Call to arms for Victorian Motorcyclists and road users
— By Trevor Hedge (in angry mode)
Are you sick of the mentality of lawmakers when it comes to motorcyclists and road users in general?
Sick of the freeloading, safety gravy train that academics and universities are getting a free ride on?
I definitely am!
I was invited to speak at a road safety conference and it was an eye opener. I found myself seated at a table with academics who earn their living by trying to help governments enforce more and more restrictive rules on an apathetic populace.
As an invited speaker, I accepted the offer of free travel to the conference and lodgings while there. However, unlike the academics, I knocked back the free footy tickets, dinners and other things that other conference attendees appear to take for granted.
These people do not live in the real world.
There is nothing this lot of nerdy bureaucrats love to do more than try and make the life of road users increasingly difficult, being well practiced in using every means at their disposal to make that happen. As a by-product of course, they also earn themselves and their universities more research grants from grateful, revenue-collecting governments in the process. No conflicts of interest there?
It’s a bit like the current ATV furore over the move to mandatory rollover protection bars on ATVs. Guess who the prime agitator for this move is…? You wouldn’t believe it if I told you that it was the people currently importing rollover protection bars for ATVs? Well believe it: this Monty Pythonesque skit is being received by those in power, with open arms. They just love making more rules, more bureaucracy; -it is what they live for… They are like a parasite trying to suck the freedom out of you, it is that freedom that is a big part of what it means to be human. But those whose DNA has more Merino strains than human, just take it all in their stride and nod complicitly in agreement with yet another restriction on our freedom.
Our dark lord masters in Victoria have launched a new survey to gauge public opinion as they seek to increase penalties, restrict freedoms and basically try to suffocate the life out of anyone who enjoys their pulse rising above resting rate.
I did find humour in their web address for the survey, it includes the word justice. Look up the definition of that word. It surely has nothing to do with the ‘guilty until proven innocent, and we make it impossible to prove your innocence’ (bikie, hoon, toll, speed camera) legislation that our whimpering MPs slip through Parliament without question. Merino is too strong a breed to describe these lemmings.
It is of extreme importance that you fill in this survey. It is crafted to provoke predictable responses towards motorcyclists by the larger public.
A case in point is their wording of the question that is clearly about legislating for the fitting of front number plates to motorcycles.
“Requiring motorcycles to have the same level of identification as other vehicles.”
The responses available are the standard five scales, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Not hard to see which box non-motorcyclists are going to tick, is it?
The introduction to the page concerning motorcyclists contains the following leading statements before the questions.
“Research by Victoria’s road safety agencies shows.
“Motorcyclists make up 1 per cent of road users but account of 16 per cent of all fatalities and serious injuries.”
“Motorcyclists who do not wear protective clothing at are higher risk of serious injury.
“Nearly 60 per cent of speeding motorcyclists do not get fined because speed cameras are not able to identify them.”
Of course the survey makers can just say they are stating the facts as they see it. Of course we know they have cherry picked three sentences to inflame anyone that has a slight prejudice towards motorcycles.
But these gravy-train academics do not see shades of grey, only black and white, and given half a chance they would not only legislate all motorcycles off the road, but cars as well. Cars and motorcycles move, thus they can cause a collision, thus are dangerous – is the way they see things.
Despite their undoubtedly high IQs, these academics are, in real terms, imbeciles incapable of abstract thought and consideration about what makes us human. If the human race had depended on their type for our development through the ages we would still be vegetarians living in caves, the hunting part of hunting and gathering they would deem too dangerous.
If they weren’t so serious in their quest to further curtail our rights this would be seen as comedy but those few paragraphs reveal the real reason for this part of the survey:
To legislate for front number plates so they can raise more revenue from speed cameras.
And to enforce the wearing of protective clothing, fluoro no less! Which is part of a larger movement gaining strength in the halls of power and bureaucracy.
I wonder if they will make the Hells Angels wear a fluoro bib over their colours…?
Click this link and fill in the survey, and urge your friends and family to do it also. The numbers will be against us no matter how many of us do it but we can make it a more slender gap than otherwise by exercising our right to a say. Do not let your apathy work against you, do it
