The good oil: Take a peek at this bad boy

Here's a bloke who doesn't miss an opportunity to push his product. He read in this column about the trend to matte colours in cars - a highlight at the recent Paris motor show - and phoned to say the cycle industry has picked up on the matte theme. His name's Justin and he's selling the matte black Cannondale "Bad Boy" bike at his new shop, Bikelab, near Victoria Park.

Yummy mummy pushing her luck

The yummy mummy and her three toddlers stepped out between parked cars and on to Tamaki Drive. It was almost a scene from Jemima Puddle-Duck, Beatrix Potter's book, not the American rock band. Cars braked and stopped. One driver put his head in his hands. Another threw up his arms in despair. Yummy mummy and her three toddlers ever so slowly crossed the road. Toddler One was in front on a trike. Yummy mummy followed with Toddler Two on her hip. Toddler Three brought up the rear, also on a trike. Yummy mummy stopped mid-stream, perhaps to tell Toddler Three not to be a slowcoach. Still the cars waited. Just down the road was a pedestrian crossing. Yummy mummy must be a product of the video generation, where everything comes to life again.

Cruelty all too frequent

Women who uses her battle-scarred Holden stationwagon to help out the SPCA with rescue dogs despairs at the cruelty she's seen and reckons there's a diseased gene running through New Zealand humankind. She reminds us of what inspirational Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi once said, that you can judge a nation by the way it treats its animals.

Now ditch this dopey rule

Now that the dopiest road rule in the world is to be repealed, it's time for the second dopiest to go the same way. The dopiest is of course the one where you give way to traffic turning right across your bows. Blame much of the driver aggression in this country on that rule. It's gone in 2013. Dopey Rule Two is the one covering the use of sirens in emergency vehicles. Cops, fire engines, ambulances don't have to use their sirens at all times in an emergency. They can run with just their lights flashing and use the siren only when necessary, at intersections, for example. Dopey Rule Two doesn't give traffic time to get out of the way of emergency vehicles - because motorists can't hear flashing lights. Transport Minister Steven Joyce has been told about Dopey Rule Two.

North wins eco plaudits

Northern Europeans drive more economically than their counterparts in southern Europe, says a Fiat survey. Drivers in Britain scored 63 per cent out of a possible 100 per cent in Fiat's eco:Index score, which measures optimal engine management while driving on specific routes. Drivers in Germany were second with a 62 per cent score followed by France (60 per cent), Italy (59 per cent) and Spain (58 per cent). Fiat's scores are based on data collected from the 50,000 drivers who downloaded the carmaker's free eco:Drive software, which is designed to help a person reduce fuel consumption on a set route. If all European drivers followed the eco:Drive suggestions, said Fiat, Europe's fuel consumption would be reduced by 37 billion litres a year and CO2 emissions would be reduced by 90 million tonnes, which is more than the annual output of a country the size of Portugal.

We are the world

Cyclist Horatio Toure, 31, snatched an iPhone from a woman on a San Francisco street and peddled off - pretty much straight into the arms of a couple of cops. The woman was doing a real-time demonstration of global positioning software and Toure's escape route showed up on her company's computers.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz