Starbucks, road accidents and bloodied Burbury handbags.

It may be difficult to see the connection in the title but its contained in the Standard. The propensity for Hong Kong journalsim to plumb the depths of, well, of stupidity, bad taste and all those things we have come to expect from Rupert Murdoch. What is it with the pictures, photofits or cartoons in the Standard. Are we going to have to put up with the Apple Daily cartoons, I hope not but I do fear for the worst. Do we really need to know what a gun looks like pressed to the neck of a Starbucks employee or where the car hit the lampost. Are words, (the reason a newspaper exists rather than watching it on TV), insufficient to get the message across. Of course when a 20 year old loses control (for this read driving like a f**king maniac) and clobbers a lamp post while trying to decide which lane he should be in (actually he nearly managed to be in both) we have to put up with the pictures of blood and burbury handbags in the road, blood splattering on the air bags, and all that makes us really believe that driving 2 Hondas, that appear to be one, leads to fatal consequences, if you should be unlucky enough to lose control of the vehicle at a speed approaching Mach 1. Of course the police were unable to confirm the car was speeding because they are plainly devoid of the ability to measure how far the bits ended up from the lampost. They couldnt even confirm that the car was in fact two cars, something the 1000 licensed EMSD mechanics could I assume do immeaditely. I for one knew when I saw it that somebody had forced two similar cars to mate with the obvious consequences. The outcome of this is, as one would expect, a rapid struggle for the statute book, blank page and pen. In a city where passing the driving test involves, if you are lucky,sitting in a traffic jam for half an hour or in the worst case having to reach the heady heights of 30km/h it is little suprise that our poor youth find themselves losing control of their cars. After all most of them lost control of their ability to think when they entered the Hong Kong education system. God forbid that the use of a roundabout should enter the test or even the training on how to use one. After all, this is Hong Kong, where passing is everything and everything is geared to passing. The ability to drive is secondary to the ability to pass the test. The introduction of P plates on cars will I assume, notify other incompetant drivers that a new and slightly less skilled pointer of a motor vehichle has joined their ranks. This person however will be only allowed to travel at 70KMPH thus causing chaos on the airport expresseway as other cars plough into the back of the individual who doggedly sits in the fast lane. Could the answer be to train these people instead of accepting that they have passed the test but cant in fact drive. Will a P save the lives of individuals who are determined to show that a Honda will knock down a lampost if you hit it hard enough. I doubt very much that it will have any affect at all. While the police huddle around a laser seeing how many people are speeding between the hours of 9.00am and 5.00 pm the mini buses will, with impunity rocket up the Tuen Mun highway at 140km/h with the driver texting his best freind regarding the racing results. Only 1 third of the speed cameras will have cameras in them, and those that have will only catch out the drivers who are not on the underground network. In Asia's world city, digitally linked cameras to a central billing service would avoid the need for the police to climb the ladder and thus inform drivers that the camera is operational. Painting them in camoflage and putting them in hidden locations would also help. But for me it comes down once again to education. Teaching somebody to drive at 30KM/H does not prepare them for driving at 110kmh on an expresseway when its raining. Maybe therefore pictures of blood guts and Burbury's is the best way of educatingf them, however I dont think so.