I’ll preface this with the opinion that I have a lot of respect for truck drivers. Well, most of the professional ones I’ve encountered and had the opportunity to have a chat and peacefully exchange views.
However there are cowboys & fkwts out on the roads, but they’re probably cowboys & fkwts to virtually every other road user.
Massive B-triple trucks eight times the length of a family car would be allowed to run on CityLink and many other main commuter routes, under a secret Department of Transport plan leaked to the State Opposition.
‘Secret’ plan
Transport strategy
Restrictions lifted
The leaked document shows the routes B-triples – prime movers towing three trailers that can weigh up to 82 tonnes and are up to 36 metres long – would take through Melbourne, and around Victoria. B-triples weigh 74 times more than a family car, and overtaking one is the equivalent of passing eight motor vehicles, according to NSW motoring organisation the NRMA.
I’ll circumvent a long rant by simply mentioning that if these monsters are allowed on more roads, then at the very least a major road user education program and complusory side guards should be enacted immediately.
Although, as usual, don’t hold your breath waiting for the revelant authorities to do the right thing. Will it take someone or something, akin to the shock of Darren Millane’s accident, to speed up any changes, such as what happened with rear impact guards in the early 1990′s?
No dam and no going back
Old passions are stirring and divisions re-emerging as environmentalists celebrate victory all over again, 25 years after the demise of the Gordon-below-Franklin dam.
The High Court ruling on July 1, 1983 not only stopped hydro-electric development on the lower Gordon and Franklin rivers, it was the climax of a great national drama, ending years of politicking and protest which changed the country forever.
The issue destroyed the governments of two Tasmanian premiers, Doug Lowe and Harry Holgate, and loosened Labor’s grip on the state, establishing the Liberals as a significant player for the first time in decades, under the tough-talking, pro-development leadership of premier Robin Gray.
25 years ago today I was too scared to catch the school bus home in fear of another fight. Instead I walked home, relieved that the High Court had made the correct decision but terrified of the social implications to come. Social implications are pretty harsh when you’re a teenager. Peer groups and so-called grown ups can be very cruel when you’re too young to face up to a fight or know how to win. Just don’t even consider thinking about trying to intimidate me now. You know who you are.
Have a Captain Cook at this commentary from the US of A:
CNSNews.com: The Threat to the Car
Recent evidence that automobile use is declining in America and that some Americans are making significant — and in some cases not readily reversible — changes in their lives because of escalating gas prices should be worrisome signs for those who love liberty.
No device is more in keeping with the American spirit than the automobile. Privately owned cars and trucks allow us to go where we want, when want. They are freedom machines.
Cripes. Better hide that subscription to ReNew before the AFP kick the door down.
Still, some liberals would like to use government to force Americans out of their cars.
They believe in socialized transportation, not free-market transportation.
In a free-market transportation system, a person purchases his own vehicle with his own money, buys his own gas with his own money and can drive his vehicle anywhere there is a road — and, if he has the right kind of vehicle, some places where there are no roads.
Admittedly, the roads generally are constructed by government, albeit with funds extracted from the earnings and gasoline purchases of drivers.
In a socialist transportation system, the government takes the taxpayers’ money and purchases vehicles — often buses or trains — for itself or a government-funded agency. Where and when these vehicles go is determined by the government.
In a free-market transportation system, a person travels solely in the company of people with whom he has freely chosen to travel. In a socialist transportation system, a person may be compelled to travel in the company of people he does not know and who could even be a danger to him.
I have no doubt that most Americans who love the freedom of movement they derive from owning and operating a car or truck have recognized efforts by various levels of government to induce them to stop, or limit, their driving and cajole or compel them to leave the free-market transportation system and submit to the socialist transportation system.
Yeah, actually public transport shits me at time too, but not to the paranoid extent this chap seems to be chewing hard on. I’ll spare you the rest, read the entire article at the link supplied above. But you do need to peruse this bit:
Hopefully, the 8 percent who have taken to socialized transportation represents a trend that can be reversed.
We should drill our own oil — now. And, when the supply naturally diminishes to where prices drive the market elsewhere, American entrepreneurs must create another fuel whose production the government cannot readily curtail, and that keeps Americans driving where they want to, when they want to, in privately owned cars.
You should kiss your arse goodbye — now.
Luckily in retrospect bicycles weren’t mentioned in this commentary, as anything to the right of Genghis Khan is probably a Castro aficionado to T. P. Jeffrey. I was going to attempt a reasonable deconstruction of steaming pile of denial bollox, but my personal time is probably better utilised by finishing up a delicious homebrew stout and basking in the glow of a reasonably pleasant day that avoided the EastLink muppet ride.
“I’m not a cyclists hater, I’m not nothing,” Jason told Macquarie Radio this morning.
“I was just driving along and I had a car failure and now I’m in trouble – I dunno.”
Oh the hiliarity which has ensured since “Jason” had his epic moment of cognitive and mechanical dissonance on Sydneys Southern Cross Drive on Thursday morning. Not only did he piss off from a road incident (yes, obviously clearly illegal), the lad then had the temerity to go on 2GB and have a chat. Read the rest of this entry »
They’re fecking huge
Have a Captain Cook at this commentary from the US of A:
