Motorcycle accidents in the media, part the V-10

Wait, what? A V-10 motorcycle?

Yes, I'm afraid so.

At least, sort of.

The Dodge Tomahawk Concept Motorcycle is, natch, a concept. It is also not technically speaking a motorcycle - it has four wheels, just a very, very narrow wheelbase so it sort of behaves like a motorcycle.

It's a lot better executed and more interesting than most massive-car-engine motorcycle concepts but, as with the others, I'm really not sure they should have done it at all.

Moving onto the important stuff.

I'm only going to do one story, because it's a decent length and I end up talking about it quite a lot. (Note for the chronologically confused - yes, I wrote this bit last).

It is another take on a story I addressed last time - the ABC's Man jailed for killing motorcyclist. This one is 70yo jailed for rider's death (Queensland Times - June 10).

This story has a bit more detail. Journalist Felicity Caldwell is a court reporter who goes and sits in the gallery each day, so that's no surprise. She also got quotes from relatives of the deceased, which is macabre but a bit traditional.

AN ELDERLY Ipswich man, who was found guilty of killing a motorbike rider after crossing the road’s centreline in his van, will face the next four months behind bars.

I would have edited that opening paragraph a little for tightness, but it gets the pertinent facts in. Four months, by the way, is the non-suspended part of two years. Truth in sentencing is a whole other issue entirely.

The rider, Joseph Vella, was 39 and died in hospital 7 days after the collision, which sounds unpleasant.

Prospect St where it happened is one of the major streets in a minor town. Google maps only has the major portion on Street View, but it looks as though there's only one crest, and not much of it. Also, hardly an abundance of streetlights.

For added self-referential macabreness, the driver was doings his rounds delivering the QT at the time. That may bring a clue - if he was distracted from the road by checking an address, or stocks, or fumbling for a pen, drifting sideways is only too possible.

But there's this little bit of weirdness:

Sergeant Darryl Morrison told the court he discovered an 11-metre skid mark on the road which was probably caused by Mr Vella braking before the collision.

But one of the first officers on the scene, Senior Constable Gregory Henricksen said he had not seen the skid marks on the night of the crash.

Skid marks on a road aren't that easy to see in low light conditions, but surely your first instinct would be to at least look?

Skid marks, however, reveal one very sad truth: Mr Vella may have been able to avoid or minimise the accident. A speed limit of 60km/h means a closing speed of 120km/h and up and that means precious little reaction time. But if Williams was driving his van only partly on the incorrect side of the road at the time, then there was some leeway for an emergency swerve to the left. And hitting the curb and going for a tumble has more opportunities for survival than hitting a solid wall of approaching metal.

Skid marks are not a good thing. Locking the wheels reduces braking power and removes all ability to steer. That's why ABS is a good idea.

To step out of media-analysis mode for a moment: If you ride a bike or a scooter, then please, please, practice emergency braking and emergency manoeuvres, and get some advanced training. Thank you.

I must, however, ask: Why no skid marks from Williams' van? Was he still distracted when a bike ran straight into him? No matter what options may have been available to Mr Vella, Williams put him in that position and was therefore found guilty.

Mr Vella's older sister thought the sentence was fair:

“While Mr Williams’ actions were negligent, it was one of those things where people don’t think about what the consequences will be,” she said.

“The public prosecutor thought that he would’ve been given a larger sentence if it wasn’t for his health – he’s actually not very well.”

And that just reinforces my opinion that he will be lucky indeed to get his licence back after four years. And if he does, well, that's another discussion.

To sum up, it was a quite well written article with, finally, most of the details I would like to hear with only one omission - what Williams' side of the story was, after pleading not guilty.

One more thing: QT really, really needs to fix their RSS feeds. All you normally get is the headline and that, compared to any other media outlet, is just not good enough.

In praise of hackers and modders

(Edit: I called the i8910 the Omnia Icon in Australia. Actually, that's a winmob device. The i8910 is the HD Icon. Which doesn't sound any less stupid.)

Before I start, let's get a little something out of the way, first:

A hacker is someone who tries to take things apart in order to understand them, and fiddle with them in order to improve them.

A cracker is someone who tries to break things in order to break them for fun and profit.

Right, moving on.

Here's the thing: The world relies upon hackers to advance. Engineers? Hackers, if they're any good. The spirit of "What would happen if..." and "Hey, how does that work..." drives productive creativity and improvements.

Scientists? Hackers, by definition. Hackers of reality and of life.

But the term is a computer one, and it's computer programmers who fiddle who I want to talk about now.

All programmers, if they're any good, are hackers. They want to know how somebody else did that cool thing, they have to chase down bugs in their own code, they're dissatisfied when they see something functioning below-par. They'll sooner spend two days building a replacement than twenty seconds being frustrated.

And they make really cool toys for the rest of us.

Commercial software is built by waged hackers with deadlines and managers. Open source software is built by hackers, some of whom have wages and managers while they're doing so.

And then there's the ones producing not the major product, but the improved version. The one you have to work to get. The operating system that works the way it should have done, if only the company producing it hadn't had commercial obligations or, well, deadlines and managers.

I had a Sharp Zaurus SL5500 for years. It was unabashedly a toy when I got it - a chunky PDA with a QWERTY keyboard and a Linux operating system which satisfied my twin desires of having a cool toy, and being able to type lying in bed. Laptops are too clumsy, too bulky, for lying on your back jotting down thoughts and chasing ideas. Oh, and an ebook reader for Project Gutenberg classics.

Being Linux, an open-sourced system, built using a variety of also open-sourced toolkits and projects, it was only a matter of time before OpenZaurus arose, flexed its muscles, and started producing an alternate, community-built, better-performing, less rubbish software platform.

Okay, buggier as well, but that's the price you pay for development.

I have no idea how many times I reflashed that poor device with new updates, but by the end I could do it in my sleep and it was probably a contributing factor to its eventual, inevitable, demise.

Eventually, however, the SL5500 was replaced with the sexier (black) SL6000, and then the C-series came out with a mini-laptop form factor and a swivelling screen and all the sex appeal that chunky SL5500 never had, and development on the now rapidly aging devices slowed and then stopped, lingering bugs left untreated.

At the same time, my progression through mobile phones landed me at a device with a big colour screen and enough of a java platform to run ebook readers, and then I found a text editor for the phone, and the Zaurus was doomed. The next time I actually tried to turn it on, no amount of hard-resetting, battery-replacing and fiddling would produce the merest flicker of life.

That phone was replaced with a much more powerful one running an open-standards operating system called Symbian with an open-standards interface called S60.

And that brings us neatly to my point, really, because we are now in the realm of smartphones which are more powerful than dedicated PDAs or even laptops of years gone, and one of the defining points of a smartphone is that you can upgrade it.

Which, of course, decent companies do on a regular basis - buy a top-end or even middle-range Nokia and you can confidently expect a new firmware version to bring speed, battery life and functionality improvements every other month for a year or more.

But some don't and, occasionally, others take up the slack.

And then there are those which invite it.

Google's Android operating system is Linux, customised. Which, to geeks and hackers, is like walking into a lion enclosure waving a chunk of dead goat over your head.

While companies pander to network operators and take special note of commercial agreements, hackers cheerfully take the code, rip out the rubbish, port across a cool toy from the next release, drop in something else to fix what everyone except the distributor thinks is a problem, and hey presto! You void your warranty but, frankly, the advantages outweigh that.

If you use an HTC device running Android, you really should be using Cyanogen's replacement ROMs.

Motorola managed to alienate a large community of current or potential users, me included, by preventing this practice on the non-USA Milestone.

It's healthy to have people like this keeping the big boys on their toys.

But let's return to Symbian. The platform, used by nearly everyone but championed by Nokia, who bought S60 and dominated the ecosystem to such an extent that they, in my amateur opinion, damaged its competitiveness, has its roots in 8-bit greyscale devices running for two weeks on a pair of AA batteries, and has been evolving healthily ever since, becoming the most resource-efficient, flexible and potentially powerful of all smartphone systems without, at the same time, really extending itself.

It can support network protocols that are still in the laboratory, but read the international press and you'd get the opinion it's doomed, dead in the water, rubbish, horrible to use, out-dated and slow, part of which relates to S60, which quite frankly is old and has always demanded a little effort to use it properly, and part of which is Nokia being parsimonious with hardware, relying on the efficiencies of Symbian to keep costs down while still providing class-leading functionality.

But then there's Samsung. Unlike Nokia, who cut back on hardware and then spend time and effort optimising the software, Samsung produce truly mighty devices and then just sort of... forget them.

The current king of Symbian, the most powerful and the most impressive, is not the all-singing N97 family but the one-piece Samsung i8910, variously known as Omnia HD (because it was the first phone able to shoot HD video) or, in Australia, the slightly nauseating HD Icon. Great 8MP camera, great stereo speakers taking up each end of the device, great big 3.7" capacitive toughened glass AMOLED screen, 600MHz processor with full graphics acceleration and oodles of RAM.

But the first release had crippling problems, and since then it's had, well, a couple of firmware updates, but not what you'd call love, care and attention from momma and papa in Korea. The C: drive, where the operating system lives, is so small that a couple of system updates fills it. And the discerning smartphone power-user these days demands updates, currency, movement, dammit!

Roll on HyperX. Yes, it's possible to produce custom firmwares for Symbian. Generally, this hasn't been needed, and it's presumably tricky enough that people haven't tried. But for a megaphone like the i8910, hoops were, as the saying goes, jumped through. And even people who normally run a mile from the innocent suggestion that hacking a phone to customise the home screen might not mean the end of the world, have dipped their toe in the water and declared themselves impressed.

I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung sell a few more i8910s thanks to HyperX. I may very well, in the next month or so, be one of them.

Raise your glasses to the hackers and the modders - we wouldn't have got this far without them.

Motorbike accidents in the media: part the .... 9

I really, really didn't think I'd be able to find a 9-cylinder motorbike.

Well, guess what? I couldn't.

There are rumours and hints, the most promising ones centred around another aircraft rotary engine, but I couldn't pin down anything definite. The best lead, complete with photo, turned out to be somebody who didn't check their facts thinking that a monster W3 engine had nine-cylinders. Uh, no.

But, moving on.

The number of stories seems to be increasing. Putting aside my delayed updates, I currently have seven tabs open, some of them dealing with the same incident, and another couple tagged and yet to open. I wonder if this actually represents an increase in accidents, or if suddenly they're more likely to be reported? Hmmm...

From the Courier Mail, from June 4, comes "Speed blamed as motorcyclist dies, passenger critical when bike hits bus at Forest Lake."

There seems to be a definite trend for Courier Mail headlines to get longer without getting any more useful. Personally, I would have started with the death, and left the speed part out of the headline entirely.

A 38-year-old man from Inala was killed when his black Suzuki bike collided with a bus turning from Forest Lake Boulevarde into Grand Avenue about 6pm.

Mentioning the brand, that's rare! He died, female pillion was taken to hospital.

The Forensic Crash Unit is investigating the cause but police said it appears the motorcyclist may have been speeding.

Given the size, visibility and general lumbering nature of a bus, that's likely. However, 6pm in early June is dusk turning into night, and without more details it's hard to tell that the bus driver didn't simply start pulling out and the rider panicked, locking the brakes instead of trying to swerve, hitting the horn, whatever.

There is a little box under the photo which says "The force of the impact can be seen clearly from the damage to the bus", but they must be referring to a different photo. I can't see any damage on the bus, just dirt and age. They may have meant "damage to the bike". The window above the wheel seems to be missing, so maybe the bike hit the rear wheel and the rider went up and through the window.

In which case the most likely scenario is the bike was traveling along Forest Lake Boulevard, which is a major road, and the bus was turning across it. In which case yes, the bike was traveling far in excess of any sane speed. The time it would take for a bus to travel almost all the way across the road is way more than the time it would take a bike to stop from 100, let alone 60.

There looks like there's a lot of information here, but actually: not really.

There is a bonus second entry in this report:

In another serious crash, a motorcyclist suffered multiple fractures after allegedly going through a red light on Kingston Road at Loganlea and running into the front of a car.

The 33-year-old was taken to the PA Hospital with suspected broken legs, pelvis and arms.

The car driver was unhurt.

This is actually a more complete and less frustrating report. It pretty much says everything with no extras and no supposition, and it sadly reads like another case of a dickhead getting caught out.

The article then mentions a single-vehicle car accident and closes with: Queensland’s 2010 road toll now stands at 98 lives lost, 56 fewer than at the same time last year.

Which is surely going to be ammunition for the "speed cameras work" brigade.

For the record: I don't think it's possible to come to that conclusion - there are too many confounding variables and the numbers just aren't big enough. But I Am Not An Ethnographer, and may be wrong.

In summary: not a bad story, but slightly frustrating, not quite enough detail, and frankly the headline is sensationalistic.

From ABC News Online from June 2 comes a six-paragraph story headlined "Man jailed for killing motorcyclist", a sentence guaranteed to bring a glow of sourly retributive "it's about time" satisfaction to any motorcyclist's heart.

Essentially: 70yo man, at Lowood at 1:30am:

The court was told his vehicle was travelling on the wrong side of the road below a crest on a hill when it crashed into a motorbike travelling in the opposite direction, killing the driver.

First of all, Maria Hatzakis, nice economically written and punchy story, but motorcycles have "riders". Only vehicles with more than two wheels have "drivers". The sub-editor really should have picked up on that, as well.

Lowood is a country sort of place, and it's likely there were absolutely no lights other than the vehicles'. Bike came over crest, thought "OH FU..." and crashed, fatally. It is sometimes possible to see lights coming over a hill, not always, and with the spread of lights from vehicles, not with any precision. The driver could also have wandered at the last minute. The driver, remember, was 70.

He has been disqualified from "obtaining or holding" a drivers licence for four years, and I sincerely doubt that he will ever get it back, at that age.

Some of the writing is a bit loose, but actually a nicely comprehensive article.

Also from ABC News Online, from June 5, comes "Motorcyclist charged after police chase".

Now, I've said this before, and I'll say it again: If you're being chased by police, pull over and cop it. There's a slim chance you can challenge whatever they were going to fine you for, but there's no chance if you run away. Evading police is an offence, it's dangerous and you lose any right to plead innocence or mitigating circumstances. You stuffed up: Take the consequences.

And this is why:

In March this year, laws were introduced increasing penalties for people who refused to stop for police.

The change was dubbed Skye's Law after toddler Skye Sassine, who was killed in a crash on New Year's Eve in Sydney's south-west.

Yes, well.

Police say he reached 140 in a 60 zone, they called off the chase after he crossed onto the wrong side of the road, and they arrested him after they found his bike in a driveway.

You see, they have cameras in cars: If they're chasing you, they know your numberplate. They know who owns the bike, and where it should be garaged.

He was remanded in custody.

No sympathy.

This is a tighter-written story, without an author's byline, than the one above with an author's byline. Go figure.

One more, I think, a short one:

From the Courier Mail, "Rescue crew trying to reach motorbike rider who crashed over cliff at Dundas", June 6.

Three paragraphs, of decreasing length. The headline is a little longer than I would allow, but it keeps interest. "Rider crashes over cliff at Dundas" would do equally well. The fact he's still alive and rescue crews are trying to get to him can probably wait for the opening paragraph.

Now: Mount Glorious, 10:40am... I'm sorry, but the only explanation that isn't "he ran out of talent" involves getting frightened by a vehicle, bike or car, speeding the other way. He may have hit gravel or leaves or oil, he may have been doing the speed limit. It's just highly unlikely.

What's astonishing is that the article is so bald it doesn't even mention speed or any suspected cause. Just the barest of facts. Makes a nice change, really.

With that, I shall sign off. Only two weeks behind schedule.

Motorbike accidents in the media: part the V-8.

There have been many V8 motorcycles, many of them made as cruisers with a car V8 with bits attached, no gearbox, neutral created by locking the clutch open and a disconcerting tendency to flip over backwards if you're not paying attention. But the one to care about is Moto Guzzi's abortive racer, a difficult and mechanically complex (duh) bike which they campaigned for two years before retiring from racing altogether, ending a successful career just as MV Agusta came on song to begin the most impressive era of dominance of any company, ever.

What a swan-song.

Anyway...

Finally, we have some interesting stories this time.

I'll lead with the shortest:

Lord Mayor stable after accident, from ABC News from April 20.

Three paragraphs - came off motorcycle after a road accident, in hospital, back injury but stable.

Ummm, yes? The only reason this story is newsworthy at all is that a major public figure was involved. No carnage, no serious injury or death, and absolutely no details about the accident. So not even a very major public figure, despite the fact he's been Lord Mayor of Hobart since Christ played fullback for Jerusalem, or the journalist probably would have rung the police for details.

Where are the details?

Moving right along, we have Motorcyclist dies after car crash (Courier Mail, May 23).

Which is a slightly odd title. You mean the motorcyclist was in a car when it crashed?

The rest of the article, however, is rather better, and has the added bonus of getting "airborne" in the lead paragraph.

The writing is a little sloppy, with unnecessary repetition, including the typical police-ese quotes, ruining tightness and precision.

But as to the facts - this is, if you ask any motorcyclist, pretty much a typical accident: Car turns across bike, who dies.

I'd like to know which way they were traveling - I assume in opposite directions before the car violated right-of-way and turned across the intersection. As well, Old North Road is a major road, and Stanley St isn't. The Google Maps view shows street lights, so I'm guessing they were both on Old North Road and the car was travelling north and turned right onto Stanley St.

I won't speculate on what the rider may or may not have done differently to give him more wiggle-room or minimise or avoid the accident.

And you don't even need to be going too fast to sail over the top of a car - I did it when going less than 40km/h on a mountain bike, and I didn't even touch the car myself - cleared it completely and landed by the opposite curb.

Which leads me to wonder what sort of injuries the rider sustained if he cleared the car - I was wearing a cycling helmet and a backpack, lots of bare skin, and only ended up with a bruised knee, but you could quite easily land on your head or collide with a kerb or part of the car.

It's a slightly sloppy article, but at least it has a police report in it.

Then, the ABC gives us Motorcyclist killed during police chase from May 8.

Well, that's interesting, isn't it?

Two motorcyclists, one pulled over by police and one sped off. The one pulled over was charged with drink driving as well as speeding and driving dangerously.

Now, at this point I have to say that I have little sympathy for anyone who tries to escape the police. Beyond being dangerous, it puts you beyond debatedly selfish into the realms of actually illegal. If you're caught fairly - deal with it.

But, moving on, the rider was killed when he struck a ute which turned onto the highway, presumably in front of him.

Three immediate possibilities: The driver of the ute didn't look, or the bike came over a crest doing something on the other side of 200 and couldn't react in time or do anything effective in time, or, just possibly, the speed of the bike really did completely confuse the driver. At this point, it's pretty much academic.

Plus, it was 6:00am, so we have light conditions to take into account as well.

My biggest problem with this story is that the writing is neither tight, nor smooth, nor particularly effective. It's a bit disorganised and clumsy, and could have done with a judicious rewrite and edit. But it's such a straight reporting of facts that it's hard to criticise anything beyond the time the journalist spent on it.

From the Courier Mail, from May 24, comes Biker doing wheelstand with no helmet crashes but saved by quick-thinking paramedics at Bray Park.

What the hell is with a 16-word headline? "Helmetless wheelstanding biker crashes, saved by paramedic" says just as much and is still too long.

In fact, having read the headline, do you really need to read the article?

But, we must.

The astonishing thing about this article is that it mentions "his late-model Honda CB1000". I have no idea why, unless "Honda" is a recognisable brand to the car-driving masses, and "1000" sounds scary/impressive. That, or we've finally got a journalist who knows anything about bikes.

It's a story written by someone who wants to write script treatments or advertising, I suspect - slightly dramatic and florid, and with too many words in it.

"Police said it was concerning any motorcyclist would attempt to ride on the road without a helmet. "

What? "Concerning" that anybody would ride without a helmet, one of the most reliably proven accident-mitigation measures available, but they burst veins in apoplexy when someone goes 10 over the limit?

Perspective, anyone?

And this:

"Of the 92 people killed on Queensland roads this year, 15 have been motorcyclists."

Aha! I've been waiting for that all year. Finally, a count. Halfway through the year, 92 isn't actually bad. 15 Motorbikes kind of is.

So, yes. Plenty of information in this, but well-written? Ah, no.

I think four stories is enough, for this time.

I am still waiting for the line "Details of how the accident happened have not been determine." to be added, de facto, to any story lacking them.

I may wait in vain.

Lies, damned lies, and headlines

(Updated, to add a headline. Oh, the irony).

This is, maybe, a story of how crap science reporting starts with the headline.

Actually, it hardly ever does: The story arrives, gets written by a journalist, and the headline is probably the last piece of the puzzle, going through sub-editors and final print editors before being set in stone (or, well, type. Or hypertext).

But how does the innocent reader arrive at a story? Via the headline.

Which makes it important.

The story is this:

A long-term (10 year retrospective) and large (nearly 13,000 users) study of mobile phone usage, investigating links with cancer (yes, another one), showed no definite results either way save for the top 10% of users, who had an up to 40% greater risk of developing a brain tumour, based upon self-reported usage patterns, which are methodologically one of the weakest ways of assessing actual usage and introduces problems the study authors are not shy to point out.

These are the headlines from four media outlets:

New Scientist: Don't hang up - cellphones don't cause brain tumours (probably)

ABC News (copy sourced from Reuters, headline by ABC): Mobile phone-cancer link study inconclusive

The Australian: Industry study shows brain tumour link to heavy mobile phone usage

Courier Mail (based upon the Australian story): Brain cancer link to mobile phones

Did you experience a sinking feeling as you read down? You should have.

The only dedicated science outlet uses a catchy, populist approach to combine the main finding (no real link) and the main problem (not reliable enough). The ABC goes for a direct and accurate but hardly exciting approach. The Australian pulls out the most news-worthy finding to focus upon and ignored 90% of users, and the Courier Mail just throws everything to the wind and goes with a misleading title for a report written to emphasise just one finding and foment debate.

It's depressing, it really is.

It also reminds me of the Daily Mail list of 'Things that give you cancer' (Facebook)

The media has an important, even central, frequently even solitary, part to play in informing the public and part of that is, some of us would like to believe, a responsibility to be accurate and not monger fear or incite hysteria.

I would also like to think that if we assume the public is intelligent enough to read an article saying "probably not, but there may be a risk if you do something a lot", we may be astonished to find out they are.

And then there's historical perspective.

The fifth paragraph in the Reuters/ABC copy is this:

Years of research have failed to establish a connection.

And do you really think people haven't tried, really hard? I've been using a mobile for ten years now and I remember the debate happening years before I started.

Basic Principle of Coping With Reality: It's complicated, it's not your only risk factor, and if it was really a problem we'd probably have found something by now.

We'd also have found a link to testicular and uterine cancer from all the phones carried on or about hips, I'm thinking.

Consider as well just how any radio waves saturate the air from TV, radio and other people's mobiles, as well as short-wave, long-wave and GPS radio signals. If you're going to worry about electromagnetic radiation, a mobile is the least of your problems.

As a bonus: Look up the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Motorbike accidents in the media: part the radial 7.

Hmmm... There is a lesson in the fact that my only blog posts have late have been ones I felt obliged to write, because I had promised to...

But: Yes! For better or worse, there has been at least one 7-cylinder motorbike.

Anyway, a small bag today, of small articles.

Story 1:

First up is four pars from the ABC back on Sunday May 2: "Biker dies after hitting gutter".

Police say it appears the 30-year-old man hit a gutter while riding his motorcycle yesterday afternoon in Templestowe.

He lost control, landed in a garden bed, died in hospital.

Once again, the article is okay - in fact this one reads a little more smoothly than some small, dashed-off news articles - but the unanswered questions are rather interesting - swerved to avoid another vehicle, or lost control, or just bad judgement? Something in his eye?

And was he conscious when the police arrived? Nothing else is quoted, so I'm assuming that nothing else newsworthy came out, such as him being run off the road. Or, police didn't believe him, but let's not go there.

The interesting part about this article, however, is that it goes from "motorbike" to "motorcycle" to "bike". I'm not sure if there's an ABC standard for "motorcycle" or "motorbike". I'll have to look into it.

The two words certainly make hash-tagging tricky in twitter - which one do you go for?

Story 2:

Even earlier, from April 29, the Courier Mail has "Motorcyclist hits kangaroo near Texas".

That's Texas, Queensland, folks.

Eight paragraphs, but three are of them are for a separate incident.

Thursday morning, no indication of how early, and injuries multiple, severe but apparently not life-threatening.

I sincerely hope his head's okay.

This highlights one of the big problems with Australia - our native animals tend to be large, heavy and extremely stupid. It's not such a big problem when something cat-sized wanders across the road, although even that can be difficult for a motorcyclist who's not paying attention, but when something fast-moving that weighs more than 100kg jumps in front of you, running off-road and crashing can sometimes be preferable.

The most interesting part of this article is that "the 37-year-old man's motorbike hit the roo". This is a trend in all road accident stories - the driver/rider collides, the vehicle hit. Did the vehicle exhibit sentience and self-determination? No, I don't think so. It's a lazy journalistic short-cut, is what that is.

Overall, fairly well written and with good quotes.

Story 3:

Now: Also from the Courier Mail, from May 11, comes "Chain of plastic garbage bags strung up across road brings down moped rider at Cleveland"

Forget for the moment that whoever wrote that headline needs to be slapped, feast your eyes in incredulity upon what it says.

If the idiot who strung up said bags is caught, do you think they'll be charged with attempted murder? Somehow, a quote like "mischievous behaviour" from the police doesn't really inspire confidence.

As commenters have pointed out, that could easily have been lethal, and a rope or fishing line could have been lethal much more easily.

I'm not sure if I'm less happy with the police response or the journalist for that one, but it really wasn't a great effort.

Story 4:

Finally, returning to the ABC: "Two die in single-vehicle crashes".

Seven paragraphs, the final four devoted to a man in his 20s crashing on the Maleny-Stanley River road.

Now, as I have previously remarked, this stretch of road, which links to the last one, is extraordinarily fun.

It is also potentially quite treacherous, with overhanging trees and suspect verges making gravel patches and wet leaves almost inevitable, particularly before dawn (4:30am) at that altitude and at this time of year, when dew can make a difference.

The forensic crash unit is investigating, apparently. Honestly, with the best will in the world, I can't suggest anything more complicated than that he ran out of talent. His brakes may have grabbed, something else may have failed, but someone on that road at that time is more than likely to have been enjoying themselves.

Sadly, he's not around to tell us and we may never know.

Motorbike accidents in the media, part the inline-6

Okay, it's been a while and there are some old stories (blame the fact that I had to do things I was a.) getting paid for or b.) getting marked on.)

So, I'm going to be dealing with several stories at once.

And, incidentally, one point before I start: If you make your websites auto-refresh through javascript every couple of minutes, you will go to hell where demons will boil your genitals in molten sugar. See the current twitter.com for how to do refreshing properly, unintrusively and data-cheaply.

Anyway.

Story 1:

Motocross bike rider killed (Courier Mail)

Three paragraphs, not including the headline.

Motocross accident, unconfirmed report that he was completing a jump at a Motocross track, the ambulance service was called and couldn't revive him.

I'm really only covering this story because I intended to do them all - it's short, pithy, completely inoffensive and really only got published because it's a local death.

Story 2:

Woman survives motorcycle crash at Toowong (Courier Mail)

Another three paragraphs, but slightly different.

Pulled from under car... Emergency services had to use airbags to lift the car... Apparently crashed into a parked car (WTF?)... taken to hospital with minor foot injuries.

First of all: "survives motorcycle crash" has connotations of something serious, not hitting a parked car and receiving minor foot injuries.

And then: Huh??? She hit a parked car and slid under a car? It doesn't say whether it was the same car, it doesn't say whether the car she ended up under was moving, and I'm scratching my head over how she ended up so thoroughly jammed under a car that airbags were needed to lift it.

I can only assume that the emergency services were exhibiting full care in making sure that they didn't tug someone who may have had a spinal injury.

This article is confusing and asks too many questions.

Story 3:

One dead, two injured in motorcycle crashes on Sunshine Coast (Courier Mail)

Ten very short paragraphs.

First of all - the headline is misleading. It suggests, to me, multiple crashes. Actually there was one incident with three bikes.

Three riders, all in their 50s, at 7:30am, on Peachester Rd.

Go to google maps and have a look via this direct link. It's a fun-looking rd, isn't it?

And it is. It's one of my all-time favourites, in fact, although I prefer the other way, towards Maleny. It's a road I ride whenever I get the opportunity, but I have a healthy respect for it - dappled light and shade making visibility difficult, the risks of leaves and gravel on the road, blind corners and steep drops, and then of course there's the traffic. And it's the first road I really went hard on, and felt confident doing so.

What really gets me in this story is that all three riders crashed, which leads me to one very sad possibility - they were pushing each other, and ran out of talent/luck pretty much together.

Oil on road? Gravel? Another vehicle on the wrong side of the road? Or they were pushing over the centre line and the other vehicle was unfortunate but blameless? All possibilities.

May I repeat, please:

Ride to your own limits.

Ride to your own limts, not someone else's.

Know what those limits are.

Don't be an idiot.

Oh, one last thing:

I'm going to quibble at "No further detail is known at this time."

"No more detail is" or "No further details are," please.

But, well done for pointing that out, and not leaving us to assume that you've just been lazy.

Story 3:

Motorcyclist killed in Springfield (Queensland Times - QT)

Single vehicle accident... Near an intersection... Head injuries and dead at the scene.

So: No details of cause, but near an intersection. 3.30pm, so traffic heavy.

I'm going to suggest that the likelihood of stupidity and evasive-action-gone-wrong are roughly equal.

There should have been witnesses. I would be interested in knowing what the police concluded.

Story 4:

Motorcyclist killed in crash at Forest Lake (Courier Mail - CM)

Hey, it's... Hang on...

It's the same story!

Yes, Stories 3 and 4 are clearly the same. Despite the different suburbs mentioned in the title, a quick look at a map will reveal that the particular intersection under mention is much closer to Forest Lake than it is to Springfield Lakes.

Unfortunately, in this instance, the QT, where I spent two productive and useful weeks as an intern, is looking pretty poor.

The CM article has only two extra paragraphs, but much more detail, including traffic delays, age of the rider, and more (but not many) details of what he was doing.

Frustratingly, anything which would confirm or deny options for how the poor bastard died is once again denied to us. "Lost control" is all very well, but poor judgment, idiocy and having to swerve to avoid any other idiot are all still perfectly valid options.

Frustrating, but a better article here.

Story 5:

Okay, this is a, um, strange one and not really the same...

Man hit by spear while riding scooter (Cairns.com.au)

What. The. Fuck?

Believed to have been hit by a spear... Leg wound... 12.45am... Victim said he saw men running away from the scene.

Okay, I'm going to go with: There are some dangerous idiots out there, who need to be locked up for their own protection before they accidentally annoy someone who makes them pay for it.

Moving on, please.

Story 6:

Motorcyclist trapped under truck dies after crash at Willawong (Courier Mail)

Okay, the headline is a bit weird - it almost sounds as though the motorcyclist became trapped under the truck, which kept on going, and then the truck crashed and the motorcyclist died.

Which, frankly, is possible.

Motorcyclist collided with truck... Emergency services found him trapped under track...

And then the rest of the article is about the Queensland road toll, and mentions other accidents. And a little note that fewer people have died than at the same time last year.

Not even "died on scene."

Oh, now, come on, were you really making an effort? "He hit truck. He was found under truck. In other news..."

Piss off.

Story 7:

Vehicle accidents claim seven lives in southern Qld (ABC News Online)

Incidentally, it has to be "ABC News Online" because "ABC" is the American one, because we're on the Internet. Which is American. Despite having been essentially created by a brit.

Okay, we have a composite wrap-up stype article.

The relevant bit is in paragraphs two to five out of 10.

Motorcyclist hit truck, Friday morning. Location. Died. Truck driver was not injured.

Now, first of all: Tell me something I don't know. A bike hit a truck, and the truck driver wasn't hurt? That's pretty much equivalent to saying a Chinese demonstrator punched a tank and the tank driver wasn't hurt.

But, moving on, it appears to be the same accident as Story 6 above.

I haven't been telling you dates, but trust me, it's the same date, road, and time.

So, did the ABC reporter do any better? Sadly, not really.

She wrote "collided with the truck", but didn't say whether this was the official police line, or an eyewitness account, or shorthand for "They hit. This uses fewer words than "the motorcyclist and a truck collided".

All but useless.

Conclusion:

Short news stories are really, really annoying because the journalist isn't given the time, space or care factor to investigate. But there really should have been more comments along the lines of "Police are investigating..." "Further details are not available at this time..."

Overall, I'm a little disappointed.

At the very least, have a pro-forma that makes this easier!