KEY POINTS:
Miracles never end. The authorities have finally noticed the epidemic of red light running at Auckland's intersections. It used to be a solo sport, but these days you can't put your foot down as the light changes to red without two or three cars following you through. Just
joking, of course. But it has got so bad that if you brake for an orange light, you risk drivers behind you being taken by surprise and slamming into your bumper.
Buses do it, cars do it, even suicidal maniacs on bikes do it. Indeed the cyclists do it a lot, when they're not trying to mow down pedestrians on footpaths.
But what is Auckland City to do? Something serious like taking drivers' vehicles off them perhaps? Or forcing errant drivers to walk back and forth across an inner-city pedestrian crossing the moment the buzzer sounds? Nope. The city is going to send offenders a stern letter of reprimand, "urging them to respect other road users".
How wimpish is that? If the light-runners can't see a red light, what guarantee is there that they can even read?
I can't help thinking a more effective tactic would be to scare potential law breakers with life-sized cut-outs of once and wannabe-again Auckland police boss Clint Rickards, wired to pop out from behind a lamppost as the lights change.
The council's plan is for aggrieved Aucklanders to dob in the red-light runners by calling 0800 Stop 4 Red (0800 786-747) with registration details, colour and make of the vehicle and date and location of the incident.
That's if they can provide any of these details. I was just about wiped out by a large creamy speeding beast the other night, but couldn't read the number plate and had no idea of make or model. As New Zealand is the graveyard for the Japanese car fleet, who of us can know what any of them are?
The dob-in campaign will be a curtain-raiser while the city, the police and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority start a $750,000 trial of two - yes just two - remote-control red-light cameras.
Why they can't hire a few under-employed freelance photographers, swear them in as deputies and let them loose I don't know. Surely a picture of a car passing through a red light is evidence enough. Better still, give them video cameras. The sight of them lurking at intersections would have a salutary effect.
Talking of red lights, Mayor Dick Hubbard can relax about what he called the Herald's "gratuitous and insulting" reference to our new sister city Hamburg's famed red-light district. The slur seems to have gone unnoticed on the banks of the Elbe. But I wonder what Mr Hubbard thinks of past references to Auckland in Hamburg newspapers. Searching the websites of six Hamburg newspapers to discover if the sister city link had been highlighted produced no results.
The most recent references to Auckland were stories from here about whale saving in the Antarctic, and passing references to German tennis players.
The only stories highlighting Auckland were one in 2004 about a grapefruit-sized meteorite plunging through an Auckland roof and another about Keith Richards' sojourn in an Auckland krankenhaus.
Oh yes, and a big spread, from last August, about "die Busen-Bikerinnen aus Neusexland," which is about the "hot breasted biker girls" who drove up the main street of "New Sexland's" biggest city, Auckland.
Included is a photo gallery of six shots of drooling Aucklanders lining Queen St for a bird's eye view of the infamous "Boobs on Bikes". The Bild Zeitung tells its readers this "sinful sexshow" has been an annual event in Auckland since 2003.
A German-speaking friend says there are smutty references to a Hamburg delicacy, "crunchy sausage", and notes that Aucklanders enjoyed "a little breast instead of a little [bread] roll for lunch".
But if I was the mayor, I wouldn't be too upset. My translator says the article will have had huge economic significance for Auckland's economy, and to expect plane-loads of chaps in lederhosen next August.
