We are a society at once paranoid and vengeful; irresponsible and baying for blood. We demand a scapegoat for anything and everything that happens, but cannot stand the thought of taking responsibility for our own actions. We are a society predominantly made up of motorist-pedestrians, looking for an other to blame for everything. War in Iraq? IT'S OUTSIDE FORCES, FOREIGN MILITANTS! Kovco fuckup? EXTERNAL CONTRACTORS! Beaconsfield mine collapse? IT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!

And the clinchers for my point. It's always someone other than a motorist or pedestrian who gets blamed.

Truck runs down Bike?
BLAME THE CYCLIST!

Level Crossing crash?
IT MUST BE THE TRAIN DRIVER'S FAULT / THE CROSSING / THE GOVERNMENT!

The Truck vs Bike thing I can't really go into too much right now because what I've heard is secondhand reports from minutes of a meeting, but they belied a culture in government circles of Blaming The Cyclist whenever someone on a bike is run down by a Truck.

The Railway Crossing thing I feel I should be somewhat evasive on too, what with the Trawalla incident the other week and my ignorance of the sub judice situation and out of respect for those involved and all that, but that incident isn't all I'm talking about.

David Bramwells is ignorant and misguided.

Call me an arsehole if you like for saying that, but that's what I believe. While what happened with Alana Nobbs is tragic, the situation is that she crossed against the lights, with her walkman on. Tragic mistake, but a mistake on her part. Why isn't David calling for fencing on all major roads? Why rail crossings only?

Because he can't identify with the train driver?

OK, I'm no psychoanalyst, but what I'm talking about here is the experience train drivers go through of seeing people do stupid things at railway crossings.. the girl killed by a Melbourne - Geelong train a few months back because she jumped the fence and tried to scramble onto the platform, or the incident less than a week after the Trawalla crash where someone drove around the gates at Rockbank and then got collected by a train.. a few more metres and they would have been t-boned into a concrete platform. Motorists see cyclists on the roads and act instinctively against them because they're not used to them being there, or can't identify with them. Motorists see a railway crossing and act instinctively as if it's a road crossing, sneaking across if they feel like it, and reacting against the train or crossing when something goes wrong. Motorists see a tram, or pretend not to see it, and then react angrily when their car gets demolished by it when they cut it off (I used to see this happen all the time when I worked in Elizabeth St). Pedestrians see cyclists on a path and freak out because they're moving faster than them, and they can't identify with it. We're a society conditioned by governments and current affairs shows to be selfish, and be fearful of things different to ourselves, so it's only natural that people often refuse to consider the motorist's culpability in these things.

There are accidents like this all the time. I passed through a lonely stretch of road just over the border on my long ride to Sydney, at Warragoon.. a rickety unmaintained branch line with a suspicious 200m stretch of brand new track, and several hundred square metres of torn up earth. This was the result of a crash a few months earlier where a B-double had driven straight into an oncoming slow moving grain train and de-railed it, tearing up track and ground. The thing is that most of the time these accidents result in no death or injury, and are between a goods train and a B-double on some forgotten stretch of track/road beyond the reach of the urban media, and at most it warrants a little blurb in the local paper, and the rest is fought out between insurance companies.

But when it happens in a more public place, or the damage is physical or personal rather than just material, the cries baying for blood never ask the real question - What the bloody hell was the vehicle/person doing on the track in the first place? STOP signs mean what they say - STOP. And flashing lights? There's no excuse.

That David Bramwells is demanding that all crossings be grade separated is understandable, but his argument is purely emotional, and not rationally viable. People often tout how Sydney has no level crossings, but that's more than anything just a result of circumstance rather than some grand wisdom behind the idea - their crossings were grade-separated as a Depression-era works program in the 1930s, and ours were supposed to be, but the money went to freeways. It'd be nice to have it done, sure, but it's taking a ludicrously expensive approach to a simple problem of responsibility, because society finds it hard to put the blame on themselves as motorists/pedestrians. There are many more people killed at road intersections, why not put the money towards grade separating every road intersection with three lanes or above? That'd save more lives. The thing is that Bramwells is thinking emotionally, not rationally, and he's being used as a convenient football by the opposition. Do you think the Liberals are really interested in putting THAT much money into public transport? Bullshit. That sort of money could be spent in much better ways on PT anyway.

Terry Mulder politicising what happened at Trawalla in the days following it is insulting and offensive to all concerned. (Likewise, in the interests of balance, was Beazley politicising Beaconsfield before the miners were rescued).. but from a man who acknowledges that he doesn't pay attention to signage on the road (and as a result nearly crashed into a train sitting in a crossing), from a coalition whose Ballarat representative called for headlights to be always turned on on trains in future (which has been the case I understand for about eighty years now..) -- the culture of apportioning blame to the other manifested in the railway crossing, the train, or the cyclist is fucked, but everywhere.

I look forward to another essay from the NMAA lambasting me for insulting their sacred cow, being the inalienable right of the motorist to do whatever the fuck they want.

But there'll be no essay response from me this time, I'll be off in San Francisco consorting with Seppos.