Hamilton Hoons and Five more die
Lewis Hamilton, the former automotive Formula One ‘number one’ had his car impounded on Friday night for alleged ‘hoon’ driving, having been spotted by police spinning his wheels at a busy intersection in St Kilda. Whilst many character witnesses have already jumped to his defence, with one interesting observation from Mark Webber suggesting we have a ‘nanny state’, there is of course another larger issue – five more people died on Victoria’s roads over the weekend with speed one of the many factors
The challenge of course is that it is likely that compared to most of us, Lewis Hamilton is a very skilled driver. He does after all, spend his life behind the wheel of a car designed to travel very, very fast. And that car is so much safer than anything else we drive on our roads. And herein lies the trouble – the Grand Prix is a circus – a huge technical and marketing development program designed to, in the end, sell more cars for the manufacturers.
If true, Hamilton’s actions were well out of line, despite whatever skill he has because as a member of the automotive elite, he IS a role model to others, and when the driving elite acts like hoons, others are likely to follow in his pedalsteps. And on Victoria’s roads the very weekend of the Grand Prix at Albert Park we lost another five lives with a dozen more seriously injured.
Webber misses the point – Victoria isn’t a nanny state because it takes away the vehicles of hoon drivers. It is a State trying to save the lives, costs and trauma of people connected to people who die. Unfortunately, the driving elite MUST be held to a higher standard of accountability,and on our streets, they must be held accountable to the SAME standard of accountability.
Lewis Hamilton is undoubtedly a good driver, he just failed to dsiplay good driving whilst on a public street – we expect better
Futurist Marcus Barber will be joining ABC’s Vicki Kerrigan in Darwin for the first of an ongoing discussion about the future this Wednesday. Each week on Wednesday afternoon’s, Vicki and Marcus will discuss the future of something, how we prepare for the future, what the future looks like for some industries and other related futures…
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Read More >Hi everyone – a quick note to let you know that our phones lines have been down for a while now and we are working on getting them fixed. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In the meantime, try using either our 1800 number where you can leave a message only…
Read More >ABC journalist Adam Stephen interviews Marcus Barber on the subject of GM foods and whether they might be more widely embraced as part of the global food requirements The interview (about 3& 1/2 mins) is available in MP3 format here and a link to the shorter web article is here. Some key points –…
Read More >South East Business Networks, the City of Greater Dandenong’s longest running business development program, is an exceptional avenue for learning about issues to do with Manufacturing. This week they provided one ‘out of the box’ with an excellent presentation by Professor Goran Roos, a worldclass expert on Manufacturing and currently South Australia’s Thinker in Residence.…
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