The World Is Not Your Ashtray

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday November 23, 2007

Greg Thiele

TEMPORARILY Two-armed Australians (TTAs). You will undoubtedly have seen at least a couple if you drove to work this morning. Smokers, right arm extended languidly into space (rather in the fashion of the representation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel), casually flicking ash into that part of creation not encompassed by their motor vehicle, oblivious to the disapproval of other road users, the climax of the performance usually being the ejection of the cigarette butt onto the roadway.

It is difficult to know which is the more appalling: the threat to the person's own safety, or their blatant disregard for the health and wellbeing of the other inhabitants of planet Earth.

One of the most basic principles of motoring safety is that no part of a person's body should ever protrude from a vehicle. Didn't these people ever listen to their parents? The day cannot be far off when a spate of accidental amputations will take a grisly toll on this breed of butt flickers. Then the authorities might sit up and take notice. Appropriate signs will be erected: Police Targeting TTAs. Only then is the epidemic likely to abate.

The loss of a driver's appendage is a serious matter. Ultimately, however, such an outcome will seriously affect only the victim and their immediate circle of family, friends and associates. The habit of ashing indiscriminately from a car window, however, has potentially grave ramifications for the rest of us, especially as we advance into the bushfire season.

While spring rains have ensured that Sydney is not as dry as the proverbial tinderbox, the same rain (as the good folk at the NSW Rural Fire Service solemnly assure us) will ultimately only exacerbate the problem by encouraging strong growth, which will in turn quickly dry to tinderbox consistency under the summer sun.

Under such circumstances, the prospect of smoking motorists scattering cigarette ash and butts - like so many mini incendiary capsules - from their car windows stretches credulity. Ashes to ashes, indeed. Even those cigarette butts that do not cause a conflagration will at the very least contribute to the pollution already choking our roads and waterways.

Smoking motorists: please, the world is not your ashtray. Even in these relatively health-conscious times, most cars come equipped with one. Use it.

Readers are invited to send 450 words on what makes their blood boil to heckler@smh.com.au. Include your daytime phone details.