I see the police in New Zealand are shocked at the behaviour of young people again. Apparently, a bunch of youths who like something slightly unusual and a bit risky have filmed themselves doing something entirely legal.
Shown the video, amazed police officers in Auckland described their actions as “incredibly stupid” and “idiotic”.
Superintendent John Kelly said: “What concerns me is the speed they get up to and the lack of control they have got.
“They’ve got no brakes. If something goes wrong in front of them, they’re terribly exposed to risk.”
Another experienced traffic officer, Sergeant Stu Kearns, said: “Anyone using a skateboard on a road like that has a death wish.”
At the top of the Bombay Hills heading south from Auckland, State Highway 1 ceases to be classified as a motorway and becomes an expressway, meaning pedestrians and cyclists are permitted to use it.
Although skateboarders are defined as pedestrians, police say they could be charged with careless driving or failing to keep left.
Kids? Having fun? Taking risks? How dare they! We’ll find some reason to penalise them, don’t worry! And if there isn’t, well, we’ll make something up.
TJW is an itinerant blogger who lives in East Angular. He grew up as a fascist, mellowed into a Tory and was converted to anarchism in his middle age by the Devil's Kitchen.
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Excellent! That looks like a LOT of fun! However the road the boarders are using looks very smooth and even – I once managed to break the local limit on an urban motorway on a bike & (keeping it upright on) the patched, worn road was even more memorable than the speed…
On the plus side, good to see the guy filming was at least wearing biker’s leathers; on the minus side, the idiot doing it barefoot and wearing hacked-off pants and a shirt is probably looking for early entry to the Darwin Awards. But there always was something admirably bonkers about NZ youth.
As soon as you have an organisation charged with keeping people safe, that organisation will inevitably decide just how safe you need to be- after all there would be no point in there existence if they recognised that some people are happy to take risks that others won’t. Thus the HSE and the police take our money telling us to do things we don’t see the point of, or abstain from things we do want to do.
How can you charge a pedestrian with dangerous driving? Muppets
Reminds me of the fuss that TfL made after someone had the audacity to ski down the escalator at Angel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6501897.stm
Can’t have people enjoying themselves or trying something new can we? The horrors! Don’t they know they could have been injured?
Bloody killjoys.
Not with you on this one, Thaddeus… although it DOES look like a lot of fun. And who cares if you kill yourself? Just one less mouth to feed on a hungry planet.
Yep — terrific fun — right up to the minute something goes wrong and you kill some poor innocent bastard who was having a nice day until you happened along. Maybe you can kill the whole family, who knows?
Or until you DON’T kill yourself — just end up a veggie whose Mum has to spend her last few years being a full time carer and wiping your bottom every day.
Great fun.
Well said Sir. And what of the psychological effects on a totally innocent driver who mows over one of these guys who has fallen?
BTW Thaddeus, undertaking is not legal, nor is failing to indicate before changing lanes or exiting the carriageway.
Well, lenko and English Viking, I trust neither of you will ever be venturing out behind the wheel of a car, because that is one of the easiest ways for you to kill an innocent or an innocent family or winding up as a vegetable. And I’m sure you’d want to avoid the psychological effects of accidentally driving over a passing pedestrian?
What’s that you say? Driving a car is OK? But driving a car is one of the easiest ways of getting hurt!
Perhaps your risk tolerances are lower than those of these children (and, I must confess, so are mine.) But the unsaid implication of your words is that your risk assessment is correct, whereas theirs is wrong and therefore they should be stopped from doing any such thing.
The fear of harming an innocent is something that could be a consequence of any action. Due to large hedges, I, while exiting my driveway, could run over a toddler who has momentarily escaped from his parents control. Every single day I see people not having absolute control over their children in my street. Does that mean I should never venture out of my driveway? Does that mean that parents should never walk in the street with their children?
I’m of the opinion that you need to look within yourselves and think again about how you have reacted to this story. No-one has been harmed. People could have been harmed, but I’m willing to bet more people hurt themselves brushing their teeth every day than were hurt by the people in the video.
The aversion to risk is a natural consequence of harming yourself and others, but that does not mean risks should not be taken. Indeed, I would argue that the risk-averse nature of modern society is largely to blame for the feral nature of the “underclasses”, who are entirely denied ways of burning off their natural desire for exposure to risk.
Well… I just this minute looked deep into myself — and it’s messy in there. All sorts of things… rubber rocking horses and stuff like that.
But granted, driving a car is a really, really easy-peasy way to write yourself off and other people too. But zooming along the highways AMONGST faster moving cars, mostly populated by idiots like me, is even more dangerous.
Cars are risky, motor-bikes very risky, push-bikes very very risky… and skate boards — off the scale, along with motorised zimmer-frames and pedestrians on motorways.
I am all in favour of not banning things, but you don’t give babies razor-blades to play with, and you consign skate-boards to a skate-boarding place which don’t have motorists trying to share the space.
I’ll grant you that driving is a dangerous thing. I have driven for a living in the past and as a consequence I have seen many stupid things done by drivers, occasionally by myself, but I have never had a bad accident. I’ll lay good money that these boys will not go 20 years without killing someone/themselves if they carry on with this insanity.
Hey, shit happens and there is nothing you can do about it so chill out.
wrong..wromg, wrong, wrong – shit doesn’t “happen”. People put themselves in harms way and are often ignorant of the potential consequences.
I am with the earlier poster – you want to race down a hill – fine – just don’t expose ME to the risks YOU are taking…………
I tend to agree with Lenko, it’s a bloody stupid thing to do on so many levels, although I normally agree with the argument that it’s their skin* so they can do what they like with it, they are forcing other people into their games.
More significantly for me it points to the futility of all the safety and control regulations in society. Some people want risk and exitement but if society takes all the opportunities away by banning them and making life bland and boring then some people will be pushed into more extreme ways to have their fun.
* I suspect it won’t be theirs indefinitely, some will be donating it to the landscape before long!
Couldn’t happen here in UK, the appalling road surfaces would have you off the skateboard within twenty feet (about 6 metres if you want it in foreign).
Tsk! Where’s a
speedsafety camera when you want to know what speed you can get up to?Perhaps we should bewail the abrupt departure of the previous ‘guvmint’ as they would undoubtedly have made ‘rapid descents on stairs and elevators’ a punishable crime with suitably severe fines.
People do that round here all the time, though admittedly not on major dual carriageways. Mainly because we don’t have any.
Brilliant. People taking control over their own lives and associated risks. We need more of it.
Pre-May 6th
Ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it
Post-May 6th
Ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it, ban it
Do you really think Dem Tories “Big Society” centralised gummint will react any differently to the way Bully McNutter’s regime of the shaved chimps would have done?
Personally I don’t care if these tossers kill themselves, the world needs less arseholes. What about when one of them loses control however and somebody in a car or van, a vehicle with brakes and a steering wheel or other means onf controlling it, swerves to avoid them (a normal reflex) and causes a multiple pile up resulting in deaths and serious injuries to people who were not doing anything stupid.
And think of the outcry there would be if one of them was mown down by a car. The chavs who made Raoul Moat a “legend” would look restrained by comparison.
So if you want to argue thay “hey, the guys are just having fun and it isn’t illegal,” (though it would actually break several laws in Britain and several dozen in the USA, stateboarders are regarded as pedestrians in law) then you must also argue that any drivers who kill them will not be charged with any crime more serious than littering.
Libertarianism imposes a burden of responsibility on people. That idiots like these skateboarders exist shows why we have a long way to go if we want to win back our personal liberties.
I’d love to heard what cyclist – hater Jeremy Clarkson had to say on this. At least bikes have brakes and handlebars.
You are correct, Sir.