Category Archives: Road Manners

Good road manners is a important riding and social skill for roadcyclists.

Post-holiday angry rant part 2 – ute driving bogans

Dear Rouleurs,

This blog will be part 2 in a 3 part series in what MMT is now calling his Angry Rant series. MMT was going to write about the theft of hisbeloved black, Sttoke coffee cup. That will now be part 3. However a close encounter with another bogan dickhead in a ute, this morning, left MMT fuming and now a few hours later somewhat amused.

MMT was cruising past Elwood Beach at about 6:45am when some bogan dickhead rolled down the passenger side window of a white flat bed ute to scream “Get off the road!!”. MMT gave the bogan dickhead the middle finger and continued on his way. About 5 minutes later, the bogan dickhead passes me again with the same ridiculous outburst. This time MMT is prepared with an iphone  handy. The bogan dickhead ute has been stopped by traffic lights on St Kilda Road. MMT catches up and starts taking photos.

As you the reader can see, MMT snapped the licence plate, YBM 890, the make of the ute, Mitsubishi Triton and a good close up of this loser covering his face. If that’s not a sign of guilt, then MMT is not sure what else would be more damning. May be video evidence would do the trick.  My guess this bogan may have had a ‘oh shit’ moment, where suddenly something that must have been amusing to him, has suddenly become something with potentially nasty consequences.  MMT wonders if this P-plate driver doesn’t have some ‘form’ or ‘priors’.

Stiil, it Just goes to show the civilising power of a mobile phone with a camera, can level the playing field. If there had been less traffic around MMT would have stopped and taken further photos.   Not so chipper now Mr Bogan Dickhead, are you??  Oh well. So the question is what to do with this ‘smoking gun’ other than naming and shaming in this blog.

Either way I offer a heartfelt ‘Vaffanculo!!!’ with the appropriate hand gesture to this bogan dickhead.

Marv

Cycling Hand Signals from our friends in Copenhagen

Dear Rouleurs,

It has been a while since MMT posted a good cycling infographic. Happily, MMT stumbled across one, yesterday, in the FLAB group on Facebook. Some FLABer must have seen it on Twitter. As a happy plagiarist, MMT provides a link to the original content here Copenhagen Cycling Signals. MMT particularly likes the disapproval and bike stolen signals.

Until next time, ride safe.

MMT.

The sad tale of Obikes in Melbourne

Dear Rouleurs,

What is it about OBikes that has Melbournians so worked up?? MMT rides past many of the bikes in his travels and has been amazed by the amount of vandalism that bikes have experienced. In fact MMT wonders how the operators of the scheme actually make a profit given the trail of carnage he’s seen. The plastic mud guards seem easy to break off. The wheels are frequently bent and doubled over. The latest form of vandalism involves stealing the entire seat post with saddle, rendering the bike useless. MMT really started to notice how much abuse the scheme was experiencing, when took this not-so happy snap taken in October this year.

MMT feels a bit a sympathy for this lost Obike. There have been regular newspaper articles about the large number of OBikes being fished out of the Yarra . One article really caught MMT’s eye. Back on the 19th November, the Herald Sun reported a brawl that occurred on the Metro, where some nut job took a swing at a guy who took his OBike on the train. In the interests of public safety, this is what the nut job looks like.  If you are out riding and see this guy behind the steering wheel of a ute, 4WD or van, get off the road immediately.

Whilst that’s an extreme case, MMT gets the frustration that some Melbournians are feeling about this visual clutter. MMT is amazed to see these bikes being left in the back streets of Port Melbourne. That’s pretty much asking for trouble in MMT’s opinion. It seems that OBikes have become the new shopping trolley, where customers can use and dump without, it appears any significant penalty.

On face value the business case of OBike doesn’t really make much sense. You can hire a bike for about $2 for 30 minutes on a deposit of $69. If each bike is used, 10 times a day, that’s $20 a bike. So the average daily usage will be critical generating cash flow. If the deposit is representative of how much else bike costs, then I guess each bike has a break even point of about 35 rides. So how on earth does this scheme make money?? The answer seems to be in the geo-location technology used to track the bikes.

To use the scheme, a wanna-be customer downloads the app. The app shows the locations of nearby bikes. So here’s the pay off. By data mining your personal information and linking it to your trip behaviour, Obike is on-selling this information to other punters eg marketing and consumer behaviour companies (oh great people are going to sell me more stuff;-). That all sounds very big brother/Google-ish, consequently I’ll be giving the scheme a big miss.

Until next time ride safe

Marv

Name and shame part 2 – AJA 780

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Dear Rouleurs,
Its been a few weeks since I’ve had a rant about dickhead ute drivers. May be I’ve been lucky. However, yesterday I had another close call with a dickhead ute driver. The driver of a black ute, Victorian registration AJA 780, was talking to his mate and looking at Port Melbourne Oval as he sped through the pedestrian crossing on Williamstown Road in Port Melbourne at 08:50am.  As always, the red star marks the spot.

Yes the driver of a white ute, registration OUF213 tried to kill me here today.

Yes, the driver of a white ute, registration OUF213 tried to kill me here today.

The vehicle was a black modern ute either Ford or Holden with mag rims and low profile tires and it looked a lot like this one.

20161014-blackute

The driver looked to be in his thirties, wore sunglasses and a baseball cap. If by some co-incidence, you come across this driver, feel free to punch him in the head and then direct him to this blog.

As Italians say ”Vaffanculo!!!’ with the appropriate hand gesture to you for some truly idiotic driving.  May be you sir are a future Darwin Award Winner.

Until next time, ride safe

Marv