This piece appeared in The Cairns Post as a comment column on September 24, 2014, with the headline: "Roads a human obstacle course." It's been changed slightly for the web.

One of my most-prized items is my driver’s licence. There are two actually, the one I passed 40 years ago in the UK, and the one from Australia in 1992. I’m proud of them because they’re spotlessly clean. I’ve had a Toyota campervan for the last three years, and it’s just coming up for its first service. I check the oil regularly, and it’s as clear as a bell. It’s been to Brisbane three or four times, and taken me all over Queensland.

I’m concerned now about three things, one inanimate, and the others most definitely animate, and usually animated and unaware of anything going on around them. The inanimate objects are shopping trolleys; the animate ones are cyclists and pedestrians. In my other life, as a musician, I can be found driving home through Cairns at around midnight. I can guarantee that I’ll have to use all my driving skills to avoid an errant cyclist or three.

I drive through town, up Mulgrave Road, and turn right into Martyn Street. This seems to be the main thoroughfare for cyclists showing no lights, completely oblivious to everything that’s going on around them. Often they’re in a convoy, sometimes one in front of the other, more often side by side, and taking up half the road, as well as the cycle lane.
These people appear to have no regard for road rules, or their safety.
These people appear to have no regard for road rules, or their safety.

and walked straight across the junction.

I can’t win. If I’d have shaken him I could be done for assault, and if I’d hit him with the truck I can guarantee it would have been my fault somehow.

As for shopping trolleys, they’re everywhere. These things are expensive I’m told, around $700 a pop. A few months ago I called the “trolley hotline” to report no less than 20 abandoned ones. I was thanked for my time, and nothing happened for days. I've seen them dumped in the nearby creek, and some look as if they've been left to enjoy a mating ritual of some kind. All these things are hazards, and they’re beyond my control, which is what I hate about them.

As a driver with a clean licence, I’m not concerned about myself; just everyone else. I’m not tarring everyone with the same brush; one of my best friends was a diligent cyclist, and was left paraplegic after a dreadful accident. What scares me is the people with no fear, no awareness, and seemingly no concern for their own lives. I don’t mind it when police stop me for an RBT; I don’t drink, but I’d love to see them pull over one of these Teflon-coated cyclists and give them the talking-to that I can’t.

If
Get a grip, not only on your handlebars and headphones, but what’s behind you and around you. Be glad it’s me, and not someone who's trying to break a speed record.
this piece makes just one person rethink the way they ride their bike home at night it will have been worth it. You may be riding on two wheels of steel, but they’re no match for my four. Get a grip, not only on your handlebars and headphones, but what’s behind you and around you. Be glad it’s me, and not someone who's trying to break a speed record.
Finally, as I was contemplating this piece on Tuesday morning on my way into the office, three backpackers walked straight out in front of me at the lights on the corner of McLeod and Spence streets. Their heads were buried in street maps, they had no idea I was there. I rest my case.