The traffic chaos that gripped the west last week came as no surprise to regular users of the Princes Freeway. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
The other surprise, fortunately, was that the man trapped under the truck in his car for several hours lived to tell the tale. I heard radio talkback callers whinging about the highway closure and being diverted into Point Cook and not knowing where they were.
My wife was stuck in it trying to get home and it was inconvenient but, thankfully, not life-threatening.
Workers at the scene were risking their own lives trying to save a life and were dealing with mangled cars, trucks with petrol tanks and the potential for who knows what. I’m sure we’d all rather be stuck in traffic than in a crushed car under a truck.
The next day, in almost the same spot, a car with those temporary tied-on car sales number plates came past me at well over the speed limit, chopping in and out of lanes.
Stupidity at its finest. This brings me to another observation that disturbs me . . . I see a lot of cars with no number plates on our streets. Why? We no longer need rego stickers because new technology allows police to call up all information on our vehicles via our number plates. So these cars with no plates are . . . illegal? Unregistered? Uninsured?
Number plate theft has always been a problem, but I suspect other reasons are at work in these cases.
Well done, Candice
Candice Wyatt has become one of the high-profile news people in town as the new co-anchor of Ten’s nightly news, although many local people remember her as a journalist for the now-defunct Werribee Times.
She covered everything from council meetings to fluffy dog stories. She also accepted my offer to do post-match player interviews for the WRFL Footy Show for Channel 31.
The players and coaches loved her and she handled it brilliantly, even in some very ‘blokey’ situations.
I’m sure she’ll become a household name in her new role. I have to say, too, that Candice is totally unaffected by being on television and is still the same down-to-earth person I met a decade ago.
