Flashing the traffic
CAN A traffic camera photograph you not wearing a seatbelt? A reader sends in a yarn about a driver who had a camera flash at him as he drove through the city (he doesn't say which city).
Realising he was way below the speed limit, he drove round the block and passed the camera again, driving even slower. Again it flashed. He repeated the process three more times. Three more times the camera flashed.
Then he got tired of it and drove on. A few weeks later he received in the post five tickets for not wearing a seatbelt.
Can this be true? Can a traffic camera be programmed to spot such things? I've my doubts, but these days you never know.
Red light tactic
THE ABOVE recalls a tactic employed late one night by a colleague when he inadvertently jumped a red traffic light and the camera flashed at him.
He reversed, waited until the light changed then went red again. He drove through again on the red, and the camera flashed. He repeated this several times,
Then he varied his tactic. It was a level stretch of road and when the light turned red again, he got out of his car and pushed it through. The camera flashed.
He was about to push it through again when a crowd of university students came on the scene, on their way back to their residence. They pushed him through.
So next day the police had on their desk several photographs of the same car going through the same red traffic light several times; plus the driver pushing the same car through the same red traffic light; plus a crowd of youngsters pushing the same car through the same red traffic light.
My colleague never did hear from them. The police on the case probably booked off with repetitive stress syndrome.
Tukkies tactic
THEN there was the Pretoria case where a group of Tukkies students deliberately drove through a red light late at night and got photographed. Two were balanced on the vehicle's rear bumper. One held a piece of cardboard over the registration plates so the vehicle could not be identified. Both had dropped their pants and were mooning the camera.
They enjoyed it so much, they went through the red light several times, the camera flashing every time.
But it didn't end there. A few weeks later the owner of the vehicle received through the post a picture of the two fellows mooning on the back bumper, one of them laughing so hard he'd lifted the cardboard, which no longer obscured the number.
No ticket was attached. Who says the Pretoria fuzz don't have a sense of humour?
A year early
A READER sends in an extract from a newsletter from his medical aid scheme. In it the scheme's chief executive says: "The first decade of the 21st century is behind us and a whole new decade – with a new set of challenges – lies ahead."
This surely is wrong, he says. We're still in the first decade of the 21st century.
Quite right. The first decade of the 21st century ends at midnight on December 31, 2010, and not a second earlier. It's like scoring a run in cricket – you have to actually complete the run before it's notched up.
It's the same confusion we had when people confused the Year 2000 with the start of the new millennium. The new millennium actually began in 2001 but it didn't stop shallow phonies like Tony Blair celebrating it a year early.
Actually, the much-trumpeted new millennium has so far turned out a bit of a downer for humanity – the 9/11 Twin Towers atrocity, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global recession.
It evokes the classic desert island cartoon:
"I came here to forget."
"To forget what?"
"I've forgotten."
The joy of sax
SOME rivetting information from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books). Adolphe Saxe invented the saxophone. In the course of his life he was also struck on the head with a brick, swallowed a needle, fell headlong down a flight of stairs, toppled onto a burning stove and accidentally drank sulphuric acid.
Tailpiece
Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Because if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels.
Last word
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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