Spent the day in Sydney

[Big Dave]

Covered a model release in sydney today, spent a few hours riding.

Asked the affable cabbie on the way to the airport. 'How much to drive from southeast sydney to northwest sydney in tolls?'

'Abowt $20 Dollar.'

Traffic conditions compared to auckland - really, about the same, standard of driving and courtesy - better.

Road conditions - pot holes etc. Worse than here (akl) currently.

[Quailboy]

Australia is so overated.

[98tls]

Have often heard the standard of driving/drivers is better over the ditch.Why do you think that is Dave? Besides the fact that it is.............

[PirateJafa]

What's this? A thread by Big Dave with no pictures?

This thread is worthless without etc etc...

[Big Dave]

Have often heard the standard of driving/drivers is better over the ditch.Why do you think that is Dave? Besides the fact that it is.............

Some of it is osmosis - you look like more of a dick if everyone else is being cool.

Different codes, the way the roads are marked and the way those markings are observed plays a big part too.

[Big Dave]

And no stupid fucking give way to the car turning in front of you rule

[Big Dave]

The harbour remains superb your jafferness

[98tls]

Some of it is osmosis - you look like more of a dick if everyone else is being cool.

Different codes, the way the roads are marked and the way those markings are observed plays a big part too. Lot of Aussies on the TL website and over the years many have come over on holiday and when home have posted WTF threads about our driving habits.Only thing i can add is when over there myself i had the misfortune to get pinged by a copper for in his words "excessive speed" coming out of a rather enjoyable mountain range road,once pleasantries were exchanged which went on to "ive a kiwi mate" he let me on my way with a warning.Nice.

[Forest]

Covered a model release in sydney today, spent a few hours riding.

Asked the affable cabbie on the way to the airport. 'How much to drive from southeast sydney to northwest sydney in tolls?'

'Abowt $20 Dollar.'

Motorbikes don't have to pay tolls in Sydney. :Punk:

[Big Dave]

Motorbikes don't have to pay tolls in Sydney. :Punk:

According to said cabbie. 'all vehicle pay same toll.'

There may be a credibility gap though.

And I'm still on Sydney time.

[Marknz]

Motorbikes don't have to pay tolls in Sydney. :Punk:

unless it has changed in the last 4 months, motorcyclists do have to pay tolls in Sydney.

[slimjim]

so the few hours riding...on what.?

[vifferman]

The harbour remains superb your jafferness
That's true.
The Waitemata (and the Coathanger) are not particularly inspiring in comparison.

[Headbanger]

Sydney and Auckland are equally shit. Sydney has way hotter girls,cheaper and better drugs.Scum around every corner.

Witnessed and was caught in so many bullshit traffic accidents during my three years in Sydney that there is no way I would vouch for the quality of the driving.

[Big Dave]

so the few hours riding...on what.?

New automatic Spyder. I'll post it up on the kiwirider site soonish.

[gijoe1313]

So BD, whats the goss on the new rides you flew ova da ditch fer eh? C'mon spill! :oi-grr:

I dunno, on a junket that pays him to ride bikes and a thread wiv'out any piccies of 'em! Shenanigans I call! :msn-wink:

[Big Dave]

So BD, whats the goss on the new rides you flew ova da ditch fer eh? C'mon spill! :oi-grr:

I dunno, on a junket that pays him to ride bikes and a thread wiv'out any piccies of 'em! Shenanigans I call! :msn-wink:


Answered as you were asking.

[Big Dave]

there is no way I would vouch for the quality of the driving.


It has a 'WTF is this guy doing?' quotient of about .75 that of Auckland's.

[Forest]

According to said cabbie. 'all vehicle pay same toll.'

There may be a credibility gap though.

And I'm still on Sydney time.

I apologise - I was completely wrong about the tolls in Sydney.


Motorcyclists can use a tag or a pass on fully electronic motorways. Currently, motorcycles are not charged administration fees for passes. For all other toll roads, you can use a tag or pay cash.

http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/usingroads/motorwaysandtolling/tollroad_faqs.html

[martybabe]

And no stupid fucking give way to the car turning in front of you rule

Well that is good news, who the heck came up with that gem. Hey as a NZ noob, has that always been the rule or did some crazy change it over night.:blink:

[vtec]

I'm in Melbourne and I've noticed, that because they've got it so good in most places, they get intolerant quickly of having to wait or even slow for anything. Plus there is a culture of venting with your horn here. Everybody toots, and they love pointing out when people are doing something they conceive as slightly out of order.

Part of it is because they've got excellent driving conditions and roads compared to Auckland, so aren't used to being held up. Part of it is because they are snobbier than Aucklander's and get off on telling people what to do more often. And because the people are softer you are much less likely to get into a fight over letting someone know they're being a nonce.

I'm pretty sure the reason why it doesn't happen in Auckland as much is because if you toot someone or give them a piece of your mind they are much more likely to attempt to take your head off.

Melbourne is a much softer city than Auckland in terms of the way people treat each other. They often point out minor faults, but it seems way safer here than Auckland.

However, it is dangerous here for bicycles, because although they have lots of bicycle lanes. It is rare for there to be a right turning arrow, so the cars turning right at an intersection tend to go on the orange/red. It's a good system because it means that most intersections only have two phases which speeds up traffic flow, but if you are a bit slow in going straight through on an orange then you could get a faceful of some muppet running the red turning right, as bicycles are still invisible to cars even in a city with about 100 times as many cyclists as Auckland.

Cyclists get killed here much more often than Auckland, but it does have 3 times the population, and way more cyclists being a flat cyclist friendly city.

And yes, the girls are damn hot, but again it helps to be in a group, and most groups are formed from school friends or cultural subgroups like emo's/punks/rock/groupies/homosexuals (very fashion focussed, the people have too much money and not enough sense/cents). And if you don't fit into those groups and don't have any long term groups of local friends, then you haven't got much of a chance scoring the hot girls. Still I've done far better here than I ever did in Auckland, although part of that is to do with my personal mentality of not "crapping in your own nest". I've had my fun here over the past year, and have kind of put womanising on the backburner cause I'm trying to save some money now that I just quit my job and am returning to a very poor NZ.

[Big Dave]

That's some interesting observations - I've usually been too worried about falling in the tram tracks and where I'm going as I've been riding through.

[vtec]

Haha, yes I've crashed my bicycle three times due to tram tracks alone (once I was EXTREMELY drunk though). I think I've only crashed about 5 or 6 times all up. They are really bad for the skinny wheels on road bicycles.

[warewolf]

Well that is good news, who the heck came up with that gem. Hey as a NZ noob, has that always been the rule or did some crazy change it over night.:blink:The Aussie state of Victoria introduced it in the seventies. NZ followed suit. The Mexicans woke up to the fact that it is a shocker, and revoked it in the eighties.

When you change the road rules, there is normally a short-term increase in accidents as drivers adjust to the new regime. Now, the interesting thing is that when this rule was changed, there was no upward spike in accidents, rather they instantly reduced. That to me says way more about how fscked the rule is than anything else.

NZ should get with the times, fix it and move on.

[Forest]

I'm in Melbourne and I've noticed, that because they've got it so good in most places, they get intolerant quickly of having to wait or even slow for anything. Plus there is a culture of venting with your horn here. Everybody toots, and they love pointing out when people are doing something they conceive as slightly out of order.


Hello fellow Melburnian!

I agree with pretty much everything you said. The tram-tracks are also a problem for motorbikes also - I smashed up a rental bike about 18 months ago.

However not all the drivers here are mellow and laid back. This story appeared The Age this morning:



Road-rage Motorcyclist Pointed Gun

A WOMAN who had a shotgun pointed at her during a road rage incident believes the only reason she was not shot was that her baby daughter was in the car with her.

The woman, who wanted to be known only as Lucy, was driving north on the Hume Highway in Somerton at 5pm on Tuesday when she accidentally cut off a motorcyclist.

The man then sped up and stopped suddenly in front of Lucy's white sedan in heavy traffic. He produced what the terrified 32-year-old believes was a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun and pointed it through the windscreen at her and her baby.

"I had my nine-month-old daughter in the middle of the back seat, who was in direct firing shot of the gun, and I didn't move to protect her, I didn't flinch, I just froze. I can't explain it," Lucy said yesterday.

"I kept thinking to myself that if the gun was loaded, that's what stopped him, seeing the little baby playing in the back seat."

After pointing the gun for a few seconds, the man turned around and Lucy seized the opportunity to drive away.

Seconds later the man sped past her on his small red sports bike, dodging in and out of the heavy traffic, and disappeared.

However, Lucy was scared that he would wait further up the road to shoot at the car as she drove past. She said she was certain other drivers must have seen the incident, and asked them to come forward.

"I want him caught. I don't want anyone to experience that, it's horrible," she said.

The rider is described as having fair skin, aged between 16 and 26 and was wearing a dark T-shirt and light jeans. His helmet may have been of an open-face design or enclosed with the visor open.

link (http://www.theage.com.au/national/roadrage-motorcyclist-pointed-gun-20081112-5o1i.html)

[Big Dave]

Yeah - we are painting with very broad brushes here.

[warewolf]

An update... article in the AA magazine online: The Right Rule (http://www.aadirections.co.nz/Issues/Summer2008/issues/rightrule.php)

The origin of this rule: in Melbourne trams run down the middle of the road. Cars cannot queue in the middle of the road waiting to turn right. So this rule was created to avoid cars blocking trams in the Melbourne CBD.

In other words, take away the trams and it has no reason for being.


Peter King looks into a law change

You have probably seen the surreal New Zealand Transport Agency TV advertisement, with the wheel of fortune being spun every time a driver enters an intersection. It comes with the warning to stop gambling at intersections by obeying the give way rules. But there is evidence that our give way rules themselves are a factor in the 2,560 intersection crashes, and one or two deaths, each year.
This has been known in official circles for 10 years, but all efforts – by the Minister of Transport Safety, the Ministry of Transport, the Land Transport Agency, Police, local government, the Institution of Professional Engineers, Cyclists Advocates Network, Living Streets Aotearoa and the AA – to change the rule have been voted down by a Cabinet concerned it would be too hard for the public to cope with.
The current give way rule was introduced in 1977 and holds that a vehicle turning right takes precedence over a vehicle turning left. The rule came from Victoria, Australia originally to assist trams on Melbourne’s streets. But Victoria changed back in 1993 and experienced a decline in intersection crashes as a result. Today, New Zealand is the only country in the world with this priority rule.
The most obvious deficiency with the existing rule occurs when two cars travelling in opposite directions reach a T-intersection at the same time. In theory, the car turning right across the oncoming stream of traffic has precedence over the car turning left with the traffic behind it. But the car turning right may have to first give way to oncoming traffic following behind the turning vehicle. The driver of the car turning left has to guess – will the car turning right across the traffic wait for another car coming up behind to pass through the intersection? If so, there is time to slip around the corner. Or, will the driver turning right risk crossing in front of the car approaching from behind the one signalling left? In that case, the left-turning driver must wait.

At this point, the driver workload is very high for all parties, so pedestrians crossing the street or cyclists on the inside of the stream of traffic are at greatest risk of being overlooked and hit.
Of course, this assumes the car signalling to turn left really intends doing so. Sometimes people are signalling because they have forgotten to turn their indicator off; anyone turning right across their path will get a very nasty surprise. Police attend 40 to 50 injury crashes of this type a year.
Then there is the situation which always confuses: two cars at an intersection, both wishing to turn right. A good example of this is when you are exiting from the car park and want to turn right to the opposite side of the road. Then another car stops on your left signalling to turn right into the car park you’re leaving. Under the current rule, if there is no traffic proceeding across in front of you (from the right), you have right of way over the car in the street signalling a right turn. The car waiting to enter the car park must give way – to the oncoming cars, and all the cars on their right, exiting from the car park. That can be a long wait in fast-moving traffic.
In practice, many prefer to get out of the stream of traffic coming up fast behind them by disobeying the give way rule altogether.
The alternatives are both simpler and safer.
With a left-turn priority, when two cars reach the T-intersection together, the car turning left only has to check for hazards on the left, and turn. The right-turning car must give way to everyone, so the risk of making a mistake is minimal.
At the car park exit, the car exiting always gives way; the car entering merely gives way to opposing traffic. Again, it’s simpler and safer.
Which is why the rest of the world doesn’t use our give way system, and this in itself is important. New Zealand receives 2.4 million overseas visitors per year. Two-thirds of these are Australians, Britons and Americans who are more likely to self-drive than let a coach operator show them around. This means that in summer there could be up to 100,000 tourists at any given time driving on a foreign licence following the give way rules that they learned at home.
A change from the right-hand turner having priority to the left-hand turner having priority would require a transitional public education campaign, but the benefit would certainly be greater than the cost.