On topic: Guerrilla Gardeners

I found this also on http://www.saculture.com/entries/s.html

A bit poetic.

Stobie Poles.

We can lay the blame squarely at the feet of Mr JC Stobie, the
Adelaide Electricity Supply Company’s design engineer, for South
Australia having the ugliest telegraph poles in the country, quite
possibly the world. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time
to make the poles with two long pieces of steel held together by a
slab of concrete. ‘These’ll withstand anything!’ JC would have cackled
to himself gleefully.

Numerous fights to the death between Stobie poles and cars full of
drunken teenagers have proven him right. In fact, Stobie poles
probably kill more South Australians than sharks, red-back spiders and
tiger snakes combined. And while sharks at least have some lethal
grace about them, Stobie poles are simply hideous.

Attempts at beautification have included growing geraniums up the
poles, and, most notably in the Adelaide suburb of Prospect, painting
works of art on them. Renowned artist Clifton Pugh contributed a
stunning interpretation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but
scandalously, he painted the couple without any clothes on.

Quite properly, Adelaide’s moral guardians insisted he go back and
cover up the rude bits

 

Poor Mr Stobie. South Australia has very little timber and an apparently
infinite supply of termites. [1] At the time (1924) South Australia did
have steel, and cement in abundance, and his design for a steel and
concrete electricity pole must have seemed like an ideal engineering
solution to the problem of importing timber poles at vast expense from
Victoria only to have the termites munch through them in a few weeks.

Apocryphally, absent a few cockies from the Mallee who head-on at
midnight because neither was using lights, and pretty much everyone who
dies on SA roads does it by trying to knock down a Stobie pole. [2]
These things are immovable objects, and neither cars nor motorcycles can
apply anything remotely approximating irresistable force.

My original point was simply that since everyone who dies on the road
gets wiped out by a Stobie pole [2], why not just paint a car wreck on
the side of the pole like they used to do with bombs to signify
successful raids on the fuselages of WWII bombers? And, conveniently,
the pole is already cruciform.

--
Regards

Andrew

[1] The majority of SA termites get their cellulose from dead timber.
How there can possibly be so many of them when there is so little timber
seems, on the surface, to be very odd.

[2] In fact, the majority of SA road deaths occur in exactly the same
way as any other Australian state; while Stobie poles are killers,
people don't drive into them all that often.

 

Not everyone who dies hit a Stobie Pole but everyone who hits a Stobie Pole
dies!!

 

Not so... I used to know a guy who had hit a stobie pole at speed.

I admit he only had one leg from about the knee down but he was alive. [1]


G-S

[1] I can only assume he impacted the stobie pole only with his legs...

 

For our non-Australian readers, the Stobie pole is a steel and
concrete pole which carries electricity and telephone lines. It was
invented in South Australia by James Stobie. Picture:
http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6321874,00.jpg

 

Seems to be an excellent design dont't have to replace them like wooden
ones

 

A mockery of road safety. I wonder whether the owner could be held
liable for putting something that dangerous so close to the road
without any barrier or any safety features.

I'm amazed that the power/comm company can get by little things that
one might imagine would stop them. Isn't there any road safety
legislation? Planning permission? Public liability? Those things
really do turn an accident into a death don't they.

 

A mockery of road safety. I wonder whether the owner could be held
liable for putting something that dangerous so close to the road
without any barrier or any safety features.

**********************************************

But they are protected, the concrete pole is protected by the railway line

**********************************************

I'm amazed that the power/comm company can get by little things that
one might imagine would stop them. Isn't there any road safety
legislation? Planning permission? Public liability? Those things
really do turn an accident into a death don't they.

****************************************************

Make one yourself and place it on the nature strip outside your house to
protect a tree and see how far you get

 

....which brings us full-circle to Crash Barrier Post Protectors (or
plain Post Protectors as originally suggested for wooden or concrete
poles).

 

Moike wrote:

As for the genius behind "Slippery when wet" signs......

Think how much money could be saved if we had Kangaroo, Wombat, Emu and
assorted wildlife signs only on the roads out of Aussie airports and docks?

regards,
CrazyCam

 

Moike wrote:

....and, as for the idiotic pervert who has been going round putting up
cameras to photograph red lights, and then adding signs skiting about it?

regards,
CrazyCam

 

They're on the side of the road, not in the middle of the road. In most
cases it is probably illegal to drive off the road and hit one, so
shouldn't be that big a problem, eh.

Nev..
'07 XB12X
'08 DL1000K8

 

OK, Moike...
1. Yes you have to be silly to hit one at speed, but the numbers
remain: 40% of fatalities are single vehicle crashes (in VIC, don't
have the figure for SA). You're not silly, so you'll never hit one,
eh? Who cares about the other people.

2. Perhaps you should've said 'just as dangerous'. Don't try and
justify/defend the road-side pole - it's not an argument worth
winning. I think they might be a little bit more dangerous because
the edge of the steel plate acts like a knife, where a pole is like a
blunt object. I would expect to see different types of injury in
victims at hospital (sharp object->amputation, blunt object->broken
bones and internal injuries). Perhaps 'differently dangerous' if
amputation is more survivable (certainly will kill your motorcycle
career unless Rick Allen rides a motorcycle as well as plays drums?).

I've had a look at a few candidate posts (wooden posts deliberately
placed at the roadside so they'll be hit by cars) near where I live
and they all appear to have been hit and knocked down often. So that
would mean you'd be replacing the expanded polystyrene jacket the
paper talks about quite often. Do you think perhaps they should look
at tough, high-density foam?

 

They shouldn't hit them either! Simple solution. Just place a warning
sign on every stobie pole, advising other people not to run into them.

Nev..
'07 XB12X
'08 DL1000K8

 

Epic win 4 nev!

 

I would be happy if the sign was made of thick, high-density foam and
wrapped around the fantastically dangerous pole. One that cut my
potentially fatal deceleration by 50%. Any silly fracker can sit in
his chair and type 'oh yeah, road safety, that's easy, I know all
about THAT, just don't hit anything! HA HA HA!' What kind of moron
could type that knowing how many people die, and be happy about what
they've just typed? Only a troll. Maybe a sicko. Or someone who
hasn't really thought out the full consequenses of his actions (i.e.
stupid). I hope you're unhappy with the current situation. If you
aren't, before defending your point of view you should think for a
moment about the people who are unneccessarily dead.