Zit Seng's Superwall

I used to cycle around a lot, on the roads. That was over 10 years ago. I think I was a good cyclists, keeping to the side of the road, not getting in the way of motorized vehicles. Back then, the danger was with drivers not looking out for cyclists on the roads, not having awareness of their presence, not knowing how to react to their movements.

The last couple of months, the issue of cyclists has cropped up many times in our media. Should they be sharing footpaths with pedestrians, or should they share the roads with motorized vehicles?

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One of the worst things about driving in Singapore (and perhaps many other cities in the world) is getting stuck in traffic jams. It’ll be really nice if we could all somehow have detailed realtime traffic information about all the major roads in Singapore. The Traffic Watch announcements on radio doesn’t work out very well. You can’t get the information when you want it, because you have to depend on the deejay of your chosen radio station to read off the information. Checking on the Internet isn’t always very convenient, particularly when you are already on the road.

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That’s what I was thinking, ERP for pedestrian crossings, when I came across an article in the Straits Times a couple of days ago. Tap & Cross. Or perhaps Tap, Deduct, and Cross. Yet another interesting revenue generating mechanism for our LTA. Except that it won’t really work, of course, since pedestrians will just cross illegally without using a designated pedestrian crossing. Our pedestrians are often already preferring to jaywalk anyway (and there are times they really behave like the roads are meant for pedestrians).

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While waiting for my car the other day, I looked around the Kah Motor showroom and noticed the new fuel economy label stuck on the windscreens of all the cars. It’s the Mandatory Fuel Economy Labeling programme introduced by our National Environment Agency not too long ago, requiring all vehicles to undergo fuel economy testing, so that buyers can be better informed about the environmental impact of the vehicles they choose to drive.

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It would happen again sooner or later. The front of my Honda Stream bumper got nicked by a curb that was just slightly too high, and now there is a streak of black plastic revealed in the front left corner of the bumper. Unlike the previous incident which scratched mostly just the underside of the bumper, this time around the scratch is slightly more obvious from the front.

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Four vehicles pictured here have been wheel clamped. Many more were seen elsewhere in the car park. The car park enforcement van was still around, with the officers busy wheel clamping more cars. I’m impressed by the size of their arsenal of wheel clamping devices. I just wonder how many wheel clamps they have altogether. How many cars can they handle?

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I wonder why ban valet services? This HDB car park is perpetually overcrowded. I imagine it is a win-win-win situation. Drivers are happy. Valet service providers get to earn a few bucks. Ultimately HDB also benefits from more income from collecting more car park charges. So I’m puzzled why HDB doesn’t welcome valet services, so long as the valet services don’t do anything unfair like reserving or hogging lots.

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Yeah. Parking Idiots is back as parkingidiotsg.blogspot.com. We get to air our parking grouses somewhere again! I would have preferred an Idiot Drivers blog site, because a good many of my driving grouses are with other drivers’ driving habits, not just about their parking skills. But alas, you’d have to take a picture right? How to take a picture while you’re driving? So okay then, from a practical point of view, I suppose we could just focus on parking idiots first for now. Please help make this site a success!

I wonder what has happened with Parking Idiots blog? Some drivers just need to be shamed publicly. I thought this site was doing a great thing but it doesn’t seem to have had any activity in over a year.

Perhaps the recent festive season and holidaying has enabled me to travel around Singapore more frequently, so with more driving and more parking I get more opportunities to run into idiotic drivers. What some drivers do are just incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems like they’re out to frustrate other drivers than anything else.

Pictured here, a car “parallel parking” across two vertical parking lots. It is just simply ridiculous.