ford station wagon, tears up the merge lane of North road from Huntingdale and goes straight through the give-way sign, straight past the “watch for bicycles” sign and would have hit me square on if I hadn’t swerved out of the way. Glancing blow on the knee and hand, looks round in amazement at the loud bang as the bike hits the door and slows for a moment, then roars off up the road.
From AAP to the Age
Interesting changes to the wording from the first report which appeared on the Age website credited to AAP, and the second one, printed in today’s paper.
The website version:
Webber urges drivers: watch for bicycles
April 3, 2006 - 6:24AM
Formula One star Mark Webber has urged Australian motorists to take a leaf out of the European book and pay more attention to cyclists on the road.
Webber, who admits to being a huge cycling fan, said while motorists in Victoria had improved in their attitude towards cyclists in the last five years, the rest of the country was not so patient.
Neanderthal motorist
From both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age; the latest motorised moron to be caught attacking people with a car as a weapon:
A man has been charged after allegedly trying to run down a group of cyclists in a road rage incident in Sydney’s south.
An argument broke out after the 50-year-old man allegedly almost hit a group of about 20 cyclists on General Holmes Drive in Brighton-Le-Sands shortly before 6 am AEDT yesterday as he drove out of a service station, police said.
Road rage
Sunny day, no wind, definitely time to get out on the bike. Jo and I did our usual ride down North road to the bay, then down Beach road to Mordialloc. Interesting mix of barricades around Mentone since there was a triathlon running and the road had been closed, but only closed to motorised traffic! Apparently other cyclists are allowed to mix with the competing triathletes, which sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Why you hit me mister?
Ow ow ow! Another day, another motorised moron.
Rush hour traffic in Haughton road? A fifty kilometre speed limit and traffic in both directions? A road specifically narrowed by Monash City Council to stop everyone using it as a short cut through the suburb. A road narrowed so that motorists have to actually think and pull out in order to overtake cyclists safely. Not a problem for our local inhabitants. Speed up and go head-on towards oncoming cars, then swerve back in and slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the next car up ahead.
People in cars
Bah! One of my colleagues from work spent the night in hospital and will spend the rest of the week off work. Motorist “failed to give way” and ran into him. I’ve seen him riding — lit up like a christmas tree, lights, reflectors, shiny vest, and always on the lookout for the idiot in the tin box. It only takes one lapse in concentration and the idiot will get you…
Rain, Sun, Wind, Melbourne!
Just about to leave this morning to ride to work when the rain started hammering down on the tin roof, definitely time to sit for a quarter of an hour and tidy the kitchen!
Oddest motorist this morning — the lady stopped at the lights on North road. She drove up, stopped, her hands and eyes dropped into her lap and she started fiddling about. “Another idiot on the phone,” I thought.
Coincidence?
This morning I’m on my way to work when I meet, SKM-###, the garbage truck driven by idiots. First they’re stopped at the corner hanging out the window and yelling sexist abuse at a female pedestrian, then they came up behind me on North road, pulled into the bike lane as they passed, then just ahead of me kept on coming left until the truck almost met the railing, pulling back out the two passengers were leaning out the window looking back at me and laughing.
Its da Law!
Aha! Finally found the bit of Victoria’s Road Rules that I’ve been after for months. Paragraph 2, Rule 134, Part 11:
134. Exceptions to keeping to the left of a dividing line
(2) If the dividing line is a single broken or a continuous line, or a broken divided line to the left of a single continuous dividing line, the driver may drive to the right of the dividing line to overtake another driver.
I am not an ashtray!
Its been a while since I’ve met quite such an aggressive motorist, one who’s prepared not only to scream abuse but to try and hit me with their car — unfortunately tonight was such a night.
I pulled up at the lights to turn right from Clayton road into North road, drawing alongside a dark blue/green Ford station wagon stopped in the through lane. As I got level with the driver’s window she flicked half a cigarette’s worth of glowing ash straight out, half in my face, half down my leg.
Roundabouts, Motorists
Where’s the BikeCam™ when you need it? Not once, but twice this evening on the way home I came within inches of being flattened by morons who decided not to bother giving way to traffic on the roundabouts. First one was just out of Monash on Woodside avenue, moron in a red station-wagon, Subaru I think, rego. ###-###, flying up Koonawarra street, doesn’t bother to slow, straight out in front as I’m halfway around.
Mandatory Monthly Motorist Madness
A grey morning, poor visibility, wet roads. Just what I need, first moron of the month — the lady in the blue Ford Falcon wagon (registration ###-###), she sits beside me at the lights SMSing on her phone, then when the lights go green drives off, eyes still firmly on the phone in her lap as she veers into my lane towards me. I point at her and shout out, “Put the phone down!
Mind the doors!
Motorists do the darnedest things. Today’s idiot du jour was the passenger in the silver Barina, P-plates, Victorian registration ###-###. There it was stopped at the traffic lights about five cars from the front, he decided to throw the passenger door fully open in order to spit on the ground as I was riding up on the left. Somehow I managed to just stop before ramming his head into the open car door.
Another 4WD, another death...
Adelaide this time, another dead cyclist, another drunk motorist gets off with a slap on the wrist. Five glasses of wine, then run into someone in your four-wheel drive and kill them — NO PROBLEM — the court will acquit you. What the hell does it take to convict people in this country? Oddly enough, the police found that they had time and resources to take a blood alcohol reading from the victim, but had insufficient resources to take a reading from the lawyer who had hit him!
Motorists never cease to amaze!
Riding to work on a quiet Monday morning, it’s a public holiday, there’s hardly anyone on the roads. Riding to work should be easy today… Then as I approached one of the mini-roundabouts in Haughton road there were not one, but two motorists driving around it towards me!
One driving in the conventional manner, on the left hand side of the road, clockwise when seen from above, at about 40-50km/hr.
Motorists
It went WHOOSH! But thankfully, there was no THWACK to follow. Idiot in a red VW Golf, (NSW registration ##-##-##), driving along with the phone pressed hard against the ear, half in one lane, half in the other, missed my elbow by inches as he decided at the last minute to not exit from North road.
Motorists...
Yow! After some contradictory reports of the Bicycle Victoria ride in Tasmania I finally got to chat with two cow-orkers who had been on the ride. Both had a good time, despite hills and rainy weather — both things that they had been expecting. What they hadn’t expected was the motorist who lost his temper, blasted on the horn and drove through a pack of riders while towing a caravan! Knocked eight people off their bikes and one had to be taken by helicopter to hospital.
Head on...
Another day, another near miss…. A couple of times a week I meet them, dickheads in too much of a hurry who decide to drive the wrong way up the ring-road at Monash then cut through to the other side. The layout of the car-park seems to encourage them, the entrance is only a little bit past the through road — but far enough that they have to plant the foot and come roaring the wrong way head-on at any cyclist foolish enough to believe that the one-way road will have traffic only heading in one way.
Another mobile moron
Riding home along North road, a car passes too closely. Lady driver in the Audi (rego. Vic ###-###) has the mobile phone in her hand and is busy staring at the display as she taps in a phone number. As I went past her to the front of the lights I gave her an evil glare, but she didn’t notice, too intent on her phone… The lights changed to green, I took off, three cars passed and then came the Audi, this time the phone firmly clamped to the ear, busy chatting away.
About
ajft looking stylish and black
…The Owner
There’s not much more I can add to who I am.
…The Site
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.
…The ISP
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