Signal before you turn, idiots

To the 40-ish woman in the grey hatchback, and the many others who drive in the same manner, please re-read your drivers' instruction manuals or whatever guides you used to get your licence.

Not using your indicator lights until you've already stopped and are already turning makes zero sense. It does not help other road users at all.

Indicate before you turn.

Do I have to take a wooden mallet to you guys or something?

More failure to read signs

So I am headed into town from Harbour Road and behind a line of cars. I was shocked to see that a car coming from the Trimmingham Hill side of the roundabout (all illustrated to the right) cut off a driver headed normally along lane 1 into East Broadway. On top of that the driver of the other car is shouting at them to give way there! Does he not know the law as pertains to rush hour traffic there? During rush hour, so as to encourage traffic to flow from the extremely busy Harbour Road side (it's not really Harbour Road, can't recall the name right now), Lane 1 is for traffic from Harbour Road only, Lane 2 is for traffic coming from Trimmingham Hill and Berry Hill Road (not pictured, but it's opposite Harbour Road in this example). Once you're in East Broadway itself you can switch lanes accordingly. But this idiot driver didn't know the correct protocol!

Anyway, the point is that it's disgusting to see that drivers don't even know the damn rules and want to be all belligerant about it when they're clearly in the wrong.

The mindset of a reckless rider, maybe

Booking AW390 for overtaking a line of traffic including near a corner. I think that the attention given by the Road Safety Council to the road safety issues of late has raised awareness somewhat this week among a small sector of the population, but there's going to be a large sector that frankly isn't going to give a crap about gimmicks and stuff when they know there's a line of traffic, they like to speed (and look 'cool') and they're comfortable in the belief that the other drivers will make way for their aggressive driving, and that there won't be any punishment lurking in the form of officers, video cameras or an unforseen tragedy.

Finally, action?

It's extremely overdue, and several lives have unfortunately been lost in the interim, but there's the actual prospect of action being taken by the Road Safety Council that's not lip service or the like being considered now.

I trust that they'll actually pay attention to the statistics and what members of the public are trying to say regarding what's wrong and what's needed to try to change the culture of recklessness(TM) when it comes to Bermuda's roads.

That means: no knee-jerk reactions to a teenager crashing and wanting to crackdown on all teen riders. No knee-jerk reactions to a tourist crashing and wanting to crackdown on all tourists who want to rent a scooter.

It means: focus on the things that are causing this chaos. Particularly:

• driving under the influence
• third-lane riding
• total lack of using indicators
• ignoring stop signs and traffic lights
• failure of the public to understand protocol for intersections, roundabouts and pedestrian crossings
• not paying attention to pedal cyclists and pedestrians particularly at corners
• cell phone abuse, especially when combined with one of the above

Also, recognising finally that it's grown adults who are causing the majority of these incidents, not teenagers, not tourists, not the elderly. Grown men and women who live here.

What actions need to be taken?

• Book people who violate any of the above. That means have officers at intersections in and outside of town prepared to ticket people, not just hanging at the end of East Broadway when traffic's at a crawl. Have checkpoints near Spice Valley or by the Reefs or Shelley Bay Park.
• If someone's off the road already, quadruple the fine.
• Get those video cameras up and active at those frequent accident spots. Legislate their use so that when someone breaks the law and causes an 'accident', they can be effectively spotted and prosecuted.
• Speaking of fines, increase them. I hate the Gazette for screwing up their archive, but there was a report in January of 2007 that indicated that Police believes that people would rather keep paying the $50 fines than cut their speed.
• Politicians need to set a freaking example and stop driving with bad habits, most notably cell phone abuse. Police officers driving shouldn't be honking at their buddies. Taxi drivers shouldn't be ambulance-chasing.
• I don't have hope that this is going to have a major effect, but Dejon Simmons needs to be part of any campaign to alert the public on road safety. His story needs to be rebroadcast.

It's past time to take off the kid gloves. The Bermudian public at large is not listening to the pleas to drive with care. Take those who aren't, off our roads. The vehicles, too, if necessary. Oh, and let them know that prison awaits those who drive after being taken off, too.

Can I install a water gun to my bike?

This ticked me off the other day. Riding along Somerset Road the other day and I'm behind a woman driving a red car. She is annoying me with her waving her lit cigarette out the window while she's driving. Little red sparks flew up toward me and I'm glad I had my visor down, really. Of course this was followed by the standard toss the finished butt into the road where it bounced near my bike.

Stupid numb-brain bitch.

If I had the technical know-how I'd try to rig up a small water gun to my bike and soak the ciggy once it was outside the window. Polluting litterbug.

Heck, it would also serve as double when drivers fire their windshield wiper fluid all up and over the hood and into my face anyway. I wonder if I can enlist Wookie and others to get some tips...

Kids on bicycles, with phones

Yesterday I'm heading home along Palmetto Road and I see this kid on his pedal cycle, one hand motioning a left-turn (props for that!), but the other hand's wielding a cell phone. So this kid's riding one-handed, briefly no-handed, with a cellphone to his ear!

I was impressed with his ability to maintain balance on an uneven road, but really, that's a sign it's gone too far. 10-year old kids shouldn't be doing that.