Sorry for the extra vitriol in my last post. Too many beers, methinks, and incredibly pissed off at not being able to get my peaceful internet time without being chewed on. I tend to lose my patience after the fourth or fifth beer… not that I get violent, just very loud and obnoxious and tend to yell at inanimate objects (and naughty puppies). Ahh well…

Anyway this week my favourite subject is reversing cameras on cars. I saw some thing on some inane morning show (actually it was probably Today, because Clare can’t stand Sunrise, as if one is somehow less pathetically perky and politically correct than the other) about reversing cameras on cars. Apparently because of the amount of kids that are getting run over in their own driveways by their parents, some lobby group or other is lobbying (that’s what they do I suppose) for reversing cameras/sensors to be mandatory in all vehicles, and encouraging people to get them fitted aftermarket to their existing cars. Now I have a number of issues with this.

Firstly – instead of making cars easier and easier to drive, shouldn’t we actually be teaching people how to drive properly? To my mind all these bloody driving aids are wonderful, but slowly but surely they’re eroding the skillset of the average driver. In 20 years there won’t be a driver on the road who can’t stop in an emergency in a non-ABS car without locking up all four wheels, or who won’t know how to accelerate heavily without spinning the wheels unless the traction control is turned on.

Secondly, and this partly is the same as the first point, why aren’t these people looking where they’re bloody going? Are they reversing with their eyes closed? I drive a late model Holden Combo every day (the same as a Opel Combo if there’s any poms reading this) – that thing has got to have the worst rear and side vision of any vehicle I’ve ever driven. Two small windows in the back doors, no side windows… yet I’ve never hit anything and I can even reverse park the damn thing. It has these two ginormous things hanging off the a-pillar on each side… they are called mirrors and if you look in them they show you what’s behind you. It also pays to take it fairly slow and steady, as not everyone appreciates your lack of x-ray vision when reversing out of a car parking space in a busy supermarket car park. But so far, after 6 months or so of ownership, not a bingle in sight.

Thirdly, the vision is far better in a normal passenger vehicle than in a 4WD. If these soccer mums weren’t driving Pajeros and Prados (ironically many of them have some sort of greenie sticker on the rear window.. yet the aforementioned vehicles are big gas guzzlers and usually have never been offroad in their lives) for taking the kids to school and back, they would have far better rear vision and would be less accident prone (even if the aforementioned soccer mums had any driving skills to begin with). Get a bloody station wagon for crying out loud, it was good enough for the baby boomers and it should be good enough for you too. If your friends give you a hard time you can tell them you’re cutting down on carbon emissions so that you can offset your next Thai holiday.

Fourthy… and perhaps most importantly… who’s watching the darn kids when they inexplicably run out in front of your moving vehicle and you don’t see them???

Once again we have a classic case of trying to remove responsibility from the people that should be taking it…. am I the only one that has a problem with this? I’m all for making things safer… but not at the expense of common sense.

So let’s not put the cart before the horse… instead of giving people more electronic gadgets to distract them while they drive (as if there aren’t enough distractions in the first place… and it could be argued that in many of these cases where kids get run over, distraction is actually a big part of the cause)… let’s teach them how to drive and teach them to be responsible for their children.

Happy trails!