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Media watch
Page 18
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IN THE NEWS
Stuart Thomas gives us his regular round-up of the way the newspapers have covered the world of transport this week.
August is traditionally a slow news month. It's fleet street's "silly season": the best we can hope for is weather conditions that either herald a global ecological catastrophe or spur 'Debbi' and 'Krystal' to frolic semi-naked on Brighton beach, depending on whether you read broadsheets or tabloids, But you might get lucky and find some hard news — like the story of the pensioner who tried to slow traffic outside her house by fashioning a lifesized figure of a traffic cop out of, er, well the Sun didn't make that clear, Why Stella Anderson fett obliged to decorate "Nancy" wflh the sort of eyeliner normally the preserve of streetwalkers remains unclear.
Someone had even decapitated the hapless mannequin in a frt of pique. One hopes the perpetrator knew he was dealing with a glorted scarecrow rather than a member of her majesty constabulary. Or a prostitute.
Anderson's ruse did have some success, though. There's been "a big drop" in vehicles breaking the 30mph limit on her road in Middleton-in-Teesdale. Whether this was due to increased numbers of kerb crawlers enquiring what 250 buys them was, alas, not revealed.
This week's award for melodramatic introductions goes to The Guardian, for describing a nightmare scenario in which "intelligent machines overrule dumb humans". No, John Vidal was not reporting on the rise of cyborgs but, somewhat disappointingly, the advent of "alco-locks" in Britain. The Daily Mirror and The Independent also drew attention to breathalysers fitted to cars that prevent you from driving drunk.
However, only Vidal exposed the "intelligent machine's" inability to recognise Pimms and Cam pan soda as alcoholic, leaving the Department for Transport and road safety minister David Jamieson looking decidedly red faced. "I think it must be the quality of the Campari served here," blustered the DfT's research manager, Lilly Read,