Category: Driving
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RBT
Did a random breath test on a suburban street yesterday at 10:00 in the morning. One cop car, two officers, with nobody pulled over yet. All very efficient and done in a minute. Cheerful, and unexpected, which is the way they like to do it. No side streets to dodge down, so the culprits would…
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They Say Never Look Back
In case you are being followed by a fiend. Wish I’d remembered that before I glanced in the rear-view mirror while stopped at the traffic lights. My curiosity at seeing the nose of a new model of Mercedes was immediately replaced by horror when I saw what the driver was doing. She was bobbing up…
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The LD Plate Driver
I am contemplating putting a small sign near my car’s licence plate – it will be light green with a prominent LD. This stands for Learned Driver…as opposed to Learner Driver. I did have an yellow and black L plate when I was 17 but it is many years later now…and I paid attention and…
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So Many Channels Of Communication
So many ways to miss the message… I was driving today when the mobile phone rang. I ignored it, as it is an offence to use a handset in the car, and a danger to attention to use a hands-free. I waited until I got home to reply. But the same person who phoned could…
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The Last Day Of The Holidays
This can be a bittersweet moment for people who have had a wonderful time away and are contemplating returning to the lowest level of the coal mine the next day. If they have been holidaying in a fleapit caravan park run by landladies ejected by the Welsh Board Of Trade for savagery, the last day…
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The Transport Trap
A series of unfortunate experiences on the road has set me thinking. I am unhurt, not out of pocket, and the car has suffered no injury – but I am frustrated and disappointed of my pleasures. I go weekly to my club for a morning meeting – but not this week. Tuesday and Thursday have…
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The Cones Of No
I have been on the road, and it has told upon me. I live in a city that is determined to improve its road system by making it worse. This takes place at intervals, both in time and space. One year one section of the streets are impassible, and the next the sadness has passed…
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Chapterette Eight – Column A And Column B
Yeah, OK. You’ve been reading detective novels a lot longer than I’ve been a private eye. You know my job better than me. I accept this. But you coulda told me sooner. You coulda told me to look at the license plates of the Hyundais in the GoPro shots and see that they were consecutive…
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Chapterette Seven – Injun Territory
I used to hear the words “ Injun Territory “ at the movies on Saturday mornings. Generally from somebody with an arrow stuck in their hat. I always reckoned that was the Wild West, but I never thought it would come to Perth. Yet here we are – surrounded. Not so bad that you have…
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Chapterette Six – Not Lookin’
I chased people all over these last twenty years. I watched ‘em at work, at pubs, at nightclubs. I watched ‘em at the casino and down on the beach. One time I watched a guy in the bush down near Pemberton for standard rate plus petrol and accommodation. Good job, that one. He had a…