Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Repent now, ye sinners wearing grey and beige

The coneheads are winning. We are brow-beaten by nonsense PC over-zealous protectionism and de-sensitised to danger.

The do gooders are so pedantic about warning us of danger, we are in danger of becoming oblivious to it.
Men and women in fluoro vests running around marking the hazards of life, an obssession which has become the priority to actually FIXING the original problem.
Road cones, a prime example. They once were for serious threats to our health and safety – such as marking the edge of the earth where the ships fell off. Now they are everywhere.
Driving to work this week we spotted a vehicle off the side of the road, apparently broken down. It had three road cones around it.
Now it's pretty clear that the car is stopped on the side of the road. A clue: It is stationary, at the roadside.
The average bear can figure out that it is stopped, it's not on the road. Therefore: drive past it. Common sense tells you that it's not a good idea to drive into the back of it. If you are holding your lane, there's no chance of that anyway.
But no. Someone is out to protect us from ourselves. In the process, making it more dangerous, especially for cyclists.
Back in the good old days, someone would have TOWED IT AWAY. Not these days. Put some road cones around it, for who knows how long.

Still there
Going to work the next day, the heap and its bloody road cones were still there. The answer should be: have the problem dealt with.
Any numbskull can see there's a problem.
Another road, another day, a string of road cones at the kerbside. No hazard in sight. I thought it was maybe a convention of sunburnt witches.
Turns out, it was the tiniest patch of loose metal. Ooooh, be careful! In reality, you'd be more under threat of tripping or driving over a friggin road cone than coming unstuck on the tiny patch of stray chips.

Sense slip sliding
Along Station Road, there's a massive slip. Every time it rains, a bit of the cliff falls across the road, sometimes into the river. What do we do? Nothing. The slip keeps slipping. But there's road cones. Aren't we robbed of taxes and rates and road taxes and fuel charges to PAY for dangerous slips to be fixed? A road cone is not a fix.
It's a cop out. There are so many road cones these days that I wonder if they are breeding. Having filthy dirty little roadside cone sex and popping out more litters of pointy-headed orange annoyances to further clutter up our streets. Perhaps we should start slipping condoms on them to stem the invasion.
The de-sensitizing to fluoro colours doesn't stop with road markings.
Now every man and his dog literally are striding out in blinding yellow or orange. Yes, even the mutts have been emblazoned with eyeball-numbing technicolour, plus reflective strips, for their own safety.
Once, if you saw a fluoro torso on the road, it meant something. A policeman or maybe a roadworker. You'd take caution, slow down, respond to the message. Not now. These days it's just Fido and Doris taking a dump in the park.
It's a wonder the turds aren't coming out glowing and flashing LED lights.
Even kayakers are bullied into thinking they need to bob around the ocean with ridiculous bicycle flags on top. Soon it will be their fault if they haven't displayed the correct flag and are run over by a Riviera. Idiotic bureaucracy gone completely bonkers.

Excessive safety tripe
We're being hounded by excessive safety tripe, into a state of lobotomised conformity. Soon you won't be able to climb a tree without filling out the hazard form, signing an injury disclaimer exonerating the tree owner or occupier from culpability and agreeing to

wear a safety harness, plus install the undersides of the tree with a safety net and landing pad. The tree will also be required to have aircraft warning lights on the top.
And don't think you'll be allowed in that tree without an orange tree climbing vest.
It will reach the point when road cones will have road cones ahead of them, warning of the road cones to follow.

Warning bells
No-one will be let out of their house, not even to their letterbox to get The Weekend Sun, without being appropriately adorned in flashing lights and warning bells.
The streets will be so full of glowing, gleaming people dodging the road cones, that the safest ones will be those in black and grey – because they'll be the only ones left standing out in the crowd.
Here at RR we are striking back. A plan so ridiculous it thumbs its nose at the fluoro conehead brigade.
We've developed the anti-road cone. It's a traffic cone in camo, so you can hardly see it. The Camo Cone, the ultimate self-contradiction. Show you don't care.
Get yours today!

brian@thesun.co.nz