The logic that the Herald is applying to this campaign is the same as the police used over the last two long weekends to try and stop people from speeding, make the law extremely strict and enforce it with no leeway. The problem with this approach is it doesn’t stop those people who flout the law regardless of what the limit is and instead turns those otherwise mild mannered, considerate and normal drivers into criminals. It is like trying to do keyhole surgery with a jackhammer.

The reality is regardless of the limits and the law a few people will continue to disobey the law and cause problems. This is a fact of society and is not something that can be just wiped out by persecuting the masses.

At least one of the Herald’s own commentators gets the stupidity of the campaign:

The Two Drinks Max thing is nothing more than the latest top-of-mind issue that’s the current thing to bang the drum about.

The absurdity of a two-drink maximum is the people who sign up are already responsible enough to know being half-cut and driving doesn’t mix. I give this campaign about another week or three and it’ll be gone only to be replaced by something along the lines of saving a few more whales or whatever.

I won’t be signing up to this campaign or anything like it. Give me something with some cojones and I’ll be there in a flash. Chest thumping does nothing for me along with a lot of people I have spoken to this past week. We don’t want a flash campaign, we want action and lowering the limit won’t solve a bloody thing.

Banning someone from driving a car for five years after a second offence, and permanently for a third, would do the trick for me. I would have preferred a publication to have a go at why so many recidivist drink-drivers are allowed to keep on getting their licences back. Or maybe a concentrated follow up on why public money is spent on helping disqualified drivers get their licences back as reported in the Sunday Star Times. Now that’s what I call a big worry – you get your licence suspended for a good reason, mostly drink driving but allegedly Work and Income will help pay so you get it back. Go figure.

So instead of fudging around the corners and telling everyone to only have two drinks, get behind something that’ll do some good. Hit the heavy drinkers and tell the PC brigade who reckon “the most important thing for drink-driving is treatment” and having people in work can be “therapeutic” to pull their collective heads in. Not too sure how letting someone who’s been convicted of drink driving go back to driving will stop them drinking.

Have a go at that lot and stop targeting folk who already know better.

Last long weekend the Police claimed that their lowering of the tolerance level saved lives, however, with the road toll in NZ being so volatile due to weather factors, and the size of the country being small it was more than likely just a statistic anomaly then any effect the Police had.

This long weekend has just shown that the effect of lowering tolerance does nothing to the limit and instead just trivialises fines and is nothing more than a revenue gathering exercise for police.

In NSW police do the same thing with double demerit points on long weekends. This does not save lives or encourages people to drive safer. Instead people who do take note spend more time looking at their dashboards instead of the road ahead.

A few weeks back former V8 Supercar Champion, Mark Skaife, was on a current affairs show on TV arguing that money should be spent on improving roads, increasing the speed limit, driver education and better cars than super strict enforcement of the driving rules.

I doubt any change will happen though when police and government policy continues to be driven on ticket quotas, revenue raising, and persecution of young drivers.

The $150 question of how far motorists can drive in a bus lane before making a turn goes to the Auckland District Court next week. Motorist John Foote says the law states it is the minimum distance necessary to safely make the manoeuvre. The Auckland City Council says 48m is a safe distance for a motor vehicle travelling at 50km/h. The council fines motorists $150 for travelling more than 50m in a bus lane. Mr Foote said this policy had resulted in the law being applied unlawfully and has sought a ruling.

Being a bit of a maths and science geek I decided to work out what is the minimum distance a car can stop in when traveling 50kmh. It turns out it is 24m if the car is in good shape, the road is dry, and the driver is fully aware (Stopping distances for cars – Road Safety Authority Rules of the Road) so say for instance it is a wet day this can affect things by a factor of two hence 2*24m = 48m. And this is the value that the Auckland City Council has set.

The major problem that I have with this is it is best case scenario maths. No consideration has been given to cars already stopped to turn within that 48m area, or the amount of distance required to change into the lane, or the fact that many cars travel faster than 50kmh, it may be the limit and the law but that does not mean people actually obey it. In the interests of safety it would be better to set it at a minimum of 65m which is the minimum distance at 60kmh on a wet day to stop.

None of this takes into account just how hard it is to judge precise distance when traveling at 50kmh or 13.8m/s while driving.

I hope the appeal succeeds, it is simply not safe with the number of factors involved to limit it at 48m. 100m would be a much more sensible solution.

Like the previous days I went to the morning meeting but only stayed for the worship. I had planned to listen to the speaker but the sun was intensely hot, I was very tired, and wanted to hang with my mates before they packed up and headed off to other parts of the country.

At the morning service they asked how many people there had been up all night. Apparently the Village had remained packed until 2am and was still going strong at 5am. The best I have done at Parachute is around 3 or 4 in the morning. This year I was a bit more of an oldie and went to bed at 1am each night.

Cool World Vision Artwork. We Are Change!

While I hung out I packed up my stuff and hauled gear back to my car over a number of trips over a period of about three hours. I had to laugh at my car when I saw it. Sunday afternoon had been very windy and because it has been so hot over the past few weeks the ground was very dry. So my car had become covered in dust. And not a little bit dirty I mean coated absolutely coated in dust, it was no longer black but more like brownish grey.

Scoring a carpark at Gate One is pretty cool

Looking from my car towards the main entrance

The main entrance

Looking behind my car... This is still the premo car park

Once I had loaded up my car I went back to the Mainstage to see Late 80s Mercedes play the last act of the festival. Like Friday they went off, probably even more so on the hot Monday afternoon. Being the last band on allowed them to go longer than their advertised 30 minutes and in the end they managed to get all the people from backstage dancing on the stage and everyone still around having a great little boogie to Elemeno P, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Evermore, and Bon Jovi covers, which reminded me of how The Lads had closed out Parachute back in 2003.

After Late 80s left the stage the MCs came out for the last time and gave away all their left over CDs and T-Shirts. I managed to score a Casting Crowns live DVD after the case separated in mid-air and I caught part of it and other people handled me the rest of the broken case.

The trip back to Auckland was good, traffic wasn’t that bad.

On the way back I decided to take my time and drive through Hamilton. They have built some new roads to handle the highway traffic with these epic two lane, five road round-a-bouts every so often, which I am sure will confuse everyone as they are not well signed posted and confusing. I almost ended up on the Raglan Road instead of State Highway one after getting into the wrong lane.

Just north of Te Rapa this awesome cloud formed in the sky (see below), I am still trying to find out what it was, but I believe it may be a Horizontal Arc, pretty much a reflection of the sun in very high cloud often seen in advance of a rain storm (it showed the next day).

Once I hit the Auckland Motorway the traffic became quite heavy and slow going, probably costing me around half an hour of extra time, but overall my trip back to Auckland was still faster than my trip down, taking  around two hours ten minutes.

When I got home the cleaning began, until my washing machine decided to die on the third load, I think it got over hot or something, had to take a whole lot of wet clothes out of it and let them drip dry. Also I discovered I had a sunburnt hand…

It took a lot of V to get this tired face and body back to Auckland

And for another year Parachute was over, but this is not the last blog, the final one will a summary of thoughts on the weekend.

These are my thoughts:

• For a $2 toll it would be worth traveling on as it cuts out a lot of hills, time and distance. It probably pays for itself through the amount of petrol that it saves.
• However the toll road itself is not hill free, it may be smooth but some of those are hills are still steep.
• They have had to move an insane amount of dirt to build the road, and I don’t know much about protecting the environment all I saw was bare cliffs, it needs some major landscaping and regrowth.
• Tunnels are a little bit over hyped, they are short, and nowhere near as cool as the Terrace Tunnel in Wellington.
• I was laughing at the turn around point at the end of the tunnels for rubber neckers like me who just went on it just to check it out.
• I object to it being labeled State Highway One. The State Highway network should be free to drive on, by having it tolled it is effectively a private road, and therefore should not be officially considered a part of the State Highway network. But that is a minor rant.
• Overall, a nice road, and good time saver, but very over rated.

Auckland – Marsden Point – Whangarei – Doubtless Bay – Kaitaia – Auckland

710km+, 10+ hours driving.

And enough hills to test your stomach. Check out this section of State Highway One through the Mangamuka’s, brilliant way to test out your power steering.

What happened in Whangamata yesterday was terrible but the way the media spins stuff to make it political just angers me.

“Until they raise the driving and drinking age this is going to continue on in New Zealand,”

The reality is this. The driver of the vehicle was 22. Not 15. Not 18. But 22. 8 years older then the minimum driving age. The problem is not a driving age problem. It is not a drinking age problem either. It is a attitude problem.

To solve the problem we should make it very clear. Drink and Drive once loose your car for 6 months. Do it twice and you loose your license for 2 years and your car is sold. Make it tough. Super tough. But don’t go blaming age. This is not an age problem.