Filling In An Accident Report Form South Australia: Fill & Download for Free

I'm not sure that this is the stupidest thing that I've ever done, but it is probably right up there.When I was a somewhat crazy PhD student, a group of fellow students and I hired a car to drive from Brisbane to Adelaide for a conference. There were five of us in the car. It was a new Holden Commodore and it was quite a bit more powerful than my old bomb.The route from Brisbane to Adelaide is inland through some very empty country in western NSW along the so-called Western freeway (calling it a freeway gives this road delusions of grandeur). We're talking long straight roads for as far as the eye can see. It was there in that empty flat deserted part of the country with endless straight roads that I decided to see just what this new car could do…Actually I'm a bit goal oriented. It's not that I wanted to see what the car could do, but if I could actually hit the top end of the speedo or at least get close to it. The top end was just a shade higher the 200 kph (approx 125 mph). So I started my chase to the top. Getting there was slow business as it takes some time for the speed to climb that high. As it increased I noticed the car getting progressively lighter on the road. I just needed to hold my nerve. A bit more… a bit more….“Yes!” I exclaimed.That woke the other guys up. I had hit the magic 200 and put all our lives in serious danger so I could one day relate this to someone somewhere as a triumph of will. Instead I now see it for what it was. A needless pursuit of a thrill that endangered everyone's lives.The car wasn't really designed to go that fast. The handling was so twitchy that I immediately slowed down to bring us back to a safer cruising speed. We survived. Luckily and no thanks to me.That really was an ill-fated trip…Later on in the journey, when I was once more at the wheel and travelling over the speed limit, one of my friends offered me an apple. He was sitting behind me, so I put a hand behind the chair waiting for the apple… no apple. The road was pretty straight, flat and boring. No other cars. Nothing around. No apple.I briefly turned around and asked for the apple.It turns out the road wasn't perfectly straight. There was a shallow bend. The wheels left the road and ran onto the loose gravel of the verge. I instinctly corrected the wheel. My instincts were matched to my old bomb without power steering. It was an overcorrection that took us across the road into the oncoming lane. I recorrected…The car went into a flat spin. The tyres were no longer gripping the road. We were out of control…That spinning time seemed to be in slow motion. I watched the others as we spun off the side of the road into a ditch.We were all unhurt. The car was in a ditch. The damage seemed minimal, except we had hit a lonely star picket that left a vertical dent in the side of the car.Not so bad.Then we noticed that none of the doors closed properly. There were large gaps where there had been none. Oops. I bent the car.The road assistance guy was surprised to see us in a ditch. He said that most accidents on that bend end up hitting the large tree on the other side of the road. Well that was one of our possible destinations. But the second steering correction was able to alter our course and we hit a star picket instead and survived unscathed.The remainder of the journey to Adelaide was uneventful because we couldn't even drive the car over 80 kph without violent shaking due to the misaligned chassis. We made it and returned the car to the hire company. I filled in the accident report complete with a detailed diagram of the flat spin trajectory being sure to point out the large tree at point X, our safe arrival at point Y, with a sole star picket at point Z. A dashed trajectory complete with a loop showed how point X was avoided, resulting in our coming to rest at point Z.This may sound like we had a narrow escape and the rest was business as usual. The conference I can't really recall anymore. The return journey…At least I wasn't driving.Steve didn't have a car, so he relished his opportunities to drive. We were still in South Australia driving once more through a wide featureless landscape. I was in the back seat. My friend Michael was in the passenger seat. Everything seemed normal. The road was empty as far as the eye could see. Steve slowly moved the car into the centre of the road… At least that's what I thought he was doing. Except that he kept moving across… At some point I realised that something was wrong. I exclaimed, “Holy crap!” or something to that effect, expecting to very soon be driving at high speed off the edge of the road.As the car continued across the road, Michael, in the passenger seat, reached over and took the wheel. He eased it back and called in a calm and gentle voice, “Steve…. Steve…. Wake up”Steve wasn't asleep. He was hypnotised. He had seen a lonely tree on a distant hill and wanted to go there….That's it! No more stories from that trip. We made it back to Brisbane in one piece.It wasn't about getting caught. It was about coming through the journey alive and fully functional. Yes I hit 200, but I endangered the lives of everyone aboard in doing so. I'd certainly never do that again.

It isn't. It's all lies and nonsense.In 1999, an alleged incident in Indonesia started circulating on the Internet along with warnings about the dangers of using cellular phones in the presence of gasoline fumes. The Indonesian story alleged that a driver was burned when his car exploded at a gas station. No official reports ever surfaced.Warnings about the dangers of using cellular phones in the presence of gasoline fumes began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Though both versions of the original Internet warning alluded to an accident in Indonesia wherein a driver was burned and his car badly damaged as a result of such an explosion, no reports ever surfaced in the news media to confirm the incident.Another alleged incident in 1999 was reported by oil companies to the South China Morning Post. This time the victim was an Australian man who was "blown up" when his phone rang as he was filling his car with gasoline. Fire service heads in Australia insist the incident never happened.Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and the American Petroleum Institute issued statements denying the risk. The CTIA issued the following:There is no evidence whatsoever that a wireless phone has ever caused ignition or explosion at a station anywhere in the world. Wireless phones don't cause gas stations to blow up. Warnings being posted in petrol stations simply perpetuate the myth.The American Petroleum Institute had this to say:We can find no evidence of someone using a cellphone causing any kind of accident, no matter how small, at a gas station anywhere in the world.In actuality, there is more risk for people who climb back into their vehicle while refueling. Static electricity is a real danger and it really can spark a fire.

Saying "American media" is like saying, "American retail", which includes behemoths like Walmart, Target, Kroger, JCPenny, Costco, Home Depot, but also includes the 50,000 small retailers that are owned locally by families and individuals. It also includes the medium sized guys you wouldn't know unless you lived in their region, like Meijer, C-Town, Fresh & Easy (we know it's you, Britain! You ain't foolin' no one!), GiantEagle, Wegmans and Nugget.Second, you haven't defined what corporate influence is. What precisely is that? Is it having to pay for utilities? Is it having to buy health insurance for their employees? Is it having to make money to keep the lights on? Be specific and give us some examples of it. Because -- no matter how much we want to desperately paint capitalism as bad and news as something that should be free from economic pressures -- "the media" need to pay their workers, in real money, not kind words or pats on the back ("Atta boy!" doesn't pay for their bratty 13 year old's braces). They need to buy equipment and facilities. They need cameras and recording devices. They do this by getting money somehow. That is through selling advertisements. Those advertisements inherently put some pressure on the organization that controls that media company. This in turn translates to some kind of pressure on the lower levels of the organization. The important thing is: how much & when? And, is the organization transparent about those pressures?The very fact that they need to also pay for sewage, electricity, heat, etc., means that -- unless they're using a Gutenberg press in an old barn in a mountain somewhere -- they're influenced by a corporation somehow. Even "small, independent" shops that have like two local reporters are under corporate influence. None of us is free of corporate influence, which -- frankly -- is a broad and loaded statement that usually doesn't deliver the sexy results when we drill down deeper and try to find out what you're looking for."Media" -- plural for "medium" which ain't no accident -- is intentionally vast and disparate. So the answer to your question is some media is mostly free of [what I suspect is the] corporate influence you're concerned about, but that doesn't make it better. Small "independent" media shops aren't filled with angels caring about your life. They may be passionate about their jobs, but free of the rigors of robust management and fact-checking, I highly doubt they're delivering more "truth" than FoxNews, frankly.There's no doubt that corporate pressures exist for the giant news organizations like CNN, Fox, NBC (MSNBC), ABC and CBS and even ESPN -- so this shouldn't be a surprise. But they also exist with Al Jazeera, BBC, France 24 & Canal 24 (which are four of my favorites). But they also exist for what are essentially the independent one's I feel like you may be favoring. They just pretend better or aren't admitting to them.Note: The goal is to get your news from a variety of sources and to keep exploring new ones. "New" and "varied" is the key. I tend to avoid TV news not because of the obvious corporate influence (they're companies after all), but because it's sexed up and glitzed up into 30-second, flashing bites that annoy me. If you only speak one language, find news sources from places like Germany, France, Hong Kong, Australia, Britain, South Africa, and the Mideast and read them.