A Housing Crash and Cycle Smash
It is amazing how many news articles fail to mention the most important things. Take this article:
Man drives into neighbour's lounge room
"It appears his foot got stuck on the accelerator when he was half sitting in the driver's seat with one leg out the door," a police spokeswoman said.
Now obviously accidentally pressing the accelerator is a serious matter anytime the motor is running, but the main reason there was a serious crash was because the foolish man had his car in gear. Whenever a car door is opened, the car should be in neutral or park, never in gear.
Here is another article with a similar omission:
Cycle pack smash: driver questioned
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cycle-pack-smash-driver-questioned/2008/05/09/1210131206412.html
A nasty idiot appears to have deliberately driven in front of a group of cyclists and braked savagely without good reason. Most of the cyclists then crashed into the car or each other.
Now obviously the driver’s behaviour was wrong and extremely dangerous, apparently a deliberate assault on the leading cyclists. However I figure that if the cyclists had all been riding safely, then only 2 would have crashed. By my understanding every vehicle should maintain a safe distance behind the vehicle in front. A two second gap is recommended in the driving manual. Cyclists are allowed to ride up to 2 abreast, therefore the first 2 riders would have hit the car, but the next two would have had an extra 2 seconds to stop and a good chance of avoiding collision, the next two would have 4 extra seconds to stop and so on. Only by riding recklessly too close together did these cyclists turn a 2-bike crash into a 50-bike disaster. And the news article doesn’t mention this obvious fact.
