Driver phone use endangers me

As a motorcyclist I’m acutely aware of the risks I’m exposed to every time I go for a ride.

As a consequence I ride defensively, wear quality protective gear and regularly take rider training courses, despite the fact I’ve been riding for many years.

So it becomes a constant source not of irritation, but anger, that my safety is compromised by motorists’ addiction to their mobile phones.

Invariably if I see a vehicle veering over the centre line towards me, the driver has their head bowed, texting.

It is not just car drivers but tradespeople in their vans and, most concerning, the drivers of fully laden logging trucks. I have seen you all and noted the company names emblazoned on your vans and trucks. You seem arrogantly oblivious to the fact you are endangering the life of a husband, father, grandfather, friend and workmate.

If in the worst-case scenario you injure or kill me, please reflect on whether that text or phone call was of more consequence than my life. Brendan O’Connor, Masterton

Are we ready?

Supermarkets are proudly announcing the eventual ban of plastic bags.

Yet we hear nothing from them about stopping the use of wrapping vegetables (eg cucumbers) in plastic and using polystyrene trays for them as well. They also use polystyrene trays for their meat. When’s that going to stop?

How’s it going to work when someone buys six different types of vegetables and fruit? They put them all in one recyclable bag, take that to the checkout, unload them, weigh them, then put it all back in the bag again. Imagine all the extra time involved and the queue that will develop at checkouts.

All the scales for weighing will have to be changed to hold the fruit/vegetables to stop them rolling off.

Have the supermarkets really thought though the consequences of removing plastic bags? Will they replace them will paper ones?

Will the cessation of plastic bag use really help the environment? Most plastic I see on the beach is bottles.

What are councils doing to prevent plastic bottles from entering harbours from rivers and streams? Surely they have a part to play here.

Karl Oliver, Lower Hutt

Righting inequities

The editorial (Sept 12) suggesting that adopting Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s reform of ACC to include incapacity from sickness or illness would be impossible because it would cost many more billions of dollars in funding, overlooks the fact that the current health and welfare systems already cost many billions of dollars for people incapacitated by sickness, disease, the ageing process and other causes.

Extension of ACC coverage for non-accident cases would not necessarily be a wholly additional cost to the government.

Palmer was suggesting that all costs arising from incapacity from whatever cause should come under a single coordinated administration and be part of the same budgeted item in the public accounts. The main additional costs will arise from the funding system adopted and whether financial benefits will be income related.

The 1998 Law Commission Report on the ACC scheme considered all the implications associated with extending the scheme and even produced an outline of legislative proposals to implement an extension.

The recommendations of that report were never adopted but Palmer’s Woodhouse Memorial Lecture has again raised the inequities between ACC cover for incapacity from accidental injury and incapacity from other causes.

These inequities will continue until a bold government acts to remove them. Don Rennie, Woburn

I’m a stakeholder

Re Bus botch-up review mooted (Sept 13), firstly it states that an email was sent by the chief executive of Greater Wellington Regional Council to stakeholders on Tuesday. I did not receive such an email and I am a stakeholder, as are all other residents of greater Wellington.

Secondly, Greg Campbell has been chief executive of the GWRC since 2014 and therefore should have been involved in the implementation of the ‘‘complex programme of work’’ which most of the stakeholders now believe to have been an abject failure.

As such he is not the person best suited to undertake an objective review of the failure, also given his reported comments displaying a denial of any failure and that there only needs to be a settling down. Mark Daly, Newtown