Category - General

Just a quick note to the rotund asshole driving the pale blue Vauxhall Meriva (reg. no. BG54 SUK ) in Long Eaton this morning… my pupil was having a bad enough day as it was.

You undertaking dangerously on the inside lane of a merge – when you had no right to do so whatsoever – didn’t help him.

I’m sure that makes you feel a lot better.

I have my own views on these. They were originally intended to warn other drivers that there was a child in the car. In itself, that has value from a safety perspective.

The problem is that the instant you had more than one car with the same sign in the window, they started to have less impact.

That impact was reduced still further by “little princess” and “cheeky monkey” signs – and the myriad other variations.

You still see the occasional “baby an bord” sign – which has to be one of the most pointless ones, even though I think it may have been the original (the concept came over here from Europe).

These days, just about everyone who has kids has the damned things. And all you have to do is go anywhere near a school in the morning or afternoon to see the value these signs have as far as the people displaying them are concerned. Some of the most dangerous driving imaginable comes from people picking up or dropping off their kids from/to school.

So, based on my own personal experience, they are meaningless nowadays.

The Wirral Globe has an entertaining series of exchanges via letters to the editor. I won’t reproduce all of them – just the links. But here is the letter that sparked it all off:

IT IS no good. I feel an irresistible rant coming on and must write.

I’m a former driving instructor and know I speak for many motorists in expressing my irritation with those pathetic idiots who feel the need to inform us that they have a ‘baby on board.’

For Heaven’s sake, don’t they realise that no one on the planet has the smallest interest in their reproductive status?

Recently I have seen one car advertising not only ‘baby on board’ but also ‘child on board’ and even – wait for it – “little star on board”. Pass the sick-bag!

Another proud driver felt it necessary even to inform us of the names of his three little treasures (‘Aimee on board’ etc.) Yuck!

On a serious level there are several problems with this stupid, self-important and indeed potentially dangerous practice. For example:- 1. Annoying other road users unnecessarily is an infringement of the Highway Code.

2. Sticking a notice – or worse, two or three of them – on the rear window is an excellent way of obstructing the driver’s rear view.

3. In the unfortunate event of a motorway smash, it is surely unacceptable for emergency services to have to waste time, at possible risk to themselves, searching for a non-existent passenger – for, as we’ve all noticed, there very rarely even is a baby, child or (retch!) “little star” in the vehicle at all.

Is it not high time this practice was banned by law?

What do other readers think?

He really lit the blue touch paper with that! Here are the links to the subsequent replies – and remember that at the time of writing, the responses are still coming in:

• response #1
• response #2
• response #3
• response #4
• response #5

As an aside, if you ever watch Dragon’s Den, just about every episode has someone on who got pregnant, had a kid, contracted some sort of brain-melting disorder equivalent to stepping a few million years down the evolutionary ladder, and then decided that no one else had ever opened a shop selling baby stuff, designed a range of baby clothes, invented a new flavour of baby food, thought of a new way of washing nappies (or disposing of nappies), or any number of other baby-related things.

And don’t think it’s just the mothers. When I was in the rat race, you’d go to someone’s cubicle or office and wonder what the hell visitors thought when they saw all the crap on display. Painted egg boxes, coloured stones, crumpled sheets of paper with random splodges of gaudy watercolour paint all over it, photographs… People pretended to be interested – let’s face it, the only ones who could sincerely admire it would be the ones with the same degenerative brain conditions – but it was a mess. So much of a mess, in fact, that if the visitor was high-ranking and internal (i.e. likely to be able to advance the career of the person in question) all the crap would be hidden away.

But I digress. The author of that letter has a point. Those signs are not put there for the original purpose of safety. They can’t be, given how those displaying them often drive. They ARE put there to say “we’ve got a baby”!

Sticking a “baby on board” sign in the car when you have a baby – and converting it to a “little princess” or “cheeky monkey” sign when they’re old enough – is a basic routine in parenthood. It means nothing.

I did a trackback using my web traffic data and found a link on someone’s blog (who links to this one) to another blog.

Now, I would hope that this blog has maybe inspired a few other people to set one up of their own - whatever walks of life they might come from. But I was a bit surprised to find one which has almost the same name as mine, and which seemed to draw on some of my articles for its own content. It even has a similar tagline.

I wonder if I should be flattered or offended?

I think I’ll go with the first one. After all, it might just be a complete coincidence – there are bound to be common topics in this business.

On the subject of plagiarism though, I once went round to a friends house to fix his son’s computer. I had to wait while the lad printed off his homework – it was the entire Wikipedia page about Shakespeare. The worrying thing is that he probably got an A for it.

As for web forums, people seem to think that cut-and-paste or just linking to articles somehow reflects on their own knowledge and intelligence. Weeeell… it does… because in most cases - if you trouble to follow the link and digest the content (or find the full article they cut-and-pasted from) - you inevitably find that they simply haven’t understood what they’ve posted or linked to. In many cases, they clearly haven’t even read it, let alone understood it.

Plagiarism, simple copying, or verbatim answers often provide a useful insight into what – and how - people think.

Silver Mercedes with prat-plates – Reg. SAN 5S .

I’ve not done one of these for a while – I was getting too many and decided only to mention the extreme cases in future.

Going to a lesson this morning in Long Eaton, and travelling along Queens Road in Beeston. I’d noticed this Mercedes behind me driving slowly and holding up the traffic as I went past the bingo hall.

As I got to the traffic lights at Station Road he still hadn’t caught up. The lights changed and I carried on – and just as the two lanes started to merge I saw him accelerate. There was nowhere for him to go, but judging by his appearance the senile dementia didn’t allow for a change of plan. He forced me over and to brake hard as he cut in front.

He then proceeded to drive at 30mph in the 40mph zone (just as he’d been driving at barely more than 20mph in the 30mph zone previously). Precisely what was going through his idiot brain is anyone’s guess.

I made it clear I considered he had a problem in the general between-ear area. I think he replied that he had two problems, if I understood his sign language correctly. I didn’t get the chance to clarify, because he turned off at Meadow Lane towards Chilwell and refused to make eye contact (always a sign of guilt).

According to the BBC, South Gloucestershire could join Somerset in turning off its speed cameras after funding runs out at the end of March.

The BBC also believes that the end of funding could also affect neighbouring areas.

I posted recently about evidence that strongly supports the idea that cameras reduce speed and therefore actively reduce the risk of death. This was from Devon and Cornwall – another area at risk of losing its cameras, it seems.

The BBC report makes one thing crystal clear:

The changes are due to cuts in government funding.