Compliance culture

[Alan M]

Unusually, I drove my wife to work this morning, leaving home by way of Limpsfield road bound for the M25. The air was cool and the roads were quiet and probably to my passenger's annoyance, I played 'Latin Lounge' music via my iPod. On return from her office I selected recently 'grabbed' and very entertaining podcast by Stephen Fry. It features him roundly castigating the corporate nutters of the BBC who it seems, against all common sense, insist that the protagonists in Spooks 'belt up' and refrain from using mobiles - even hands free - whilst at the same being filmed shooting people in the face and otherwise saving mankind from near annihilation. Presumably this is administered via company style guides aimed at protecting us us from the ill effects of these televisual role models and their antisocial lapses. Not unreasonably Fry feels this is all a tad silly and that these protective and risk averse suits in the BBC are indeed morons.

Emboldened by all this, and feeling slightly cavalier, when my podcast came to its conclusion I fiddled a bit with the iPod to line up a different download. As a cyclist, and owning up to having shouted at drivers ignoring my safety while using mobile phones I knew that I had crossed the line and I was indeed behaving in a wrongful, even illegal way. Should I have crashed while performing this bit of multitasking I could only have accepted legal censure; this was at the very least careless behaviour as my attention was avoidably distracted from the task of driving safely.

It was just then that I noticed (as I sometimes do) an attractive young woman in the lane beside me; she was driving a BMW soft-top ..... and with make-up brush hand, concentrating on the mirror on the reverse side of her sun visor, she was proceeding put on her face while driving along the Caterham bypass! What!

I suppose it is difficult to resolve the relative tensions in these dilemmas of our times but I am pleased to report that I arrived home safely and hopefully she didn't encounter any sudden unexpected cyclists between as it were eyebrow pencil, blusher and lippy.

[huw williams]

Quite right too - can't have birds driving smart motors round if they don't look the part

[Sylv]

[quote="Alan M"]
Emboldened by all this, and feeling slightly cavalier, when my podcast came to its conclusion I fiddled a bit with the iPod to line up a different download. As a cyclist, and owning up to having shouted at drivers ignoring my safety while using mobile phones I knew that I had crossed the line and I was indeed behaving in a wrongful, even illegal way.

[Sylv]

That took a bit longer than I had expected

[Alan M]

Have you set record set for the thread going off at a tangent Marco?

[Bo-Gilly]

[img]http://www.cellphonesafety.org/images/distraction.jpg[/img]

Women have superior multitasking skills :FACT:

[Mike I]

She clearly fancied you, Alan .

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

She doesn't appear to be fiddling with any knobs though

[Marky Mark]

Could be alot worse but I can see where you are coming from. Good old Britney

[img]http://www.wkyc.com/assetpool/images/0627173743_na35t--britney-babylg.jpg[/img]