Road Rules solution

It's been a while, but as an exercise in being more creative I will be attempting to write something every week. This week it's road rules.

As a person who cycles, drives and walks, I want one simple rule that will make people more considerate on the roads. You're never going to be able to prevent idiots (cyclists running red lights, drink drives, etc) but as a general rule of thumb, here is a fairly simple suggestion that I think improves safety for everyone.

Change the burden of proof from innocent until proven guilty, to guilty until proven innocent, if you are the operator of the heavier vehicle (1) involved in a collision (2).

In other words, if you're a cyclist and you hit a pedestrian, you're guilty of dangerous driving unless you can prove it was the pedestrians fault. Same with a car hitting a motorbike. And all the way up the chain.

The idea behind this is to make it safer for the more vulnerable people (3) who use the roads, based on whatever method of propulsion you're currently using. If you're constantly on the lookout (as you should already be!) for dangers up ahead this should be relatively easy for most people to do.

References

1. This should be done by class of vehicle, not metric tonnage.
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4xyFwLi4rQ
3. Although normally I wouldn't say someone driving a 4WD is vulnerable, when they're in the path of a Semi Trailer they definitely are.

Time to buy a bike

Footy season has started and we had our first game of the year on the weekend. True to form my knees are quite painful. But not as bad as last year, which I put down to the bike riding I did over summer.

Now that I've got the payout for a new one, it's time to get back on the bike. I've done a lot of talking about it (which I call research) so I'm confident I'll be able to find a bike I like at the price I want. Here's hoping I can find one today!

Back in Victoria

I just can't seem to keep away! I came down two weeks ago for the first round of the AFL season, which was amazing.

Now I'm back in Melbourne airport, on my way to Mildura for a wedding. I left home at 6am and I'll be home at 1030pm tomorrow. Right now I'm not sure it's worth it. I'm going to enjoy myself but it's a lot of travel.

Sleeping in would be awesome round about now.

Fortuitous circumstances

I knew the Socceroos game was on, but it's one of those things that just don't register. But I happened to be at the pub for a friends farewell from work and when he got taken home for being too drunk I noticed that the game against Saudi Arabia was on foxtel.

As a side note, kudos to Dave for taking Mitch home, as that way Mitch won't attempt to drive home.

I have to say though that this first half has been woeful by the Socceroos. If we want to play in the world cup and get out of our group we should be destroying teams like these.

Let's hope the second half is a much more polished performance!

Global warming

It's very hard to believe in global warming when you've been rained on for a couple of days.

It's now called climate change though, which is probably more accurate. Given our limited senses we probably can only sense your local micro climate. So if you live on the Gold Coast you've probably never experienced a drought.

While personally I'm a believer in anthropogenic driven climate change the only real way to measure this will be with hindsight. I wonder which side of the current debate will be judged as being less wrong than the other?

March already?!

Ok, so it's not yet March but it definitely feels like it!

I've been keeping myself far too busy lately and it's not helping that footy season has started as well. All in all I'm starting to feel very run down and need a holiday.

I haven't even played BF3 for a couple of days!

Mary Poppins musical

There will be spoilers, so if you're going to see it you may want to stop reading now.

So I went to see the Mary Poppins musical last night in Brisbane. I already knew it was based on the book more closely than the movie so I wasn't expecting exactly the same. But I didn't expect to walk away disappointed either.

It all started with the first song. I couldn't hear some of the words. Whether my seat in the Lyric theatre was in the wrong spot for the acoustics or the orchestra was too loud or the singers just not strong enough, I simply couldn't hear what was said.

And then they skipped my favourite verse from Supercalifragalisticexpealidocious (which is a word my spell checker doesn't recognise) . But what really put me off was the choreography and constantly interrupting songs to make a point. Feed the birds is one of my favourite songs and instead of using non verbal cues to communicate the story the music had to stop while we explored Michael's growing sense of responsibility while showing Jane's lack of interest.

It may be wrong of me, but I would have thought I could have enjoyed one song from start to finish without having the singing stop so I can watch a dance number. If any song was to be chosen to highlight the main actresses voice, that would have been my choice.

I did enjoy the play, and the ending was quite spectacular. I did get the impression that Mary Poppins was afraid of heights though ....

I will still be recommending to people to go see it ... but I'll make sure their expectations aren't as high as mine were.