JT> non-slip coating on the steel slabs over holes in the road.
JT> Good fun while riding a bike over those things in the wet.
JT> After much lobbing, there was a new reccomondation passed early
JT> in the year to do just that.

JT> Last week while riding over Paramatta Road, guess what I saw, a
JT> virgin metal cover (three in close proximity actually) with no
JT> such coating. How suprised am I? Not at all.

 Aargh! I cansympathise with your problem. When I was riding a motor
bike, they still had exposed tram lines! Push bikes used to get caught
in them!

> Now you'll have to call me an intelligence-challenged
> age-challenged flatulent-challenger (ICAC FC for short) Sorry,
> for height-challenged.

JT> You can take your political-correctness, stick it in a dolphin
JT> burger, served in a styrofoam box and eat it.

 Do you want a plastic bag with that?

 I keep thinking that there's a limit to the meddling that normal
people will tolerate before they start punching these arsehole out,
but our aceptance seems bottomless. They're going to ban plastic bags?
How the fuck are we supposed to get stuff home from the supermarket?

 I was actually operating in the era *before* plastic bags, but that
was before supermarkets too, when the grocer put your stuff in a
cardboard box, when he was just around the corner, and you shopped
every day.

 I am *stunned* to see those wankers with their calico bags! Hasn't
anyone told them where calico comes from? You need six calico bags,
multiplied by 5 million families, 30 million bags that will last less
than a year... $50M and the Gwydir River run dry to grow the
extra cotton! Fuckn hell!

> The nice man at the smash repairs told me they paint them yellow
> because no one can see them if they're yellow.

JT> Take it from a motorcyclist. It's all about "perception of
JT> threat". What's visible and what's not all depends on how much
JT> of a threat it is to you. 

 In this case, I think it was expectation. They usually place the
bollards to protect the side of the building or something, but I was
well clear of that. I wasn't even close to missing the bollard. When I
got out, it was placed to protect some sort of a manhole cover.

JT> People claim all the time that "I didn't see them", when they
JT> probably didn't look. What's actually happening, is they didn't
JT> notice because one guy on two wheels poses no threat to another
JT> guy strapped within a ton and half of metal. 

 I don't think it's "threat" or you'd never be able to drive down the
street for worrying, like those silly old farts in Volvos. I think we
see what we *expect* to see. If you drive down a narrow street with
parked cars, you "expect" to see a kid run out. Once you see it,
*then* you flag it as a threat or not.

 This isn't theory, it's the way our brain works. We don't see a TV
picture - we see dark masses that grow in size (coming closer), red
things (open mouths), white with black dots (eyes), slanted lines (for
perspective), and our brain fills in the detail as required from the
last stored memory. Our brain is slow (around 100mS) so we *focus* on
what we expect and use an old image to fill in the rest. "Keep your
eye on the ball" is how we play tennis, the rest of it is painted in
because we *know* the background won't change... we focus on changes.
As we run across the court, the brain just "moves" the court without
looking. We "know" what happens to perspective when we move... maybe a
glance at the base line.  

 The weird part is that we "see" it as if it is continuous. When we
move, the world moves with us, even what was behind us, unseen. It's
all a fake. We see tiny parts of the world and our brain fakes the
rest, some of the memory of a well-known room can be years old! We can
fake sub-millisecond changes with a computer that runs in the
100-millisecond range. It happenswhen you drive fast... things slow
down. They don't actually, and your brain doesn't speed up... it just
ignores a whole lot of happening shit.

JT> If I were to ride a white BMW with blue strips, I would
JT> GUARANTEE they would notice me coming from three suburbs back.

 Maybe not. Ever been booked by a cop who just suddenly "appears"?
Once noted, the cop would be flagged as serious shit and scanned
every time you loooked that way.

JT> You didn't notice the yellow pole for that very reason. If it
JT> were painted dark blue, wore a hat and had a batton leaning
JT> against it, you'd notice. I guarantee it.

 Not if he were standing where he was not expected. Ever seen a big
spider on the wall? First nothing, and then WOW! Total focus. If I had
*seen* the bollard, it would have been flagged for sure, even more
than a cop. It was where it  should-not have been, so I missed it.

> Some people are born hopeless drivers (not me, though, I'm in the
> top 1% like everyone else).

JT> You DO realise that "everyone else" comprises of only 1% of the
JT> total driving population?

 Certainly not. Everyone else is a hopeless driver. 

JT> Agreed. Predictability is important, everyone around you knows
JT> what your next move is, and can work around it. Unfortnately,
JT> not everyone can "see" this predictability. (and it's the 1%ers
JT> on the other end of the scale that are oblivious).

 (grin) They don't survive peak-hour traffic for long...

JT> I've been speaking to an L plater recently, the RTA has changes
JT> the laws regarding L platers. You need to keep a log book of
JT> the date and time you go out, duration, distance, description
JT> of trip, name and licence details of the person who's
JT> supervising you.

 What!! God! Is there no end to this creeping loss of freedoms?

 Everyone knows that driving is risky at the speeds we travel, but
we travel at a speed where we can accept the risk. Now we have
bureaucrats *dictating* our degree of risk, and when we ignore them,
first they spend *our* money on spin doctors and propaganda, and then
they invent new restrictions.

 For Christ's sake! If driving was more dangerous than we could
accept, then we'd slow down! I'm 63, and over the last few years I've
slowed down... not because I'm worried about speed cameras (I know
where the fuckers are anyway), because I'm not the driver I once was.

 The other weekend I drove out to Camden, and on the back road around
Oran Park I let the Skyline have its head. The spped limit was 90,
which is pathetic, but I didn't top 120. That's all I'm good for now.

 I saw a thing on TV last night... World's Crash Video Analysis (or
some such crap) where dopey Kiwi cops were analysing an accident
where a Corolla ran off a corner at what they calculated as 115 kmph.
The posted speed was 65 kmph and they made a big thing out of this...
too fast, criminally dangerous. For Christ's sake! On an unknown
road, I just just convert the kmph to mph, adn use that! 65 kmph would
become 105 kmph, and 115 kmph would be tricky but not impossible.

 You'd see it coming, whoops... gentle, foot off, cut the entry as
close as possible, gentle, let it drift scrub off speed... straighten,
don't run off it's better to spin... okay. Whew!

 Bad driver, probably panicked. But the fuckwit cops put it down to
speed. Durr... *every* crash is caused by speed.

JT> After your L's, it's a year of the standard red P plate, and
JT> after that a Green P plate along with different alcohol and
JT> points restrictions on each. A far cry from the old "drive
JT> around the block, if you come back in one piece, you've passed"
JT> testing methods.

 I don't actually disagree with the P plate, but I can't see how
a two-stage P makes it safer. I had the *only* crash that was my
fault, in the first two months of driving. I always drove too fast,
but that wasn't the problem with me. It takes a while as a new
driver to know where to look, to get the idea of defensive driving set
in your head. At first, you're struggling to drive your own car... it
takes experience to realise that you have to drive everyone else's
too, to expect them to do totally stupid things, and adapt.

JT> Time will tell if it works.

 Of course it won't work. In fact, I'd be happy to argue that even
P-plate restrictions make it worse. When my nephew got his licence, my
millionaire brother was really clever (I thought) and bought him a
Suzuki 4WD. How could he possibly get itno trouble with a Suzuki
Sierra? He rolled it at 120K on the expressway. Then John bought him
an Nissan EXA (the early 200SX) and Clayton never had an accident in
that one.

 Beats me.     

Regards,
Bob

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5