Nothing special
about this photograph of a stretch of worse-for-wear suburban road – except,
if you look closely at the lower left hand side, the line of yellow dots and an
X painted by the police accident investigation squad.

I can’t claim
to accurately decipher the hieroglyphics left at the scene of a young
motorcyclist’s death. Some seem more obvious than others though, such as four
square brackets about 10 metres away on
the other side of the road pretty neatly matching the position of a car’s
tyres. The line of yellow dots runs back to the series of potholes.

Funny thing
about those potholes. A couple of weeks
after the fatal accident, someone has filled in the particular hole where the yellow
dots started. As you can see perhaps more clearly in the second photograph,
they left the hole in front of it alone. Another couple further back also
remain unfilled. Such symbolism.

These potholes
were all much the same, just two maybe three centimetres deep, the top layer of
bitumen missing. I don’t know what it’s
like riding a motorcycle across that sort of hazard but I don’t like driving my
car over them – firm suspension and low-profile tyres.

Once or twice
on the average day though I have to be in that inside lane of River
Road, Lane Cove, for a right turn so I’ve come to anticipate
the thump. They’ve been there for a
while. It would be nice if the RTA filled them all.

I don’t know
how the motorcyclist died. Neighbourhood rumour has something about him on one
wheel and being pitched into an on-coming car. I don’t know. In time a police
officer will explain those yellow squiggles for a coroner’s court and likely
cause will be determined.

You can’t help
wondering though if the potholes might have had something to do with it,
particularly given that line of yellow dots. And you really have to wonder why
all of those holes haven’t been filled.

The relevant
State Minister is Joe Tripodi. He’s been a little busy lately with another hole
in Lane Cove. That one was much bigger but it’s been filled in much more
quickly and no-one was killed. Joe visited that hole. It received a lot of publicity.

Before that Joe
was in the news driving another politician to near violence because of
his lack
of action over a series of fatal accidents along a notorious stretch of
the Pacific Highway. Fixable road conditions there kill people by the
dozen while Joe and his predecessors dither.

The death of
just one motorcyclist on River Road a couple of weeks ago didn’t get much coverage at
all, aside from the traffic reports while the road was closed for the police to
take their statements and measurements and paint their yellow lines and dots.