Letters: Distracted drivers should have their phones confiscated

Derek Packam (Rotorua Daily Post, July 14) has the right idea! Confiscating the cell phones from people stupid enough to use them while driving is a really good idea!

Make the fines really hefty - $500 and make them pay before getting the phone back.

I would take the cars as well, but then, having seen the results of accidents caused by people using cell phones while driving, I am a little prejudiced.

Jim Adams
Rotorua

Fact or guesstimate?

A mountain bike study reveals the economic impact of forest rides contributes between
$30m and $50m to the Rotorua economy. Great news – but who conducted the survey and who prepared the report?

Was it a guesstimate as indicated by councillor Peter Bentley?

$20m – that's quite a variance.

Can the same group conduct a survey on how the Green Corridor has impacted on the business community in the CBD?

Saturation – a situation in which too much of a product or service is provided so that there is more available than there are people that want to buy it or use it.

Time to buy into the idea of reinstating the 70 lost car parks?

Tracey McLeod
Lake Tarawera

Bureaucratic piffle

Re the worker who was injured in a lathe accident (Rotorua Daily Post, July 10), the article says, "it identified the root causes, which, if added or removed, would have prevented the incident from happening, to be the absence of documented safety procedures for the worker to revise before using the machine, the absence of hazard identification or risk assessment completed on the lathe, the lack of controls such as guards or signage around the lathe and that the lathe was left out of the bi-annual safe machinery audit".

Hilarious!

I am a qualified toolmaker and have never heard so much guano in my life. Total and utter bureaucratic piffle.

I have used lathes and other toolmaking machinery nearly all my life and have never needed a "documented safety process" to read every time I used a lathe.

Time consuming and unnecessary, especially for a third-year apprentice who should know what a lathe is capable of.

Yes, I have seen people have accidents with all types of machinery and in nearly every single instance it was operator error. No amount of shuffled paperwork would have helped.

Hazard identification or risk assessment completed on the lathe could have prevented the accident? What a load of rubbish.

Lathes, like any machinery, are dangerous and should be treated with the respect they deserve.

As for guards, they are virtually impossible on machines doing one-off type jobs.

Signage? Maybe.

But in the end, no amount of paperwork and seat polishing from the safety officer would have made a difference.

[Abridged]
Graham Hansen
Rotorua