June 2008 Archives

Today I spent the day in a work sponsored driver safety course, learning how I can be seriously injured or killed by a twisted seat belt, be made a paraplegic by slouching sideways in the passenger seat, and be killed with with a deadly combination of my own flailing arms and the airbag in the event of a car crash.

The name dropping instructor, a slightly eccentric balding older gentleman with an uncanny ability to casually drop 'street' references to drugs and call every other driver out there 'intellectually disabled' in his series of lectures was chiding us on the importance of taking our safety into our own hands.

You never know what the other drivers will do... a red light does not guarantee your safety... someone jacked up on cocaine in a stolen car won't give way to you at a stop sign... don't hit your brakes to discourage tailgating drivers because you never know how sharp their samurai swords are... don't speed in school zones because you are destined to have to pick small children out from under your car... always check for children under your car before you drive off anywhere... truckers are on more pills than a Balinese nightclub so beware etc etc etc.

He was using the recent tragic story about Eli Westlake, who was tragically run down by a Pymble woman who was dosed up on a cocktail of 2 bottles of wine, four Valium tablets, an ecstasy tablet (which the 50 year old instructor referred to as an 'eccy') and two cones. Apparently the two got into a disagreement, during the course of which Eli threw some cheese-balls at the woman's car... she retaliated by driving at him once, clipping him with her mirror... not happy with her work she drove at him again, ramming him down a flight of stairs and crushing him with her car.

The instructor baited us...

"So what does this tell you about your safety, and what you can assume about people?"

- silence from the group of business executives -

"What is the moral of the story?"

The sound of a throat clearing at the back of the room... and then the timid, yet rather mischievous reply...

"Don't throw cheese-balls at cars?"

I have been around on this good green and blue planet for a few years now, and if there is one thing that everyone around me knows to be the single most consistent 'universal truth' in life, it is that the roads and transport authority (RTA) is directed, operated and maintained by a strange race of beings totally lacking any soul, charisma and personality, a strange race of beings that are the bastard offspring of mangy chimpanzees and dull grey snails.

It is unfortunate, but rather unsurprising that the RTA is a government run organisation. No good private company could survive in today's world by treating its customers like cattle, forcing us to take a number then sit and wait in cramped uncomfortable conditions for an hour, while we watch a grand total of 4 RTA workers serve 100 customers with all the speed of a disabled and mentally retarded slug.

Then when we get to the counter, we get patronised and abused by overweight sweaty middle aged men whose lives didn't exactly turn out the way they had imagined as children.

Today I filled out a form upgrading my riders licence, and accidentally ticked the wrong box. There are around 100 boxes on those bloody forms, and I ticked 1 wrong. So technically I got 99% on that test, which is a High Distinction as far as I am concerned, but apparently I was mistaken.

The sweating overweight man looked through the form while he was holding my licence, stopped and looked up at me, then looked back at the form, and slowly tilted his head up towards me with a condescending look in his eyes.

"So, you can't read right?"

"Sorry?"

"Do you need reading lessons or something?"

"Why?"

"You filled out the form wrong... they run reading classes at TAFE, I suggest you enroll in one."

I was a little thrown... but there was my mistake, all light up in blue biro. To answer a question asking if I had held a NSW licence before, I had ticked NO, confusing it with all the other questions about drug convictions, cancelled licences and disabilities that could affect my driving. So I made a mistake, did I need to be abused for it?

Later in the conversation he had another shot at me. Pig.

"Uh, looks like there is a fee on that licence"

"Of course there is... nothing is for free nowadays."

"Yeah, some things are still for free... the library for instance... oh wait, you can't use it because you can't read."

In my head I visualised squeezing through the security glass and beating him to death with his stapler, then pinning his stupid little RTA name badge (which said 'carl' for the record) to his tongue along with what I am assuming would be a very short educational transcript.

But because I didn't feel like getting arrested, I didn't. But let me just end through the power of an open letter...

Dear Carl from the RTA at Hornsby,

Will.