Please do something about those dithery drivers

OFTEN overlooked as a contributing cause of road crashes is the dithery driver.

These people delay others to the point that, incensed at being held up for a few seconds, those other drivers take silly risks to make up the lost time or overtake the ditherer.

A classic example of the dithery driver are the many who wait at a pedestrian crossing until pedestrians reach the footpath on the other side of the road.

The NZTA’s online Road Code has something to say about that.

It says: ‘‘Wait until the pedestrian has crossed in front of you and is clear of your vehicle before you proceed.’’

Contrary to the belief of many, there is no legal requirement to wait for pedestrians to reach the footpath.

Once the pedestrian has passed your vehicle and is moving away from you, you have fulfilled your obligation to give way.

I have often wondered why the incorrect interpretation of the rule has persisted for so long.

A possible explanation arrived in my letterbox this week in the form of the AA’s quarterly magazine.

In a ‘‘Road Rules’’ column on pedestrian crossings was ‘‘Remain stopped until they (pedestrians) have crossed the entire road and reached the footpath’’.

No, AA!

Incorrect!

When the nation’s supposedly premier motoring organisation gets it wrong, is it any wonder that so many drivers do also?

Could the AA please stop encouraging drivers to be ditherers and help to keep the traffic flowing? Tom Moore

Waverley

Orwell spoke the truth

FINLAN O’Toole (ODT, 4.7.18), claiming Orwell as an ally, writes with reassuring nonchalance that ‘‘Orwell, of course, would have recognised all of this [. . .].’’

Indeed war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

And Mr O’Toole and Carole Cadwalladr are both thoroughly deserving winners of the 2017 and

2018 Orwell Prize for journalism. Malcolm MoncriefSpittle

Dunedin

Stop vivisection

HEART transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard, who later in life was troubled by conscience over the pain he had inflicted on laboratory animals, would be really disappointed.

That would be over, given the progression of computermodelling alternatives, the proliferation of vivisection with its ongoing hardhearted approach to sentience.

R. S. Hogan

Waikouaiti ..................................

BIBLE READING: Let the little children come to Me; do not stop them. — Mark 10:14.