Ben
delicately described my absence from club rides as a sabbatical. Wish it had been; felt more like
For
those of you who don’t know, I blew over the limit on New Year’s day and earned
a license cancellation. Though painful
to revisit, I thought I’d share the story with you so that others might learn
from my error.
The
family was over for lunch on the day and by evening, being my turn to cook, I
popped out in the car to the local supermarket to get the makings. A two minute drive with a 10 month
consequence. If I’d been stopped and
asked beforehand, I think I would’ve have said I might have been close to the
limit. Got picked up and blew well over.
They say that there are now enough booze busses on the road to test
every Melb. driver 1.5 times a year.
So
there’s graduated punishments for various levels of ‘over’ that you can read on
the VicRoads website. There are three
agencies involved and advice on what you have to do may vary: VicRoads, VicPol,
and the Magistrates’ Court.
In my
case the ticket said I had 28 days and then the cancellation started. No discretion over the punishment. Cancellation means at the end of the period
you have to go to a Magistrate’s Court and apply for restoration. If you have any points, during this period
the clock is not ticking so you return to exactly what you had. Equally, the cancellation came with no
points.
So I
started the banishment and learned to know and love our public transport
system. Two days a week I had to get to
Clayton and that took a walk, two trains and a bus. Two hours one way had to be allowed. All up I was spending the equivalent of two
working days a week on public transport.
A mate cued me well: it works fine if you have no sense of entitlement. I got used to it. There was only one train cancellation though
delays were common. The trip gave me
time to do reading for work or to listen to downloaded ABC radio programs on an
MP3 player. All quite relaxing and
productive; and cheap.
Apart
from that I took to the pushie for local trips and took some pleasure in
reducing my carbon footprint. (The methane
footprint on the other hand ...). The
shopping could be done with a backpack, and flashing LEDs front and rear of the
bike kept drivers at bay on the roads.
The big downside was that all the taxi-ing of the teenage kid had to be
done by my partner Helen and that was a significant burden, as was any driving
for visits or to pick up
I came
to like the fitness and fun of pushbike riding though found that pedestrians
were a real menace as when they heard nothing they would assume nothing was
coming and step out in front of you. On
one occasion I managed to entertain some waiting tram travelers by high-siding
in front of them at a stop when the front wheel slid out on dewy tracks.
So the
months dragged by. What I hated was the
feeling of being ‘cribbed, cabined and confined’ as Shakespeare put it. No travel could be done without major
planning or time commitment. No Sunday
adrenaline hits; no nothing. The house
got a lot of attention.
To
return to the road a driver education course was recommended but not compulsory
and I thought it good insurance to take one.
Eight hours of mostly bumpf but I got a wake-up call about the brain
effects of regular drinking and some useful tips about how to apply for the
license restoration order. For this you
front up to a Magistrate’s Court and display your remorse, commitment to
‘planned drinking’ and ability to calculate BAC. (And there’s more to that than meets the
eye). My application was to be heard by
a Miss Sparrow (name changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty). An image
of a crotchety spinster who’d once been abused by a drunk flashed to mind. Turned out all she asked me was ‘What
happened?’ Must’ve been my grey hair and
middle-class diction while taking the oath.
So the
restoration was ordered on the usual condition of three years driving with zero
BAC.
I got
the ‘Blade reregistered and mounted a flashing LED pushie light on the
front. Not legal but effective. Day 1 was a spin to Yea, Highlands, Strath Creek
and the
Ern Reeders