In Melbourne last weekend some 82-year-old codger went through a pedestrian crossing without stopping and cleaned up a couple of kids. The Herald Sun has the story today. The headline reads Apology to injured kids after crash. The elderly driver is apparently in shock. Members of his family have apologised profusely. Though the kids are obviously a priority, you’ve also got to feel for the old guy, hidden away at home, feeling responsible and guilty…

“Feeling responsible and guilty”? The hell he is:

Mr Citino yesterday claimed he was not to blame for hitting the two children. He said he hadn’t broken any road rules when he ploughed into the children on the pedestrian crossing.

“I was right. It was green so then I turned,” he said. “The parents were on the footpath . . . but the kids ran.”

Mr Citino also defended his driving skills, saying he had been a safe driver for more than three decades. “Me, I’m a good driver for 35 years . . . 35 years I’ve been driving,” he said.

Cars are weapons of much destruction. As much we may want the elderly and the infirm to be independent, we should also expect that children, adults - and other elderly people, for that matter - can walk around in safety without the slim but existent risk that some random octogenarian is going to mistake the throttle for the brake. (There’s hardly a month goes by in Melbourne without a news story about how some kindly but inept grandpa manages some short-notice redecorating at his local chemist when he inadvertently sticks his Mazda into reverse.) 

For this reason I have always supported compulsory and stringent re-testing of drivers over the age of 70 - biannually, if not more frequently.  And more stringent license testing generally, including a compulsory re-test after license suspension for any reason, a review of driving history and offences before graduating from probationary to full license, and more long-term and lifetime bans for habitual and serious driving offenders.

As for Mister Citino, meet Senator Bronwyn Bishop; she’s got a special bath for you. 

Riding my bike to work this morning I scored the double whammy of bicyclist experiences: abuse and near death.

First I was riding up a suburban one-way street (the right way) and preparing to turn right where the road met another at a T-intersection. The dude in the car behind me leaned out the window and yelled, “Get out of the middle of the road, dickhead!” You see, my crime was that I’m apparently supposed to give way to vehicles behind me.

Then I was cruising down a major-ish road in the bike lane when a car turned left into a side street right in front of me without indicating. I was so busy screeching my tires and fighting to keep control of the bike that I didn’t have time to extend a middle finger and yell some combination of swear words at him.

Sometimes I just can’t shake the impression that people in cars hate my guts and want me dead. All I want to do is get to work.