#UKriots: A personal timeline and call for some rationality.

The big news story at the moment, probably in some small part related to but currently eclipsing the global financial "whoops," is the little breakdown in law and order in the UK, where the world is now observing that America and Arab, African and poor countries have no monopoly on rioting and looting.

Human behaviour is never simple, and society is never a simple collection of humans. Perhaps more hopeful than the riots are depressing is the way there has been a flowering of community togetherness in the form of broom brigades and support, with twitter hashtags spawning off to help people coordinate help for the aged, disabled and infirm.

@debcha: Urban rioting existed before social media. You know what didn't? Large-scale community cleanups, organized within hours.

But inevitably there have been arguments over causes and responsibility and what the proper response is.

My own opinions here are informed by having worked with the under- and un-privileged and studying enough Psychology to be very, very cautious whenever anybody emphatically states a simple concept as an ultimate truth.

Ever since the rioting began I have been struck by how everybody has, once again, been talking at cross-purposes with broad, sweeping generalisations and, because I can't help myself, I have been getting increasingly annoyed by the lack of actual debate.

Early on Thursday evening I was inspired to spurt out this frustrated little ditty on Facebook, under the heading:

Riots: The difference between "excuse" and "explanation" is insight

Here is the the problem with the most basic, and common, reaction to rioting:

Saying "They don't have the right to smash up other people's stuff," or "Alienation is not an excuse," ignores the following:

1. People need to know they don't have the right to bash, smash or steal.
2. People need to care about that, and let it drive their behaviour.

From what I'm hearing, a lot of people feel there's an entire generation in the UK (since, oh, Margaret Thatcher was in power) who haven't been given a reason to know or care. This is a failing in society. It's not an excuse, it's not permission, it's not even a mitigating factor, but IT IS A FAILING IN SOCIETY.

It was a development of what I had said to close the previous depressing evening of being involved in the publication of depressing news:

I sometimes wonder what simple change in people's minds would produce the best, most wide-spread, positive change. Tonight I'm thinking it's the ability to understand the difference between "explanation" and "excuse", and start talking about appropriate responses to each.

Throughout the night, I keep up a running stream of tweets and FB updates as instant reactions occurred to me.

A rough timeline of my other efforts looks like this, oldest first (my apologies for not linking directly to individual tweets, mine or anyone else's: I can't work out how to get the link out of Twitter's website right now, useless pack of ----): 

1. If a society does not provide support to those who need it, it can not expect those people to support it.
2. The word "draconian" is leaping energetically and irresistibly to mind. #ABCnews24 #DavidCameron #ukriots
3. What depresses me the most about the world right now is not the economy or the riots in the UK. It's the government response to the #UKriots
4. Suddenly, I am beginning to see why Britain tends to produce dystopian SF like 1984 and V for Vendetta.
5. Someone tell David Cameron 1984 wasn't written as a manual, guide or handbook. #UKriots (retweeted four times, by complete strangers)
6. The country that produced V for Vendetta will use 1984 as a manual because it failed to realise the lessons in Lord of the Flies. #UKriots
7. It seems UK parliamentarians are proposing to respond to violence arising from extreme alienation and disenfranchisement by alienating people more and de-enfranchising them further.
8. Fuck humanity, bring on the genetically engineered apes.
9. The most effective law and order intervention I've ever heard of was an advocacy and support service, not extra laws or police. #UKriots

And among the tweets I retweeted, this:

RT @kim_harding: Norway 92 kids killed & they call for more democracy. London riots & the they call for a clamp down on human rights...

I also, flippantly but bitterly, said this:

I am disappointed I have not seen a Guy Fawkes mask on a rioter yet. Mind you, that would require an education ...

Which sparked a discussion including the point that access to education is one of the problems, wherein I clarified that:

What concerns me is problems seem to be arising long before "tertiary" education is even an issue. These people have given up hope before getting to high school.

Also:

Maybe if these youth had been given more youth workers and programs they might have produced the next batch of Alan Moores, Sex Pistols and Monty Pythons instead of several billion dollars of insurance bills and a clogged criminal justice system where courts are working 24 hours to clear the backlog.

No matter how critical is personal responsibility, and not matter how inexcusable it is to bash other people, rob them, damage and loot stores, any discussion needs to come back to: Why are people doing this? Why are they not stopping themselves? What bit of their brain is not stepping in to say "Hang on, that's not on"? What's the difference between the looters and the broom brigaders?

On Wednesday night on Lateline, lifelong Tottenham resident and youth worker Clasford Stirling (isn't that a great name?) said:

You know, and this tension has been going on for a very long time. So, to see the youths acting in that way was not a surprise to myself and some of the workers that work with young people.

And in the last eight months - a year to eight months, there's been this added pressure of services being cut, families - people in families losing their jobs, and just the whole pressure of society.

And I think it's all come to a head now, because the unemployment, especially in Tottenham, is absolutely horrendous for young people. And if you're a young person who has, for whatever reason, got yourself in trouble, you are not going to get a job.

...

Well, I'm glad [UK prime minister David Cameron] said that: that they think the world owes them something. Well, I'm telling you, David Cameron, that the world does owe them something.

These are young people. They want to work, they want to be educated - all these things that we have to do to make them better citizens. These things are being taken away bit by bit.

Please note, before accusing him of defending the indefensible, he also said:

I'm not for one saying that myself or anybody condones what a lot of them have done as regards to burning people's property and looting. And I think the people that I've spoken to in my community have echoed the words that I hope they're dealt with severely.

...

I think, yes, we do have to get tough with them. I don't agree with now that people like myself and other people's got to pay for all this damage. I think come down heavy on those looters that are caught, and even if it takes their whole life to pay back some of the money, that's what the Government should be looking at. Yes, come down tough.

Two ends of the issue: Give people an opportunity to become a "productive member of society", then be strict if they reject it. But who's going to be surprised if, not given an opportunity to do good, they do bad?

Then, a different perspective, from sociologist Professor Ellis Cashmore on Lateline Thursday night:

I would actually call it cannibalism more than [rioting] ...

...

I really do think that this is commodity-driven kind of phenomenon at the moment. I stress again: it is not rioting. It's young people eating up their own neighbourhoods.

It disappointed me, I have to say, that Lateline host Tony Jones didn't ask a sociologist why social behaviour was breaking down, what was enabling this - particularly as Tony had interviewed Clasford Stirling just the night before.

However these two perspectives really do highlight what for me, as you may have gathered if you've actually been reading all the way down, is the issue:

People are cannibalising their own neighbourhoods, beating their neighbours, and even telling people "This is my banker's bonus!"

Why are they not not doing this? Anything can spark a demonstration, particularly among the bored and the angry, but what sort of absence of moral opinion or presence of huge resentment has lead to this? 

Let me be very clear: I have worked with the unprivileged and the angry, the mental health patients with nothing and the drug addicts with self-induced mental health conditions, and we saw negative behaviours and we tolerated none of it. We understood, we identified the sources of their frustrations and, from outside unable to help, shared many of them, but we tolerated none of it on our neutral territory.

If I come across as ignoring the criminality in the search for an explanation, it's because I was feeling overwhelmed by the anger and by kneejerk reactions. The behaviour I have seen sickens me and my first reaction is to lock the lot of them up. I just don't think it would do anyone any good at all - not the looters, not the UK taxpayers, not UK society.

So don't go shouting you can't excuse this behaviour by looking for any explanation beyond David Cameron's crashingly bone-headed "pure criminality": We're not trying to.

Clasford Stirling, not the best public speaker, not the most coherent or the most considered, talked about a struggle to provide young people with any sense of hope and future at all. Professor Cashmore waved away suggestions of real poverty by talking about the welfare state, but try telling that to someone who find themselves unemployable and needs food stamps to survive while all around billboards advertise nice cars driven by the well-dressed to the Michelin-starred restaurants.

It's all very well pointing out the inanely obvious "They have to help themselves up!" but they need, at the very least, a fucking ladder.

Motorcycle accidents in the media: Part 25

If you cross your fingers and wish very, very hard this may be the last one for the year!

On December 15, the ABC gave us Motorcyclist charged over 260kph chase.

Not an accident report, but worth noting for the sheer stupidity. What is going through the mind of somebody who decides that running, which is a definite charge and likely to get considerably worse, is better than playing by the rules and leaving the option of appeal for a to-be-decided minor charge?

Also: What, exactly, are the Victorian guidelines on police chases? There has been a bit of a debate and revision going on in other states recently and I'm sure public safety advocates would have something to say about this story.

Also December 15, the ABC gave us Motorcyclist killed at Thornlands, which is interesting because the Courier Mail had Motorcyclist killed at Thornlands.

Oooh, spooky! Actually, the weirdest part here is how short the Mail's headline is.

The Mail's report has slightly more detail but worse editing ("his motorcycle and vehicle crashed at Thornlands"), but the ABC has attached a video from the night's news, which is the sort of thing you can do if you're a multimedia broadcaster and publisher.

Jumping ahead to December 22, there's Moped driver who injured child pleads guilty from the ABC.

The lead paragraph is clunky but the rest of the report is fair enough, if baffling. If he was running away from "a group of youths" at the time, it looks suspiciously as though he was riding his moped through the park when they took offence to him (and, well, that may have been perfectly understandable), so he was probably eligible for at least one more charge into the bargain.

Some more background would have really fleshed out this story.

The Courier Mail also has the report, in Moped rider Michael Andrew Bolitho blasted for hitting boy, 6, on Gold Coast and speeding off.

A definitive Courier Mail headline: Too long, too informative for a headline and contains a carefully selected, emotive, value-laden phrase.

This report has the background, including the claims he was panic-stricken and couldn't get to the road because his tormentors were in the way.

The article, in fact, does the neat trick of painting the accused as both cowardly, callous and quite possibly deviant and, at the same time, a victim of "youths". Talk about spoiled for righteously indignant choice.

And that is the complaint I have about the CM article. It almost buries the fate of the boy, and the legal process, under social judgements. On the other hand, the ABC article goes to the other length and suffers only from being too concise.

Motorcycle accidents in the media: Part 24

A sense of inevitable horror lead me to search and, guess what?

There has been at least one 24-cylinder motorbike made.

It has 24 chainsaw engines, was built by their manufacturer as an advertising stunt, basically, and apparently they all have to be pull started.

I almost wish I didn't know that.

At the other end of the scale, we have two stories concerning the same scooter.

From ABC: Scooter road rage driver loses appeal (December 8).

First of all, that headline is ambiguous about whether the scooter was the perpetrator or the victim. Yes, it says "driver", but stranger things have been done in the non-specialist media.

The summary is: A "pensioner" (at 50, that surely means either a disability pension or self-funded retiree because he's not yet eligible for the aged pension) chased a former work colleague in his car, shouted death threats and then ran over his scooter three or four times.

For this, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail and that, to a rider, is actually gratifying to see.

The driver argued his sentence was excessive but his appeal was unanimously rejected, and that forces me to ask: If you chase someone while shouting death threats, force them to take evasive action in fear of their life, and then destroy property, what exactly is an "appropriate" sentence?

The article is quite clean and, apart from the headline, unproblematic, but I can guarantee you there will have been riders reading it thinking "Yep, they really are out to get us."

The Courier Mail had a different and more informative take, published on the same day, with Road rage driver ran over man's scooter four times, then exchanges punches.

In this case, "Road rage driver" is clearer, but the entire headline is still too long and the comma is completely misplaced.

As the article points out, the case deals with using a vehicle as a weapon. All vehicles are always potential weapons. More people need to remember that.

There are a lot more details in this story and it is better for them. However, it is not so cleanly written and almost falls into the old "He said... then... then..." tedious-to-read list problem that commonly afflicts court reports where a record of events needs to be reported clear of any editorialising or risk of being held in contempt of court.

There are also some areas where punctuation actually would have been a good idea.

And while we're talking about appropriateness of sentencing, the comments on this article are entertaining as well: "Should have been longer," "Suck it up and deal with it," and the nicely worded "reckless endangerment and childish behaviour have no place in society."

Alas, most articles deal with deaths.

The CM has Motorcyclist killed in Bundaberg (December 9), a startlingly efficient headlines.

He was negotiating a bend on Quay  St (which appears to be straight with a slight curve) when he struck a guard rail and fell down an embankment.

Once again, we have the old nonsense of "his bike lost control and crashed."

I'm also not sure if Bundaberg, which is coastal, is really "central Queensland".

If I'm nitpicking, the third sentence needs the first "and" replaced by a comma.

From the ABC, a two-paragraph story: Man dies in quad bike accident (December 12).

Does that suggest to you that there were four bikes involved in one accident? I'm no expert, but the basic rule of thumb is to hyphenate compound adjectives and "quad bike" is, in this case, the adjective to the noun "accident", meaning "quad-bike accident" would make fractionally more sense.

As rules of thumb go, however, there are always debates ongoing.

I'll avoid arguing whether a quad is a bike.

I will point out that "was thrown from" is perilously close to ascribing intent to the quad, and that "thrown from it and pinned down by the vehicle" is a clumsy sentence construction.

Because that was short, one more:

On December 13 (not a Friday, sadly), after an RSS headline of "Two road deaths in southeast," which is perfectly fine, the Courier Mail give us Crash kills motorcyclist on Pacific Motorway at Pimpama; driver at Helensvale dies after his car leaves suburban road.

A truck, a minibus and a motorbike collided. It's like the start to a bad joke. No indication of how three vehicles came to come together, but it should surprise nobody that the rider died.

The editing in this article is not quite as I would do it, and there's an extra blank line towards the end, something the Mail does fairly regularly. I thought I would have a quick peak at the page source and noticed that HTML for a sidebar had been inserted in the middle of the article text.

I suggest there needs to be some debugging of the website management software.

For the sheer scale of the accident, this article begs out for a follow up.

Motorcycle accidents in the media: Part 23

I love it when media organisations follow minor stories. It goes without saying that big events will be given their endless, excruciatingly detailed days in the sun, but it's nice when small stories get updates.

How many times have you thought "Hey, I wonder what happened to...?"

Well, then.

More entertaining, however, is when the same story gets progress notes from different media organisations.

December 1 was a little rich for stories of bike accidents and general shenanigans. I'm not sure why - it was a Wednesday, so there was no weekend backlog to clear.

First up, and first series, Oxley traffic branch cop killed, from the QT.

The headline doesn't reveal that he was a fair way from Oxley when he died, or that he wasn't in fact shot in a drive-way revenge attack by mafiosi. He was way up north between Gladstone and Rockhampton when he hit a truck.

Once again, we have "his service motorcycle collided" as though no human had anything to say in the matter.

There's sad quotes from the Commissioner, but little actual details on the accident. He was riding escort, and there was a collision with a truck. I would love to hear the outcome of that investigation.

Also: Would a commissioner ever come out and say that an officer was anything but a "valued member of the Service"?

I suspect there was a web glitch and the last paragraph was supposed to be split into two.

Same day, the ABC has considerably more in Motorcycle cop killed on duty.

There are more quotes here, and some information about the accident. Bizarrely, there appears to be a paragraph or two missing.

We are first told "his motorcycle collided with a truck" but no more.

Then, at the end of the article, there is mention of a review of training of officers escorting wide loads - probably fair enough - and then "it does not appear the truck's speed was a factor in today's crash." This may be just another knee-jerk because-it's-expected reference to speed, but: "The truck driver was taken to hospital with minor injuries."

Um, what? The only way a truck driver could get injured in a collision with a motorbike, while they're driving the truck, is if they have a heart attack out of shock, bump their head from surprise or the bike flips up and comes through the windscreen, and that would be newsworthy.

Perhaps the answer comes from the Courier Mail, who had their say on December 7 with (deep breath, now) Wildlife corridor to be named after fallen policeman Dan Stiller, killed by jack-knife truck on highway.

Oh, right, that's why they collided! (You did get to the end of that headline, didn't you?)

Apart from that critical piece of information, the article is basically a long eulogy, with lots of regrets being voiced and a wider-perspective version of the same official photo used by the ABC.

Notice, however, that this article shows the value of subheadings. The ABC is not afraid of breaking up an article at logical places, and it helps the reader. The Courier Mail hasn't, but there is an extra blank line inserted towards the end which looks like a missing headline. I even highlighted the text in case my web browser was doing something funny and it was there, just invisible to me. No, it's just a redundant blank line.

The second story arc, also beginning December 1, is just two stories long and both from the ABC, beginning with Dirt bike rider in serious condition after crash.

Apart from the usual language issues ("fell off") it's a good story, perhaps less crisp than most ABC pieces are and has a good set of quotes from the organiser.

The follow up, from December 6, is unfortunately Injured dirt bike rider dies in hospital.

This story is shorter and has no byline, and is blunt and to the point. The lead par is perhaps a little clunky, but there's not really anything missing and not really anything wrong.

Motorcycle accidents in the media: Part 22

I really thought I had cleared my November backlog, but it appears not: Somehow, the chronological order of items in my Reader starred list had become messed up.

Le Sigh.

Okay, here goes:

Motorcyclist dies after collision with 'speeding' ute (ABC News Online, November 16).

There are many reasons in journalism to use quotes, including in headlines, but I'm not sure what the reason here was.

The ute was being followed by police, who hadn't got to the point of putting on lights and therefore making it a 'pursuit', and had a reported speed (which is probably accurate, from the police and all) of 140km/h. Which is 'speeding' anywhere but a couple of roads in the NT.

Quotes all too often make headlines look messy.

My other problem with this headline is that, as reported by the police and as demonstrated by the photo accompanying the article, the ute struck the bike. So why phrase the headline so a logical reading suggests the rider struck the ute? Yes, the ute is identified as being in the wrong in one sense, but 'bike -  collides - ute' implicitly puts blame for the collision upon the rider. 'Collides with' is a much cleaner construct than 'being struck by', and it can be argued that 'ute - strikes and kills - biker' is too close to an attribution of blame prior to a judicial judgement, but this headline feels like an unsatisfactory compromise.

It's a well written article, though, and provides much scope for discussion on whether the "technically it was not a police pursuit" is sarcasm from the writer - particularly given the last paragraph, where we are told the police investigation will be overseen by the ethical standards department.

What interests me here is that there is no quote from the police concerning the state of the driver. 140 is not actually all that fast, even at dark, with full-beam headlights on. I don't know what the state of lighting on that section of road was, but either the driver really wasn't (in a state to be) paying attention until the last minute, or the rider wasn't and merged at a fatally stupid wrong moment.

The lesson for all road users is: pay attention!

(As a side-note: I noticed when doing a final read-through that I had Freudianly written "full-beam headlines on".)

Now, from November 19, the Courier Mail went past over-long headline territory and into just plain actually wrong (language-wise, not fact-wise): Woman motorcycle rider killed crash at Withcott, east of Toowoomba.

Also: Why "Woman motorcyclist" in the headline, but "A female motorcyclist" in the opening par?

Interestingly, the RSS headline was "Warrego delays after fatal crash" which is slightly ambiguous (Who is Warrego, and what are they delaying?) but much cleaner.

Withcott is right at the bottom of the ranges, and marks a sort of gateway to Toowoomba. Murphy's Creek Rd is east of Withcott, and fairly major. The Warrego Highway is littered with uncontrolled intersections like that and there have already been speed limit reductions and serious signage put elsewhere at major blackspots. There needs to be a lot more flyovers. Oh, and better drivers.

10am means the sun shouldn't have been too low and in the eyes, a 50yo driver shouldn't have been so young they're getting eyesight or judgement problems, and there's no information given about who was doing what. As a motorcyclist, it's far too easy to put all blame on a driver who wasn't paying attention.

Apart from that, an okay article.

The ABC also covered it, same day - Motorcyclist killed on Warrego Highway.

Less information, nothing to complain about. Except the usual "her motorbike collided with" humanising of machines.

So, that's November out of the way. Again.

Leaping straight into December 1 with Crash survivor faces jail from the QT.

Apart from a confusing opening par, this one confuses me in general.

There's no mention of how the speed of "about 100kmh" (shouldn't that be km/h?) was judged, and I'm always confused when I see that someone who was unlicensed has had their licence suspended.

I would also dearly love to know how magistrates react when they hear someone has "struggled for many years with alcohol issues but was now getting counselling." My instinct would be to give them a harder penalty for not having sought help sooner for something that encourages illegal behaviours.

There is a whole other, highly entertaining, argument around whether psychiatric disorders, mental health conditions or substance use/addictive behaviour problems are "explanations", "mitigating factors" or "excuses", in decreasing order of personal responsibility. From my experience after nearly a decade working with people with various behaviour-modifying conditions, the professional viewpoint is: "You know you have {condition}, you know what it does, you have a responsibility to get help. If you can't control yourself in this service, get out."

Getting back to the article - there's some clunky sentence structures, but it reads less like a list of facts than most court reports do, and I only have one other quibble: Was it really necessary to write "Shaking her head, Magistrate Donna  MacCallum sentenced ... "?

At this point, I'd like to point out that there was a rash of reporting: Reader still has six items with a date stamp of December 1. Now, some of those may have been starred on December 1 but have been published earlier, still in November.

There are some double-ups and some running stories and I'd like to keep those together, so I'll do one more in this entry and it's from December 5, from the ABC: Motorbike rider dies on sand dunes.

It's a simple and straightforward report, and the only quibble I have is punctuation: In the second paragraph there should probably either be a second comma after Perth to close a subordinate clause, or no comma at all and run the sentence on. I would go with an Oxford double comma bracketing the clause, myself, but ABC style is to minimise commas where possible.

Today's lesson is: There are some really dangerous road users out there.

Motorbike accidents in the media - part 21

Feast your eyes on this one: From November 24 from the Queensland Times, Man caught doing 300 metre wheelie.

That's: Caught on a public road, doing two wheelies, on an unregistered trail bike. It would only have been better if the cop in the unmarked car had been in a marked car.

Seriously, how selfish/stupid (delete by personal preference) do you have to be?

He said he felt he was in control and yes, pulling a stunt like that does demonstrate a considerable level of control, but it also demonstrates a considerable lack of judgement and considerable self-centredness.

I rather like the magistrate's remark: “You’ll be geting a letter from Transport near Christmas – it won’t be a Christmas card.” That spelling mistake was from the original copy, by the way.

Apart from that, a well-written and well-edited article. Also, entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

Same paper, November 27, actual accident: Teen dies after motorbike crash.

Only two things spoil this article, which is concise, clear and fairly complete: "The the" at the beginning of the second paragraph and "he from died from internal injuries" at the end of the third.

The Courier Mail had the story the day before, and ruined it with another classic CM headline: Young man, 18, in a critical condition after his motorbike strikes tree in Blackstone, Ipswich.

In Blackstone? At Blackstone?

Just as I'm beginning to think this was a well-structured, cleanly-written and good article before that headline was put on it, we have "his machine struck a tree". Give me strength.

And then, the QT did a full write up on November 29: Trail bike rider dies

This article says "bushland near Blackstone". The CM article named a street. I'm guessing the CM, as first cab off the rank, was given incorrect, preliminary information.

We have extensive quotes from a police officer, and for once they don't come across as patronising or just plain bloody stupid - they are, in fact, fair, reasonable, sensible and intelligent. Makes a nice change.

But then, having mentioned safety equipment in quotes - it is not known whether safety equipment played a factor in the crash at the weekend.

I'm inclined to think that when reporting a specific accident you should make your quotes relevant to that accident. Don't confuse the readers and risk giving them a false impression.

Other than that, it's a good article.

From the Courier Mail, November 27: Man dies as motorcycle hits power pole at Bowen.

The RSS headline for this was (at least initially) "Motorcyclist dies in crash", which is about as news-worthy and informative as "Advocates criticise spending".

So... the rider died? An onlooker died? Somebody completely unrelated to the event died?

"Smashed into" a pole, which is unnecessary use of language, then "passerby stumbled upon the scene", which always sounds as though he tripped over it before noticing it was there.

A lovely use of quotes for "failed to negotiate", and then another unnecessary verb - slammed - rounds out an overwritten article.

Okay, one more and that's November out of the way:

Courier Mail, November 29: Motorcyclist loses control, killed on Gympie Road Arterial.

At least they didn't say "Motorcycle loses control, kills rider". On the other hand: The correct form seems to be Gympie Arterial Road (incidentally, a quick googling lead me to Snarl, which seems very handy for Brisbanites).

Other than that, there's not really enough here to analyse, although the fourth paragraph, listing the two most recent accidents (both mentioned above) was too long and messed up its punctuation as a result.

Today's theme was: Quirks and failures of final editing (and yes, I'm sure I've made mistakes here. On the other hand - I don't have a second pair of eyes paid to correct them).

Motorbike accidents in the media - part 20

Here we go again and I'm now a month behind thanks to a massive surge in reporting and the complete inability of my free time to return to normal levels.

Excuses, excuses.

Five pieces here. Because.

There are two longer pieces I want to take a brief look at first. Not too surprisingly, they're both court reports. Court appearances are scheduled, predictable and full of quotable quotes as well as juicy details.

They're both from the Courier Mail:

From November 5: Man accused on hit-run death of pedestrian at Coorparoo granted bail

Yes, you could guess there was going to be an over-long headline, couldn't you?

The article is mildly detailed on events and fairly free with its commas. It does not, to put it plainly, paint a sympathetic view of the accused. String of offences - extensive history - false licence plates. That's even before getting to the actual charges relating to this event.

Plus, I would be very interested to hear what the opinion of the court is when a "letter from a drug rehabilitation counsellor at Cleveland who has been helping" is handed up as supporting evidence.

A problem I see in many longer articles, and particularly court reports, is the endless stream of "he said, she said" comments and this particular example is not immune. That may be due to deadline pressures, it may be due to legal concerns. It's tedious, whichever it is.

This article is also lacking any details on how the alleged accident occurred or what is alleged to have happened. It was a hit-and-run, and that's all the detail we're given.

Frustrating.

The second article is also November 5, and deals with the speeding-and-collision event previously covered in this series, the infamous "like an F-111" highway incident: Jail for speeding motorcyclist who struck man severing his leg at Woolloongabba

Right in the opening paragraph we have "abhorrent history of speeding" and "at the speed of an "F1-11",".

The first one should not have been there unless it's a quote - and in that case, mark it as such - and the second one is phonetic but nonetheless inaccurate.

So a good start, then.

The copy-editing on this piece could have been tighter, as well.

Reading it, I get the feeling I should be grateful they don't try a poorly-informed description of the bikes, like "powerful one-litre motorcycles" or "large-capacity motorcycles." It's been done, you know.

However: "Sparrow, a martial artist with a criminal history for violence". Um, what? Cue up another stereotype. It is not, in this context, relevant. If some of that history was directly related to his school, or if he had used his training as a threat, even then it wouldn't be relevant to this story. Even stating he has a criminal history of violence is barely relevant in this context - the history of speeding fines and the fact he struck someone at excessive speed, severing their leg - those facts are relevant. The rest, not so much.

The actual incident is one of those cases that make the rest of us want to thump the riders responsible while screaming "YOU'RE NOT HELPING!"

Mind you, I haven't been keeping an eye on media reports of four-wheel idiocy so I don't know what the comparison is.

Interestingly, defendant Sparrow was disqualified from driving absolutely. So it can be done, then.

It is hard to avoid the feeling, reading this article, that the paper judged as well as reported. And that wasn't necessary or good journalism. A bald reporting of the facts of this case needed no emotive additions from the writer or editor to get the point across.

By comparison, from November 7 from the same paper we have Motorcyclist dead after falling from bike at Noosaville.

Headline still too long but the article is crisply written, contains just the essentials and, although it could have done with some brief rearrangement of facts between paragraphs, is perfectly good brief news writing.

From November 8 the CM gives us Motorbike rider hurt in crash with car in Red Hill, Brisbane.

I've been to the Broncos NRL club for a work function and I don't particularly like the road outside it. Of course, we're given no information on whether the location of the accident was relevant or just a coincidence - somebody been drinking, perhaps?

This could be have been a little more tightly edited, but the main problem I have is: "motorbike rider" comes across as a clumsy construction. What's wrong with "motorcyclist"?

I'll finish up with a longer piece, from ABC News Online this time. From November 12, Moto-cross rider badly hurt in fall.

See that headline? Perfectly good and only six words, if you count a hyphenated construct once. I'm actually surprised it is hyphenated. I was expecting motocross to be one word by now.

Personally, I would have rewritten some of the paragraphs during editing. For example, third paragraph: "He's recovering today" is a bit redundant. Leave it out, say he had an eight-hour operation, and we can assume he's recovering unless told otherwise. There are only three choices: Worse, worrying or improving. Only one of those is really newsworthy.

Also, those quotes:

The mother said "He has a couple of small bleeds in his brain but they're not worried about that at all that's a bit of head trauma and that's just affecting his short-term memory, that's normal, they've said so."

Ummm... head trauma can be a huge concern, an affect on short-term memory might be permanent and small bleeds can be serious if pressure continues to build. With all due respect for the fact I Am Not A Doctor, I suspect either he's not getting most appropriate supervision or she misunderstood what they said. "That's normal" could be misinterpreted as "that's normal, so it's fine" instead of "that's normal, unfortunately." This is pure conjecture, of course.

Also: "We all just pray for broken bones and they all heal." Unfortunate choice of words? I think she meant "We all pray for just broken bones, which heal."

It's nice to see an inline link in the article, however, something the ABC does less than some other news outlets.

I wish him a speedy and complete recovery, or at least a recovery indistinguishable from complete, which is usually the best we can hope for when any nerves are damaged.

Treating drivers as simpletons is a major cause of road accidents

All of a sudden, five stories from the Queensland Times appeared in my RSS reader.

They are, in the order in which they appeared: Speed cameras do help save lives, Drivers disregard the Fatal Four, Forget the phone, you're driving, Enough is enough - Drive 2 Stay Alive and Count the cost of careless driving.

Spot the theme?

It appears that Drive 2 Stay Alive (I will withhold my comments on cutesy SMS-like usage of homonymic numbers) is a program adopted by the QT to encourage road safety, and all five of the articles list the other four in a "Related links" box right at the top.

Which is all very admirable - the intent, I mean, not the internet formatting. I really can't fault the QT for public interest journalism in this matter.

In fact, it's fantastic that the last-named of these articles points out the costs of road accidents aren't just in fatalities, and include medical treatment, disability care, clean-up bills and legal costs as well as costs to the economy in loss of labour (I've always wondered how they calculate that...)

But I would like to make a few points, because my cynicism doth runneth over.

Over the next four weeks, we will provide informative features to help you stay alive on our roads, and by taking the online pledge, you are saying enough people have died needlessly on our roads.

Umm... I will withhold my opinion of online pledges, as well, but admirable, admirable.

Let me get into the meat of criticism, now, and it's exemplified for me by this statement:

Colin Goodsell from the RACQ said distraction while behind the wheel was one of the top causes of accidents on Queensland roads aside from the fatal four – speeding, drink driving, seatbelts and fatigue.

Okay, first of all, not wearing a seatbelt is not generally a cause of accidents. It can be - you could lose control because you moved relative to the seat in a corner or while braking - but it's generally a cause of getting hurt in an accident, not a cause of the accident happening. Language like this may be approved by marketing and may present a united front, but I'm not sure it helps.

Also, if the "fatal four" is speeding, drink driving, seatbelts and fatigue, is it a "fatal three" for motorcyclists or do they have a different set?

And then there is the argument that distraction is the biggest cause because if you were truly paying attention then, either you wouldn't be speeding or it wouldn't be as a big a problem, you wouldn't be drink driving and you would be managing your fatigue.

All of these road safety campaigns, possibly in an attempt to get the message across, over-simplify matters so badly that you're left with the impression of a collection of tick-a-box, exclusive and non-related options. I have been complaining for years that some of the most dangerous drivers I meet on the roads are the ones who aren't speeding, and I've been much more comfortable in cars where the driver was speeding but competent than in some cars where the driver just wasn't paying attention to much except the speedometer, the road signs and the conversation.

I am convinced that ignoring the interaction between all cognitive factors and driving decisions is just going to lead to trouble.

It's also a major factor in my complaint against the anti-speeding arguments and the anti-speeding initiatives and the crowing of authorities when a rise in speed cameras is correlated (say it with me: "Correlation does not equal causation") with a reduction in road fatalities.

If they don't, in public, consider the possibility that the reduction is not because people have decided to not speed but because they are keeping a much sharper eye out for cameras and camera vans and are therefore more likely to spot and respond to other dangerous situations, then I just aren't going to take them seriously.

In fact, the "Speed cameras do save lives" article is a classic of waffling, unsubstantiated claims that would get laughed out of any research proposal. "Police have linked...", "increase in speeding detection... has been credited..." Oh, puh-lease.

And then there's the almost throwaway line "... more people driving to the speed limit and road conditions."

Just try and convince me that the two are necessarily (to use the word in its nice and exact meaning) related. Go ahead, just try. Most articles run like that: "Speeding.... speed limit... too fast... dangerous.... road conditions." Slipped in almost as an afterthought, the one most important factor - road conditions. Driving to the speed limit at all times is just a recipe for disaster the next time there's a decent storm.

What I would like to see, in all of this pleading, public displays of hurt bewilderment and patriarchal trumpeting from the various authorities, is this exhortation: Take responsibility for your own driving, and look out for everyone else.

That's it. Drop all this talk of specifics, mention it when it's relevant to individual situations, but just keep reminding people that, actually, they have a "licence" to drive, not a "right", and they are in command of several tonnes of metal travelling at speeds never before attained by human beings and in excess of what our physiology and neurology evolved to cope with.

Start treating drivers like complicated, thinking, sentient human beings and, just perhaps, they'll start behaving like it.

A brief motorcycle accidents diversion: safety initiatives in the media

As I see it, there are three components to motorcycle safety:

1. Motorcyclists looking out for themselves, paying attention and not making stupid decisions
2. Car drivers looking out for other road users, paying attention and not making stupid decisions
3. Not building roads and road furniture which will compromise, slice, dice, pulverise or flatten motorcyclists who do happen to come off because of consequences of 1.), 2.) or even 3.), because the roads are slippery, unstable or can't get rid of diesel oil.

Number 1 above seems to be the entire focus of Queensland road safety advertising, which is one reason I have so little respect for the authorities up here.

Number 2 seems to have only been covered recently by the "Don't ride us off" campaign, which was years ago now.

Number 3 is, well, a bit of a worry. If the bodgy road patch-repairs and non-repairs around here aren't of concern, the road edging, lighting and "safety" rails are. Sharp-edged end caps, wire-rope barriers referred to by riders as "cheese-graters", unnecessarily narrow lanes on fast corners, etc.

There really is a "it was your decision to ride, f--- you" mentality evident in road policy in this state at the moment.

And the "well, don't crash, then" response is a "f--- you" response. If you fail to plan for the worst eventuality, it just means you won't be prepared when it happens. I never intend to crash - I can't afford the pain or financial loss - and there are road conditions that make me paranoid, but I still wear helmet, gloves, jacket and boots every time I ride. Unexpected circumstances aren't expected. You maximise your alertness and attentiveness, monitor your road position and everyone else's, keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour or loose loads, and then one day there'll be a patch of oil that blended in with the road, or mechanical failure, or...

So I was extremely interested to see this crop up:

'Bendy signs' could prevent motorcycle injuries (ABC News Online, October 21).

You know those poles they have in competitive skiing, that all the skiers run over and which whip back upright when they've gone? Something like that, but a lot less bendy, I imagine. You can see smaller versions as road edging markers, knee high white poles with a red rubber hinge at the bottom.

I invite anyone to jump out of a moving car at 80, straight towards a road sign's metal pole, and then tell me this is not a good idea.

This is a neat little article, pointing out the fatality figure, saying that these signs have been effective (or at least 'some success') at reducing the fatality rate in Britain, and giving some details of the trial.

Wonderful idea.

Just one, little, teensy-weensy problem with the article:

The Queensland Government is hoping to reduce the number of motorbike accidents with the use of flexible road signs.

Now wait just one goddam minute, there.

"Accidents" and "fatalities" are not synonymous, no matter how much more vulnerable we are on bikes. The fact that the media and the public relations campaigns of roads and traffic authorities get all hung up on deaths does not mean that the deaths are not vastly outnumbered by the non-fatal injuries which merely, oh, I don't know, result in life-long serious physical, cognitive or behavioural disabilities and financial ruin.

And bendy road signs could not, except under the most stupid of circumstances, prevent accidents. They can, as the Main Roads Minister pointed out at the end of the article, prevent injury once you've parted company with Mr In Control and are headed, in the company of Mr Momentum, towards the otherwise fatal road furniture.

Journalism students are taught that the headline and opening paragraph are absolutely vital. They are, in fact, either the reason people read the article or the only part they read. The opening paragraph needs to say as much as is possible, without massacring Ms English Language, of the core journalism questions Who, What, Where, When, (Why), How - W5H.

I put Why in brackets because straight news reports may not investigate that. The rest, however, are pretty much mandatory. It's called the 'lead', and it both leads the story and, hopefully, leads readers into it.

For the sake of one little word, credibility can be lost.

In the vernacular: facepalm, and head-desk.

Stay upright, and I'll see you on the road.

Motorbike accidents in the media - Part 18

Alrighty, time for another one:

First up, Biker dead in Woodridge crash (Courier Mail, October 03)

Now, this is a very straightforward article, basic and complete as far as it goes, with just one problem: "he was dislodged from his bike after veering into a median strip."

What? "Dislodged"? and "veering"? Without an eye witness, "veering" is an assumption. And "dislodged" is just plain stupid. What's wrong with a plain and simple "came off"?

"Dislodged" is a wank, plain and simple.

Next, Motorcycle rider dies in crash at Elimbah; other crashes at Toowoomba and Cape Tribulation (September 18, Courier Mail)

Chronologically out of order. Whoops, I suppose.

Yep, another gloriously bad headline.

The article itself is okay - brief and to the point, detailing three separate accidents. There's a formatting problem, but what the hell.

Pumicestone Rd is a bit country, and at 5am all sorts of things can go wrong, including one or both speeding, getting distracted, or running out of talent.

The language used is fairly neutral, so that's good.

And moving on to: Man dies in hospital eight days after motorcycle crash on Esk-Kilcoy Road (Courier Mail, September 19)

I have no idea why the dates of items have become messed up, I really don't.

Five paragraphs, mention of three separate fatal motorcycle accidents, the second of which is the Pumicestone Road one above.

The first one, three paragraphs, is a single-vehicle accident on the fairly fun Esk-Kilcoy Road. Make your own mind up about that one.

The final paragraph mentions "falling off his motorbike". Give me strength.

Otherwise, concise and inoffensive article.

Finally: Drunk biker disqualified (Queensland Times, October 21)

Hallelujah, not a fatality!

Not an accident, either, but I humbly suggest it still qualifies for this series.

Basically: Unregistered and uninsured 250CC (not sure why the capitals, there) bike, .125, while unlicensed.

The first bit that gets me is: If he's already unlicensed, what has he been disqualified from? I can only assume: from reapplying for his licence.

I'm also interested that they put in the engine capacity of the bike, but nothing else about it. I can only assume it was in the police report. Not sure why it was in the police report, though. Probably because: the rules said so.

This bloke lost his licence originally for drink driving, then had two seizures and then not reapplied, because he was "lazy". Seizures aren't good. Particularly not for road users. In fact, there is now an entire law in Queensland requiring people with medical conditions which may affect their driving, to report them. We have this law after lobbying from a woman whose son was killed by a driver with, funnily enough, epilepsy. Story, also from the QT, at Jet's Law honours toddler's memory.

This bloke may not even qualify for his licence, ever again.

This is a nice, succinct article, but following that lead about seizures may have been interesting. Or, possibly in another article. Sounds like a good excuse to me.

P.S.: While working with brain injury, I spoke to a man who wanted to get a licence "just to drive around home on the Sunshine Coast, I don't want to go on the highway or anything, just local, where I know the roads." While working, in that capacity, I was considerably more polite and sympathetic than I would be now, even when he complained that he couldn't see why they wouldn't give him one. Of course, the simple answer is: They don't have licences that work like that, so no, you can't.

Yes, I wish we could all ignore reality and use all the water we wanted to, as well

This post will prioritise an angry response over diplomacy, and as such I'm about to make a lot of people very angry. Many of whom are very big men who think fights solve things. I shall rely on my relative anonymity to go sailing past unnoticed.

One of the biggest issues I have with my fellow human beings is short-term thinking.

Take the current argument over the extremely sick Murray-Darling Basin river system, a considerable chunk of south-eastern Australia and the water feed to a considerable chunk of our agricultural output, not to mention other primary and secondary industries as well.

Breaking the issue down, the propositions are:

1. Agricultural and mining industries need water
2. Reducing their water allocation will hurt them
3. Communities are hurt if their industries are hurt
4. The river system is dying because it does not have enough water in it.

Try and add those up to something that works. Go on, I dare you. Can't? Start feeling sorry for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, then, who have to.

Let's try looking at this a different way, using impeccable logic:

• When total output consistently exceeds total input, total volume decreases to zero.

Now that just doesn't help at all, does it? Looks like we might have a problem!

Now, to me this represents an interesting and complicated issue which will probably require innovative, sideways thinking and a complicated set of solutions.

Changing crops and maybe adjusting Australian eating and clothing habits, perhaps. Researching new water delivery systems that involve less spraying out into the air and more targeted feeds. More efficient processes. Not growing rice which needs to sit in standing water, possibly. 

Much of this won't be cheap, won't be easy and won't be quick. Neither was converting from manual to automated farming methods. And the alternative is we either become Fremen or we end up with a Water and Power authority. It's not a coincidence that when Frank Herbert had his Bene Gesserit describe the most basic form of control through withholding scarce resources, he used water as the exemplar.

The problem is that all of the complaints I have heard to date have boiled down to 1+2=3. If you reduce water, you reduce productivity, which means masses of job losses, so therefore let us keep the water.

Unfortunately, the scientists are saying 4. Water volume in the Basin is steadily decreasing. Basic physics says that if this continues, there won't be any. At which point, everybody is .

It sucks, it arguably shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but guess what? Life is hard, particularly when vital, irreplaceable resources start running out.

And just in the past few days, legal advice has come down that the Authority failed to adequately consider the social and economic impacts of their proposals, and stressed environmental considerations too much.

Step back a minute: Option A. is: the entire Basin dries up, we're all . Option B. is: We get to some sort of stability where enough water is returned to keep it at its present level. Option C. is: We rejuvenate the whole thing, with enough water as is required.

Obviously, Option C. is most desirable, environmentally speaking, but would involve considerable human hardship. The problem is that Option A. results in considerable human hardship as well, just not before the next election. And maybe not when the current irrigators turning out and burning copies of the preliminary draft guides to the report are still working. Maybe when they're retired and the town crumbles about their ears, leaving them homeless.

Option B is probably the best we can hope for, and the thing is: If we don't get Option B as a minimum, you can wave goodbye to maybe not your livelihood, but definitely your childrens' livelihoods. Feel good about that, do you? 

Threatened or actual riots aren't going to make it rain. Burning things is only going to accelerate the carbon cycle, not fill the marshlands. Complaining about job losses is not going to restore parity.

The only thing that will restore parity is ensuring that outputs are maintained at the level of inputs, or below. Anything else is trading long-term stability for short-term selfishness. 

So start talking. Stop shouting, start talking. 

You're not winning any concessions from reality, and you're not winning any respect from the rest of us. 

There has been intelligent discussion - there have been people talking about improvements already made. There has been discussion centred around lack of consultation, rather than the result. 

But the sad fact is that shouting and burning make for good television, and bury anything intelligent that anybody may have to say. 

So: Either start thinking, you're homo sapiens, you're supposed to be able to, and: shut up, you're not helping.

Motorbike accidents in the media, part 17

The big problem with having things you have to write is that it doesn't leave you any time for things you want to write. Which means that thesis has taken a huge priority over blogging and randomly scrawled fiction.

So I'm about two months behind, here, and am only going to comment briefly.

Straight out of the blocks with:

Man's leg broken in trail-bike accident at Dayboro (Courier Mail, September 19)

Slightly long CM headline, but not too bad. Four paragraphs, pretty complete, nothing to take exception to and they even said "coming off his bike" rather than "the bike crashed."

Motorbike rider dead, pillion passenger hurt as bike hits tree in Ipswich (Courier Mail, September 30)

Now, there's an excessive CM headline for you. I'm not sure they're expecting people to actually read the articles.

Six paragraphs. Fernvale Rd at Brassall, which is fairly straight and through suburbia. No mention of any known cause, which gets the the police bonus points for not having a superficial, knee-jerk speed reference.

"A police spokesman said it was believed the motorbike left the road and collided with a tree."

So, either the headline is not entirely justified, or the police are being cautious to the point of silliness. I would have thought that would have been obvious - a cause, not so much. But having hit a tree that wasn't actually in the road - pretty obviuos.

Oh, well. The impressive thing about this article is that it manages to get three different spokesmen into six paragraphs.

Man killed after hitting tree - same writeup, longer and more informative from, surprise surprise, the local regional paper the Queensland Times (October 1).

Seventeen paragraphs, starting in good emotive style with Shocked residents have told of the horrifying moment...

Puh-lease.

This time we have "veered across Fernvale Rd" and a photo of nice big skidmarks in grass, pointing straight at a tree.

This bit gets me: "The man's helmet landed in our front yard," she said.

Not wearing it, or not done up, or the strap ripped right off? The rider was given CPR at the scene before being pronounced dead and the male pillion was taken to hospital still breathing, so neither were completely dismembered and, therefore, it's hard to imagine helmets coming off unless they weren't being worn properly. Hmm...

Another resident heard the motor "revving really loudly." Yes, well, it's a bike, so there's not a lot we can say about that. Some bikes with modified pipes sound like they're racing at idle.

Okay, not a bad article, but there's a huge whiff of ghoulishness about it.

Okay, one more: Heartache drives man to drink ride (QT, October 2)

Six paragraphs, some quite long, court report.

Attempting to overtake using the left lane, which happens to be illegal (note: Riding on the right without overtaking is also illegal in some states, but doesn't seem to be enforced in Queensland), crashing, blood alcohol concentration of 0.152 which makes it impressive he hadn't crashed before then.

Also: L plates, rear tyre not roadworthy, weeping hydraulic flood (so the brakes weren't working properly, not much else that's hydraulic on a bike), and he broke his back twice, his knee and has to learn how to walk again.

I think we can say, unreservedly: Idiot.

Again, no mention of speed, which is great to see, and nothing extraneous. A baffling story, but a good article.

Speed camera defences are facile and unhelpful

Recently, while riding or driving, I have done the following obviously dangerous things

• Strayed onto a white line in the pouring rain, and had the bike slip sideways in the middle of a corner.
• Almost pulled out in front of a car because it was 2am and I had a lapse of concentration.

I have been threatened by other road users in the following ways:

• Overtaking vehicle leaving its wheels in my lane, next to me, while looking at something else.
• Vehicles cutting in front while driving slower than me, making me brake sharply.
• Vehicles trying to merge into me.
• Vehicles starting to merge in front of me while I was overtaking.
• Vehicles creeping into road in front of me from a side street, leaving me unsure what its intentions were.

That's just what I can remember, right now.

Notice anything about all of those? Notice any uniting factors?

There were two of them:

1. They all involved lapses of judgement, and (with one arguable exception) concentration, and;
2. None of them involved exceeding the speed limit

And yet, the one message we have rammed down our throats is "Speed kills!", "Don't speed!", "Speeding fines are for your own good!"

The most obvious reason is, of course, that speeding is easy to police and it's a low-hanging fruit: Set up fixed cameras with radar/laser attached, set up mobile cameras and leave them, put automatic equipment in patrol cars.

It's much harder to police fatigue, much harder to police inattention (although very obvious when the inattention leads to something dangerous actually occurring), much harder to police drug and alcohol usage (just look at the effort involved in running a random breath test) and much harder to police the road rules in general, although we do have red light cameras.

I have four basic issues with the campaign against speeding:

1. It focuses on a factor which has been identified, at various times, in various jurisdictions, as being quite a minor contributor to accidents fatal or otherwise;
2. It is conducted in a way which is offensive to the intelligence of all road users;
3. It obscures the far more important discussion of driving technique and skill;
4. I do not remember any sensible discussion justifying this focus, merely scattered claims in advertising.

You could also add: I've never seen any sensible explanation for why speed limits are set the way they are, or justification that they are anything but arbitrary.

And now here we have another contribution, an opinion piece submitted to the Courier Mail from the chief executive officer of RiverCity Motorway, the organisation running the clusterfuck that is the Clem 7 tollway tunnel:

Speed cameras help keep Clem 7 on the road to safety.

When you read this article, you at first don't notice that it's anything but a news story. Then it dawns on you that it's editorialising a bit, then it gets personal, then you look down the end to notice the byline.

Online, this needed to have been flagged as a column from the very start.

The big problem with this article is illustrated right here:

For those people who don't believe speed cameras are an important road safety measure it is worth looking at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, which opened in 1992 without speed cameras. In 1997, it became the first road in NSW to have fixed speed cameras installed.

This action was taken when it was found that 30 per cent of drivers using the tunnel exceeded the speed limit by 20km/h or more. The highest recorded speed in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was 199km/h.

After the cameras were installed, the percentage of speeding motorists fell dramatically.

Closer to home, the speed cameras inside the Clem7 are in place to safeguard the people who use the tunnel. Speed cameras are the only practical method for speed enforcement in tunnels.

I would like you to notice that at no point in those four paragraphs was there any mention of any accident, crash, injury, fatality, minor bingle, brief nudge, complaint, collision or scrape.

No logical pathway, in fact, from "For those people who don't believe speed cameras are an important safety measure" to "speed cameras inside the Clem7 are in place to safeguard the people who use the tunnel."

No mention of whether the dramatic fall in speeding in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was in any way, shape or form associated with a drop in accident rate.

Speeding is wasteful in fuel, reduces safety margins, is potentially rude and, in traffic, hazardous if you puts you at a different speed to everyone else. The faster you hit something the more damage you do, but this bald claim? I'd like to see anyone get this through an undergraduate essay in any science or otherwise research discipline.

So I have to ask: Have people become so used to seeing the proof that they assume it, and skip over the bit in the middle? Or is this just a debate that runs on unthinking consensus, ideological certainty?

If it's run on proof, then more of that needs to come out in the public debate.

At the moment, there are two factors limiting my speed: What I think is safe, and: the likelihood of getting fined and losing licence points.

And a slavish adherence to the big black numbers in the red circle doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I think is safe. Far more important to me is the behaviour of other road users, the quality of the road, how awake and focused I am, the light conditions, the atmospheric conditions, the vehicle I'm on or in, and the likelihood of somebody or something running across the road in front of me.

I have become used to people I overtook back there overtaking me here because my reading of the conditions made me slow down. I'm used to people who do 75 in the 80 zone then doing 75 in the 70 zone. I've become used to people doing 70 in the 80 zone who do 60 in the roadworks 40 zone, crowding me or trying to get past while I'm riding 2 metres from people wielding shovels.

Speeding? That's the least of the things I worry about.

At the end of this abysmal, preaching article there is this:

It is very pleasing that the vast majority of motorists are driving safely through the tunnel.

And the only evidence presented is that only .5% of motorists have collected a speeding fine.

It's very difficult to have any faith in the ability of any authority to manage any roads when this is the quality of their debate.

Motorbike accidents in the media - Part 16

Anyone want to guess if there are 16-cylinder motorbikes out there? Drop me a line if you find one.

A brief four articles today, to catch up to mid September:

We start with a rare report of a non-fatal collision, from August 27, the Courier Mail giving us Woman hurt in crash between motorbike and lorry at New Farm.

Another CM story, another tedious headline.

There is a weird atypical quotation mark in the last paragraph.

"Woman motorbike rider" is clumsy, "she collided with a truck" needs supporting evidence, and I would be interested to know who was going where, who had right of way and what the truck was doing at the time.

Not a particularly well written article, a hurriedly edited one, and overall unsatisfying.

From September 7, the CM also gives us Motorcyclist killed in car collision at Finnie, outside Toowoomba

I can only assume they have a reason for these headlines. There must be a reason.

Six paragraphs, all quite tight and concise but with one clumsy and poorly placed comma, the last paragraph an update on the yearly road toll figures.

Collision between car and bike, 30yo male rider died at scene.

The Toowoomba-Karara Rd is a bit winding, so all the usual country-road risks apply: suspect edges, casual attitude to driving, temptation to go faster than the road affords, loose or compromised surface, etc.

A concise news article, with little information but no randomly thrown quotes or assumptions, either.

From September 9, the CM also gives us Man dies in scooter crash in South Brisbane

A headline that could be improved, but at least this one isn't trying to be a paragraph unto itself.

Eight paragraphs, two different quoted sources, a bit of information and a very oddly worded intro: "A man in his early 20s has died after an accident involving a scooter". What? Was he riding it, or not? Was he a pedestrian?

Further down we are forced to assume he was riding, and appeared to have collided with a power pole.

Bizarrely, he may have been travelling with another scooter at the time. So where, pray tell, did they go? And who called the ambulance?

Most odd.

The article could have been tighter, but the comment below it is a classic - sincere, concerned, stating that the law is ridiculous because riding "these things" doesn't need a bike licence whereas young motorcyclists are restricted by tight laws.

Unfortunately, the article didn't say what type of scooter it was, and he may have had a bike licence. The laws restricting beginner riders don't guarantee good training and don't prevent you getting your hands on something quite capable of getting you in serious trouble, and without knowing a lot more about the accident there is no way of telling that any licensing or training would have made a blind bit of difference.

One more, from  September 16 and, yes, the CM again (deep breath): Motorcyclist killed after losing control of bike while overtaking on Bruce Highway at Chevallum (breath out)

I would like to point out that the RSS headline was "Biker killed while overtaking". Sigh.

Ten paragraphs and a call to send in tributes. One other odd quotation mark.

This time, a photo, showing a bike a bit sporty and with considerable rear-end, not front-end, damage, which supports the claim he lost control before hitting the truck, and a spot where I would not have been trying to overtake at all - two lanes and a corner with impaired visibility.

Finally, we have enough eyewitness reports for a decent article - he was seen overtaking other vehicles and "braking heavily" (subjective) before losing control.

Nowhere in the article does it say he hit a truck - just in the photo caption. What the? Wasn't it most likely that impact which killed him, not tumbling along the road?

"Speeding by the motorcycle was a significant factor", Sgt Crowley said. Which seems justified, but he may have been exceeding the speed limit or may have just been overtaking in a stupid manner but inside the speed limit, or may have judged it well then hit a spot of diesel oil on the road.

Also: "was seen overtaking vehicles in the left-bound lane". Left relative to what, exactly?

We finish with some human-interest background profile stuff.

This article was decently written in a very local-paper manner, but it desperately, desperately needed more editing.

Motorbike accidents in the media - Part 15

I shouldn't need to say this, but: No, I don't know of any 15-cylinder motorbikes.

It's been three weeks since my last post - where did they go?

Before I start: I have, in the past, abused (with love) the Queensland Times for their RSS feeds, which consisted of a headline and then a description field filled with a copy of the headline. They have now fixed that, and have a proper, informative,  good RSS feed again. Well done.

Today we have four different takes on the same story - the death of an 18yo who hit a truck on the Brisbane Valley Highway west of Brisbane at 5.50am (AEST) on Friday August 27.

In purely alphabetical order we have:

From the ABC News Online: Motorcyclist killed

A pithy title, no? The article describes three separate accidents. The last one is a motorised skateboard, for extra dark-humour value.

Three paragraphs for the bike accident, with a police comment and a note that emergency crews are there and the highway is partially closed.

Nothing to say against this article - I'm guessing it was written from a traffic updates-style radio list.

From the Courier Mail: Teenage motorcyclist dead after collision with truck near Ipswich

Once again, another long CM headline.

Much more informative, concisely written, only a few instances of sentences straining at the seams to fit facts in, one misplaced comma, useful details of what the road closure diversions are, and an unattributed "Excessive speed is considered a factor in the crash."

At 5.50am the highway should have been fairly open, however the Brisbane Valley Highway is one of those two-lane country roads that winds up hill and down dale, trees up to the edges and driveways and towns popping up at random intervals, so dodging somebody else is difficult at best.

That note about speed is my only issue with this otherwise well written article: Why? Looking at the description, the fact that a truck could pull out of a driveway far enough for the bike to hit its trailer suggests that, yes, the bike was going too fast for the conditions. Possibly over a crest, possibly around a corner, possibly just being stupid.

But forgive me for not even slightly trusting an authority who says "Excessive speed is believed to be a factor" without some sort of justification, and that should be noted by the reporter and inserted in the report. "Police say the motorcyclist's inability to stop may have been due to excessive speed" would be good. Just "Yes, he was probably speeding." sounds far too much like towing the party line and jumping to easy assumptions in the face of inadequate information, and it is the job of journalists to hold authority figures honest and make them explain themselves.

Finally, from the local QT: Motorcyclist dies in crash.

The ABC said "about 6am", the CM said "about 5.50am", the QT said "about 5.45am." Um...?

Two paragraphs, which really didn't warrant the use of the word "horrific" in the lead. The second paragraph also looks like three which were joined together by poor formatting. Speaking of poor - "riding a motorcycle, which collided with a truck" is not only my pet peeve of attributing intent to that which is inanimate, but is one of the most egregiously misplaced commas I've yet seen.

I'd also be interested to know if the QT has an opinion about "a" or "an" before "horrific", but that's just a matter of interest.

A poorly written article, but I can't really quibble about the contents.

But wait, there's more!

The very next day, the QT had a proper full-length treatment: Teen dies in bike smash

This time, a definite time of 5.40am, and details including name of the rider and where he was going.

Some casual language, which looks odd but that may just be me, but some good use of the police spokesman and a nicely, classically constructed article let down a little by a couple of instances of poor subbing ("SHE told him", for example).

And, ha-ha, a direct quote from Snr Sgt McCrae: "We don't know if speed was a factor or why the truck driver didn't see him." Up yours, jumping-to-conclusions.

Unfortunately, the article says "the motorcyclist travelling south-bound". He was understood to have left his home south of the crash site and was on his way to work north of the crash site. Um, whoops?

If he was going north, towards Fernvale, but the truck had pulled out of a driveway heading towards Ipswich, which is south, then either the truck pulled across his lane into the south-bound lane, or swung all the way into the north-bound lane in order to exit its driveway. Either scenario left the rider nowhere to go around, leaving braking as the only option. Hmm...

This is otherwise a well done article, very neutral and free from editorialising or judging.

Moving on to a non-fatal collision this time, the CM gives us Woman hurt in crash between motorbike and lorry at New Farm.

Another CM story, another tedious headline.

Speaking of formatting, there is a weird atypical quotation mark in the last paragraph.

"Woman motorbike rider" is clumsy, "she collided with a truck" needs supporting evidence, and I would be interested to know who was going where, who had right of way and what the truck was doing at the time.

Not a particularly well written article, and an unsatisfying one.