Survey Says....

Here we go again....

The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ)(emphasis on 'Automobile') are holding another What Cheeses You Off? survey to gauge driver attitudes on the roads - in Queensland, presumably.

The problem is that, for some reason, the RACQ seems to think that it is qualified to comment on driver attitudes to cyclists and that it somehow caters to cyclists.

Screaming big, billboard-sized, mental note to RACQ - YOU DON'T!!!
You don't cater to cyclists and your poor-excuse-for-toilet-paper members magazine, The Road Ahead, displays this on almost a monthly basis with some form of half-witted comment from the magazine editor.

What this jerkoff fails to realise is that the RACQ is NOT about roads and who should use them but about AUTOMOBILES and their owners. The RACQ isn't even very good at their core audience anyway as people like me who own a rarely-driven classic that ISN'T 30 years old are forced to pay full registration in Queensland and that the eastern states are NOT alligned in their registration laws. It costs me $55 just in registration fees to back this car onto the road before anything else because it does not get driven every day or every weekend.

Here's a simple method to use....
A person sitting behind the steering wheel in a car is NOT a 'driver'.
A person sitting on the seat of a bicycle is NOT a 'cyclist'.

A driver knows their vehicle; knows the law; doesn't cruise the roads in a fashion that impedes the progress of other road users; they 'drive' to the conditions of the road and weather; they USE THEIR MIRRORS; they move over for emergency vehicles; and generally show courtesy on the road.
Everyone else, which means 98% of the driving public in Queensland, is a 'Car Operator'! They know how to push this pedal to push this thingy over to there and pull another thingy to make a flicky noise and to turn a round whatsit in order to get their 2-tonne weapon the 1.5km to the shops to get a newspaper - or to cruise to work following the identical route of a railway line or bus line (mainly in Brisbane).

A 'cyclist' knows their bicycle; they know how to ride; they look ahead to ride defensively; they keep to the left and know the road rules; they are aware that they tun a great chance of arriving DEAD if they do even a remotely stupid thing; and they too know courtesy on the roads. They are also required to take some liberties with road rules (in safety) because situations demand it. Not everyone in colourful lycra is a cyclist - a $4000 bicycle does not a cyclist make!
Everyone else on a bike is a 'bike-rider'. They're the ones who ride without due care and attention to their surroundings and show neither courtesy nor common sense when on the roads. THIS is the bracket that the dickhead editor of The Road Ahead seems inclined to lump EVERY person on a bicycle into. I wouldn't mind betting that he is one of the car-operators that thinks it's OK to verbally and physically attacks cyclists on the road as well.

I am NOT a rabid pro-green moron either. I have a hotrod and an imported American V8 in the shed as well as holding a truck licence, a motorbike licence, and I know the road rules better than most. I object to some FOOL editor thinking that it is OK to attack me as a cyclist when he doesn't know SHIT about the state of the roads and does NOTHING to promote the reality that ALL taxpayers are entitled to use the roads and that registration fees DO NOT pay for the bitumen that we all use!
My taxes pay for those roads just like those of everyone else.

So - pull your fucking head in, you wannabe-journalist cock-biter and get out on the road on a bicycle and try to actually commute anywhere in Brisbane, on the Gold Coast or on the Sunshine Coast WITHOUT getting DEAD thanks to fuckwits like you who have no idea what it's like out there and think that roads are just for cars!

While we're on the subject of wannabe-journalist cock-biters, someone drag that shithead Mike O'Connor from The Crappier Mail out of the Wickham and put him on a bicycle on Coronation drive during peak hour while all the lazy arsewipes in their one-occupant vehicles are trying to get home while stuck in that 5km carpark!