The good oil: Confusion over bus lanes

The confusion over the use of bus, or special vehicle lanes, continues ... The Good Oil had to jump on everything in the city to avoid crashing into a bloke in a Subaru who had just entered a bus lane and panicked. He swung the car into the outside lane without even looking, drove another 60m or so, and went back into the bus lane to turn left. Yet he is entitled to use the lane at that time of the day. The City Council and its public relations people have made a dog's breakfast of the rules about bus lanes. The regular letters to the Herald's Ask Phoebe column are proof of that.

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The bus lane at traffic lights on the corner of Albert and Wyndham Sts, outside the Herald, is one of the standout examples of the confusion. Traffic turning left from Albert into Wyndham can do one of two things: either wait for the bus on the inside to drive off up Albert, or, if it is still picking up passengers, drive across the face of it and into Wyndham. Even when the bus lane is clear, motorists turning left remain confused. Some go into the bus lane, others sit in the next lane, where an arrow points left. It's Rafferty's rules. Both drivers end up giving way to each other in a "you first, no you first" fiasco. Day after day, it's a shambles. Bit like the "merge like a zip" and give-way road rules. Overseas road safety specialists warned years ago that such rules "lead to overly aggressive driving behaviour". But they obviously hadn't heard of "Kiwi ingenuity". The road toll is likely to top 400 this year, or upwards of 50 deaths on last year.

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Mercedes-Benz has come up with a dashboard display screen that allows driver and passenger to see two totally separate programmes, at the same time. Dubbed Splitview, it allows the driver to keep tabs on satellite-navigation directions, for example, while the front passenger watches a DVD and listens to it via headphones.

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The row continues over cyclists' use of Tamaki Drive. A mate says he nearly wiped out two cyclists there the other night. It was around dusk. He was turning right, or east across traffic, from a side street, they were heading west. He had his lights on, they didn't have a lamp between them. He hit the brakes, they swerved, slowed and abused him. Another mate, who cycles and drives on Tamaki Drive, says council's legal people need to define "cyclists" before the ruckus goes any further. Are "cyclists" a couple of average Joes on pushbikes? Or bunches of lycra-clad athletes in training and doing 40km/h on racing bikes? If "cyclists" covers both pedallers, our mate's next question is: When does a public road become a training track? His own answer? When it is monitored by appropriate authorities. The Good Oil welcomes comments.

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The women have spoken - the World Car of the Year is the Jaguar XF. Eight female motoring writers from all points of the globe got their heads together and chose the big cat as the supreme four-wheel being. They said: "That a luxury car has won the supreme award is an unexpected result given the ubiquitous 'shopping basket' is what many in the car industry consider to be a 'woman's' car. But judges clearly considered the Jaguar XF to be well-constructed, competent, comfortable, a combination of sport and luxury and ideal for women." Chief judge was New Zealand's Sandy Myhre, who said: "The awards stemmed largely from the fact the USA-based World Car of the Year judging panel did not have a single woman judge in 2007."

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From a police report in New Jersey: "An out-of-state visitor who parked his Ferrari Modena overnight on the street in Jersey City returned the next morning to find the car burglarised and a $100,000 Audemars Piguet watch that he had left inside the car missing."

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz