The full article gives a fair balance but as always the crackpot idea gets the first, most prominent, run. Oh, yes, it’s the SMH, again. And it’s the “Drive” section, so we can pretty much expect this sort of self-serving pro-motoring fluff. In summary the idea is that newer cars are inherently safer, more competent at speed and in braking performance and more protective if it all goes pear-shaped. Can’t argue too much against the idea that newer cars are “better” – but it’s an old argument: I can remember owners of better-handling, higher-performance European cars saying much the same 30 years ago. And it’s a variant on the “better drivers should be allowed to go faster” idea, too. And – ironically – “better” drivers would immediately see the problem: safety is about a combination of driver skill and attention, machine and road design and consistency (or regulation) in road behaviour. It’s not just about the car.

Speed limits are set according to road conditions, including local, surrounding features that are likely to introduce driver “challenges”, and common or “mean” levels of expectation about balancing the wants and needs of all road users. After all it’s not about pleasing just one segment of road user.  

What you especially don’t want (but get anyway) is an inconsistent mix of speeds on our public roads. We already have trucks at a capped speed that sometimes is less than the posted absolute limit, but generally we recognise that and they fit in OK. We have slower vehicles, too, like caravans and cars towing trailers, or simply lower-powered or over-weight vehicles, but again we cope. And we have pedestrians and cyclists, pedal or motor-powered, doing whatever they are capable off. That seems like a lot of inconsistency already, so why add another layer? Why would we want some cars, hopefully identified in some obvious way, allowed to go faster? So that they can get to where they are going in less time, of course. But at what cost?

Consistency is an aid to safety and smooths traffic flow. It allows us to more easily predict approach speeds and plan our driving manoeuvers in advance with some reliability. As in lane changing and overtaking, or in entering or crossing the path of traffic. As drivers we learn to read both the real speed and position of approaching vehicles as well as rely on speed limits to set our general expectations. We don’t expect to see motor vehicles travelling well under or in excess of the posted limit and we find it a surprise when they do. That’s just the sort of nasty surprise we don’t want when pulling out of a side street or changing lanes. Of course people “speed” anyway and create those nasty surprises – but why should we want to legitimise speeding of any sort? What safety benefit is there in allowing some cars to go faster and thus introduce yet more complexity and difficulty into our driving environment?

Think about it. The speed inconsistencies or variations we have now are clearly linked with size, shape and ability. Trucks are physically obvious enough, surely. Caravans, trailers and bike riders are clearly different and obvious to the diligent driver as well. But to distinguish levels of car and thus speed by “newness” is a level of difficulty we really wouldn’t want. It wouldn’t be enough to slap a sticker on the car, we’d have to give it a flashing light as well. And in the most part all it would do is allow these “legally speeding” cars to get ahead of others and catch up to – or cause – the traffic jam up ahead. It’s a whacky, crazy idea. And inherently unsafe, if you actually care to think about it.

Should newer cars have higher speed limits? | Two-way street

So, why does a 1970s Kombi get to do the same speed on our highways as a BMW 7-Series that is engineered to safely cruise along at 200km/h without breaking a sweat?

It’s about consistency, stoopid.

Should newer cars have higher speed limits? | Two-way street

Turning the focus on drivers allows bureaucrats to justify picking the pockets of road users every time they creep a couple of kilometres an hour over the limit.

Lots of people believe that but it’s also an easy way to ignore real safety concerns and just run with your own self-interest.

Thankfully the SMH ends this pice of fluff with some thoughtfulness:

Should newer cars have higher speed limits? | Two-way street

A modern car fitted with every hazard-reducing bell and whistle can be driven by an absolute twit. You say the owners of older cars should have their speed limits restricted? I say bad driving should be monitored, and penalised, more efficiently.

Bravo!

Having ridden close to 300,000km in my lifetime I’ve just about seen everything imaginable, from fiesty kangaroos bent on destroying a peleton to looney drivers determined to rid the road of riders at all costs. As well as, in the majority, careful citizens just getting along. But this Shane Warne whinge is a rare one indeed – complete with tweeting and counter claims, all in the public eye.
And the truth? Who knows. If it wasn’t Warnie it’d be just another day in the bike rider’s office, dodging cars, trucks and buses and keeping as alert as possible.    

Warniegate! The cyclist’s side | Cycling Tips

At this point a pedestrian witnesses were yelling, “Get his rego” and some even yelled out his registration. One woman approached me offering assistance and asked, “Are you OK? Are you going to follow it up? I have the rego ” as she held her phone. I thanked her told her it wouldn’t be necessary – partially because I was in shock but also because I hadn’t yet realised the extent of the damage to my bike and I knew who the driver was anyway.

My girlfriend who had witnessed the whole thing from the adjacent corner now came over to ask if I was OK and what happened. “Shane Warne just ran into me with his car” I replied.

Shane Warne vs. cyclists: registration and number plates — David Johnstone

Shane Warne has managed to get himself embroiled in controversy again. This time it’s with cyclists. Firstly he wrote a series of tweets last week where he called for cyclists to ride in single file, show number plates, and pay registration. Unsurprisingly there were a lot of responses, some of which he retweeted. The classiest of them wasn’t from the wife of a certain famous Australian cricketer suggesting that he “just throw a cricket ball at them if they really annoy u”.

Cyclist hits back at Warne Today’s News – The Mercury – The Voice of Tasmania

The man alleged Warne “lurched his car forward forcing my bike wheel and almost my leg under the front of his car”.

He said following the incident he immediately went to the nearest police station to make a report.

Police have confirmed the man did take his bike to a station and said officers spoke to both parties.

It is believed police advised both parties to take civil action.

A police spokeswoman said due to the minor nature of the event a traffic incident report would not be submitted.

Cyclist hits back at Warne Today’s News – The Mercury – The Voice of Tasmania

Six-time ironman champion Luke McKenzie accused the cricketer of inciting hatred towards cyclists.

Amy Gillett Foundation spokesman David Lee said it was disappointing Warne was using his profile to inflame cyclist-driver tensions.

“Each road-user group has a requirement to respect the rights of the other, and inflaming the situation, whether you are a cyclist or a driver, doesn’t help,” he said.

Bicycle Network Victoria spokesman Jason den Hollander said Warne should be aware of the road rules and obey them, just like other road users.

I have my own personal stake in this – my kids just don’t take council library threats seriously enough. They are great readers and borrowers but slack returners. I badger and remind them but if I don’t take control and induce some action they just let it slide. And the reminder letters come. And finally they feel guilt. Or fear. I wasn’t like this as a child (or even now, obviously). I borrowed almost weekly from the council library and saw it as my social responsibility to get the books back as soon as I could. Someone else may have been waiting to borrow them, after all. It seemed natural to think that way, although maybe it was just me. Probably.

Anyway, the Terrorgraph’s Susie O’Brien has had a bad experience and is using her media access to have a bit of a whinge about modern society in general. It’s “sick”, she writes, that a local council calls in a debt collection agency to pursue her child over a book. Well, actually, to pursue her as guardian. (Perhaps that wouldn’t sound so sick.) Now painful personal anecdotes like this can illuminate a real issue or simply distract and distort. This one looks like a mix up over library late fees rather than a society-wide crisis. Yes, there should have been a letter sent, and maybe it just got overlooked – perhaps at both ends. Yes, it was unfortunate and over the top. But it could also be a case study in personal responsibility and teaching kids that if you agree to return books on time – you do so. No excuses.

There’s the root cause here – a late return. Yep, personal responsibility. There are consequences in life if you choose to ignore or to simply “assume” it’ll be OK, no matter how tempting it may be to just let it slide. And whilst the customer service presented here is indeed poor, there has to be some sort of responsibility taken by the consumer. If you borrow and agree to terms, you respect them. Perhaps the poor customer service values represented here simply mirror the lack of respect presented here by the consumer?

The fine and the statement:
It’s a fine mess we’re all meant to cop | thetelegraph.com.au

THERE is something seriously sick about a local council calling in an international debt collection agency to pursue an 8-year-old boy over a $7 overdue library fine.

The later, umm, correction?
It’s a fine mess we’re all meant to cop | thetelegraph.com.au

Yes, the letter was addressed to me as his guardian, but it was a pretty heavy-handed way to treat a kid in grade two on his first proper visit to the library.

And then the rant about everything else, loosely tied back to, umm, a library fine?

It’s a fine mess we’re all meant to cop | thetelegraph.com.au

There is a principle here worth fighting about.

I am tired of cops outsourcing policing to private speed camera operators who make more money by employing more aggressive tactics.

I am tired of having a nice man come to my door and sign me up to an electricity company, only to then have to deal with overseas call centres who put me on hold for my entire lunch break.

Wow. And the principle is? Don’t speed and you won’t be fined? Don’t switch electricity providers without due research? Yes, well, it was an opinion piece after all.

I know, it’s easy to predict this stuff. But here it is already, the proof of the pudding. Expect more. Lots more.

Now I can’t verify the biographical facts as they are written in the book quoted below – and I don’t expect Steve Jobs to come back to confirm or deny – but here are some choice bits anyway.

Jobs brands Bill Gates ‘unimaginative’ – Strategy – Business – News – iTnews.com.au

Steve Jobs called long-time rival and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates “unimaginative” and not really a product person, according to a biography of the deceased Apple chief executive.

Let’s not forget that these guys – Gates, Jobs, Wozniak et al – grew out of the home-brew or kit computer “craze” of the early ’70s and were busy trying to firstly make sense of it all, then make something of it and lastly to make a buck. A lot of bright people were in on it and there were ideas aplenty about where microcomputers would go next. Most people could see that there was hobbyist potential and a few – not just Jobs and Gates – saw a broader market. There was luck as well as skill involved in picking the right processor and operating system and betting on what applications would sell best. I would say that almost all of these guys (and they were mostly guys, sadly) were “imaginative”. And most of them knew something was going to happen. That Jobs and Gates had ideas and luck is unquestionable. They also ended up with some pretty good products. But for many years it was Bill Gates who tussled with IBM for the lion’s share of the software market. Whereas Jobs spent many years fighting for scraps in niche markets – until he had better luck with a late but highly successful run at the MP3 and smartphone markets.   

Jobs brands Bill Gates ‘unimaginative’ – Strategy – Business – News – iTnews.com.au

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology,” Jobs told author Walter Isaacson.

“He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.“

Sounds like a bit of guilt showing in that comment. Picking on a guy because he’s giving stuff away to help others? Hmmm. Now let’s get this comment in perspective. Jobs – if quoted correctly – is partly right. Gates had a lot of luck fall his way when IBM basically gifted him what became MS-DOS. He can thank his lucky stars – or perhaps Digital Research’s lawyers – that IBM didn’t wait around a bit longer for Gary Kildall to talk with them about CP/M. But Gates also made the most of that luck and leveraged it into a mammoth software enterprise that in many ways dwarfs Apple’s efforts by scale and reach – even now. Although MS Windows possibly drew at least some inspiration from Apple’s mouse-and-GUI-based operating system, and certainly became embroiled in a legal wrangle with Apple over the design, it can’t be said that Apple invented that interface either. Surely we have Xerox to thank for that. So it’s hard not to imagine the pot calling the kettle black here in some ways.

It’s clear also that whilst Microsoft and Gates prospered Jobs and Apple stumbled. There were product successes as well as failures but big hits were few and far between. Instead Apple wedged itself – with the Mac – tightly into the graphic design and audio niches and hoped for the best. There was even talk of IBM buying the Apple computer business at one stage but – possibly – it was too far gone and a bad fit in a market that was already well matured and likely to decline. Where Jobs finally found his luck – or best design – was with a mass-market MP3 player that used a slick interface and easy-access online content. The iTunes methodology in particular has been a spectacular success at locking in customers. Coupled with great marketing Apple has made a spectacular turnaround on all fronts, Mac included. But Jobs wasn’t first with MP3 players, either. Nor even smartphones. Or maybe even Tablets (it’s certainly disputable). He even ran into difficulties over the very name of the company, given that the Beatles had already put the name “Apple” out into market place Jobs had to fight a legal battle to share it.

Pot calling kettle back, again?

Whilst there are some genuinely nice ideas incorporated into Apple’s products they are rarely, truly, cutting-edge. In many ways Apple has – at least recently, with the shift in emphasis away from their mainstay personal computers into smaller but broader mobile consumer devices – made a late move into each market and simply offered a better, perhaps more charismatic package at a higher price and – get this – sometimes fewer features than the competition. And consequently taken that market over as their own. Wow.

Now that’s great marketing, fantastic product leadership and stellar business strategy – but I don’t see it as particularly wholesome and wonderful either. But others may not agree! 

Don’t you love seemingly global competitions that deep down in the fine print exclude significant populations? Yes, I understand national and state laws are the usual “reason” for this but somehow I think it could be worked around a bit better, or at least made more obvious. Otherwise readers just waste their time looking at web pages and filling out forms. And whilst that’s the point of this marketing exercise anyway it does set in train some negative feelings when you realise that you’ve just done what they wanted – for little or no return. You aren’t likely to win anyway but in fact you were never even eligible. Sucked in, as they say.   

CyclingNews is a familiar culprit and they are up to it again with this Specialized comp (and I like and use Specialized gear, by the way):

Rules – Win Specialized Bikes Gear with Cyclingnews.com

6. Unless otherwise stated, each Competition is open to all who are 18 years and over, except: 6.1 residents of Belgium, Norway, Sweden, India, Rhode Island, New York, Florida and Puerto Rico, New South Wales (Australia) and any country embargoed by the United States

Not forgetting this catch-all that doesn’t apply in the case above but is another nagging irritant, especially given that CyclingNews started in NSW, Australia in the first place:

FutureNet – Competition Rules

Unless otherwise stated, each Competition is open to all GB residents of 18 years and over, except employees of: (a) the Company; and (b) any third party appointed by the Company to organise and/or manage the Competition; and (c) the Competition sponsor(s).

Grrrr. I must move on and get a life.