N900: Ah, Linux in your pocket

I recently, as anybody who keeps an eye on this blog may have noticed, got my hands on an N97 mini and found it nice but wanting.

Then, in a rare (not being sarcastic, it really was rare) moment of brain-fartery I left it on the roof of my friend's car, from where it hit the ground and was run over by a tram in Melbourne.

Which left me back on the old N95. Which is now unusable because the ribbon cable to the screen broke.

Which, of course, left me needing a replacement and, despite the availability of the brand new Nokia N8 and a swag of new Android devices, I went for something with confirmed power but an uncertain future. Oh, and a keyboard and a Debian-based operating system.

I got a Nokia N900.

This is therefore my usual rambling sort of things-I've-noticed post, and this time not only am I writing it on the device, I'll be posting it as well, using the MaStory blogging app.

So anything could happen.

It is, first and foremost, a Linux computer. This is very, very cool. It means that all sorts of things that wouldn't normally be possible, are. Application having problems? Run it from the command line and see what it says. Try doing that on a different platform!

I am, right now, cheating slightly by writing a few paragraphs from my desktop computer, using vim, after ssh-ing into the N900. Yes, that's all possible.

This is not a phone that grew up and wants to be a computer - this is a computer that shrank enough to be a phone.

The build quality is up to Nokia's usual standard, which is to say: potentially great, but on this device about 95 per cent of great. There are a couple of little niggling things to do with fit and close lines, but generally absolutely solid. The biggest worry is the neat little kickstand that folds out from around the camera housing. It just feels fragile, quite apart from being off-centre.

Now, some specifics:

The screen isn't up to capacitive levels of sensitivity, but is rather good and the image quality is truly stellar. Everything is fantastically crisp.

Camera: great. Software interface less so, and I am disappointed to see that the excellent night mode available on the N95 and N97, with the same camera hardware, is not there. Dual LED flash very nice and there's a program available to use it as a torch.

Speakers: as good as the old benchmark N95, just about.

Text entry: for some reason, there's no on-screen display of the old Nokia standard 'abc/Abc/ABC' lower-case, first-letter-upper, all-upper notification. As it sometimes but not always automatically capitalises first letters (there's a setting for that), it would be nice to know, you know?

The Notes application is a different approach to the 'list of simple notes' application in S60, and damn it's good. A proper little rich-text word processor. I'm using it here (or I was, until I copied and pasted - which is not only possible, but uses desktop-standard keybindings - into MaStory.

Which brings me to: the keyboard. It's so much better than the N97 mini's keyboard, actually friendly to my slightly long thumbnails, good feel and nice rounded profile for easier usage. Could be even more pronounced, but that would probably impact upon the already, um 'noticeable' thickness of the device. Also, having the apostrophe needing an extra key press is a bit annoying for those of us who know how to use it properly. The only other issue is that, as All About Symbian noted, it would be slightly easier to use if taller.

And then there's the writing aids. Has auto-completion but it's quite weak. Has no auto-correction. Having said that, it copes fairly intelligently with punctuation and seems to learn for the auto-completion, which is nice and will no doubt be quite helpful.

Now: Nokia didn't provide any MMS functionality on this device. A fantastic camera, all data options, full multi-tasking, but no MMS. Didn't they *learn* from the first iPhone? There is, however, fMMS, from The Community Of Developers, to fill the gap. Nokia have even released a semi-official statement saying, in essence, "We're not going to provide MMS functionality because, well, gee, isn't it just *swell* someone in the community did our work for us?"

Now, the first problem with that approach is the comment from early in the development cycle to the effect that "I can't make it work yet because it's a proprietary Nokia API." The second problem is the hell of a time I had making it work. I managed it, but I still have no idea how (I think you have to have the right GPRS and WAP APNs configured, but *not* an APN for MMS, let fMMS take care of it).

The third problem is the fact that, as I was swearing with it, I found that my current provider, Crazy John's, don't provide MMS configuration settings for the N900 because it's not necessary on a device that can't do that. Crazy John's have quite another problem in insisting upon doing everything with auto-config SMS instead of just providing a list of bloody settings (you can find them if you go to the Android FAQ pages) but you should be able to see my point: no official supply means no support. Good one, Nokia, for ignoring a fundamental piece of a modern phone.

Oh yes, and not only but also: WTF were you thinking, Nokia, when you built Ovi Maps for Maemo with no provision to keep, let alone sync, bookmarks? There is a workaround - have a Contact for each bookmark, with full address, and it will give you a little globe icon that opens that place in Maps. But oh dear, for a company that invested so much (buying NAVTEQ, for a start) in GPS and mapping - just not good enough.

Moving on.

Multiple homescreens: I'm not convinced it's the greatest idea of all time. There are more efficient ways of launching applications, and it's really only an advantage for dynamic widgets. I think that HTC's way of doing an overview - thumbnails of desktops filled with widgets - is an excellent idea if you're going to have multiple screens. The N900 could do this - it would just be a modification of the current, fully dynamic and live task manager view of running apps. Damn, I wish I had the skills to program that.

There's a problem with some Qt applications. After spending huge amounts on purchasing Trolltech and their Qt, and coming up with two cross-platform device strategies, some twat at Nokia let a release out the door with a default setting for some text fields of black on black. Truly, WTF?

When it was launched, it was notorious for not having any form of portrait mode. That has slowly improved, but where it does appear there are bugs and issues. In typical Nokia fashion, we find a huge WTF in the web browser which, in portrait, gives you a couple of option buttons but no way to access others until you rotate back to landscape. So you can't, for example, close a web page. This is annoying.

Overall, I am enjoying it immensely. None of the twitter clients are as good as Gravity on Symbian (not much is) and at least one of them still hasn't been updated for OAuth and some of them don't work very well at all and the best of them isn't in the repositories yet, but that's a niggling issue next to the sheer power of the device.

Unfortunately, I also have to say "potential" about a device which has run up against a change in Nokia strategy and may be orphaned very soon, but there are some very good developers and they are doing some very good stuff.

And oh, the shiny is great with this one.

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.