This (first) post in Dutch is about a complaint filed against the Belgian Police for not following the rules that allow them to drive through a red traffic light.
De vorige keer heeft het indienen van een klacht voor een soortgelijke situatie bij het Vast Comité van Toezicht op de politiediensten (beter bekend als Comité P) weinig opgeleverd omdat de betrokkenen niet geïdentificeerd konden worden. Deze keer heb ik de nummerplaat onthouden.
De klacht (verbatim tekst + linkificatie):
Geachte,
Vandaag, dinsdag 27 maart 2007, omstreeks 18 uur 53 is er een politiecombi met nummerplaat SMB-565, komende van de richting Hove en rijdende in de richting van Edegem over de Hovestraat, door het rode licht gereden op het kruispunt van de Hovestraat met de N171 (Boniverlei), zonder evenwel te stoppen zoals nochtans voorgeschreven door Artikel 37.4 van het AR op de politie van het wegverkeer en van het gebruik van de openbare weg. Het prioritaire voertuig maakte op het ogenblik van de feiten wel gebruik van de blauwe knipperlichten zoals voorgeschreven door AR 37.2 en van het speciaal geluidstoestel zoals voorgeschreven door AR 37.3.
Een bijkomende, en mijns inziens verzwarende, omstandigheid in verband met deze overtreding van AR 37.4 is dat het speciale geluidstoestel slechts werd ingeschakeld op een vijftal meter voor het kruispunt en weer werd uitgeschakeld op enkele meters voorbij het kruispunt. Het eerste feit maakte dat aanwezige bestuurders te laat opmerkzaam werden gemaakt op het aanrijdende prioritaire voertuig dat, door ook niet te stoppen, te weinig tijd liet om weggebruikers het kruispunt te laten vrijmaken zoals hen verplicht wordt door AR 38.
Het tweede feit maakte dat het betrokken prioritaire voertuig bij de eerstvolgende oversteekplaats voor voetgangers en bij het volgende kruispunt met voorrang van rechts, beide even voorbij de plaats van de overtreding, geen voorrang kon afdwingen.
Hoewel er 'slechts' sprake is van één flagrante overtreding van de wegcode, blijkt uit het algemene gedrag van de bestuurder van het prioritaire voertuig een minachting voor zowel het verkeersreglement als voor de veiligheid van alle andere weggebruikers.
Met beleefde groet,
Als alles gaat zoals vorige keer verwacht ik deze week nog een schriftelijke bevestiging van ontvangst van mijn klacht en over een maand of drie, vier een verdere opvolging.
Het belangrijkste van dit soort klachtenprocedures is niet het behalen van enig direct voordeel of het veroordeeld krijgen van bepaalde politieambtenaren, maar het geven van een signaal naar de politiediensten toe dat burgers het niet langer pikken dat politieambtenaren zich als cowboys in het verkeer gedragen. Voor het Comité P is dit een beetje extra werk (werk dat ze geacht worden te doen en waarvoor ze betaald worden met mijn belastinggeld), maar het brengt op zijn minst een hoop irritant gevraag en mogelijk een berisping of (hopelijk) zelfs een straf met zich mee voor de politieambtenaar in overtreding. Alles bij elkaar een stevige incentive om het niet meer te doen.
Ik kan iedereen aanraden om hetzelfde te doen (het moet uiteraard wel om een echte overtreding gaan). Een klacht indienen kan online.
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
Saturday, 24 March 2007
Team building
Today (technically yesterday), we had a team building day with the entire company (well, almost entire anyway) at Brasserie Kwadraat in Ekeren. The day started with tea/coffee and croissants, followed by an introduction of the team building people and the obligatory speech/presentation by the Big Boss.
The first activity of the day was a getting-to-know-you session; the group was divided in two manageable parts of 13 people each and the goal was for each person in the subgroup to have a short face-to-face with all the others in the group, with 5 minutes per conversation. It wasn't just a conversation to have, but to determine one nontrivial common trait; tell each other something special about oneself; and set an expectation for the day.
This was a good opportunity to learn something new from each other. Apparently, I'm no the only biker in the team, there are some former-bikers and wannabe-bikers as well. There are also a number of people who share my passion for DIY and tinkering with stuff. And there are some who can appreciate classical music as well.
The second activity was a practice for some quick on-the-spot team work: a small competition between two subgroups of 13 people. The assignment: get all 13 people on a 2x3m piece of polytarp, cut away as much as possible, and flip over the tarp. All this without anyone setting any foot outside the plastic. The winner of the two teams was the one with the smallest piece of plastic left.
It was oficially called an ex-aequo, but our team actually lost.
Lunch was good (smoked salmon).
The third activity was a larger and complicated project, requiring some planning: Mute and Blind. Again the group was divided in two teams of 13 each. Each team would have one mute person and twelve blind ones, all working together to reach an objective. The assignment was: divide the team of blind people into two subteams of 6, have each subteam find a piece of rope, have each subteam lay out the piece of rope in an equilateral triangle with one point touching one end of a narrow bridge, get each subteam inside their triangle, and finally get each subteam to cross the bridge to the other side.
The mute guy can see everything, but cannot move or touch anyone and thus has to steer all the blind people around on the field using non-verbal signs (clapping hands, whistling, etc). The blind people can talk (to each other and to the mute guy), but not see anything.
An operation of this magnitude needed some preparation of course. We were given given some time to agree on some sort of strategy to get the job done. Admittedly, the preparation of our team was complete and utter chaos, until somebody took the bull by the horns and started making some decisions. We finally ended up with a distributed control system and parallel triangle generation.
This means that the leader of each subteam asked simple yes/no questions to the mute and the mute had only three available instructions: two replies and one interrupt (1 clap for yes, two claps for no and multiple claps for full stop). The control system was distributed in that the mute did not send out instructions (central control), but rather relied on the intelligence of the subteam leaders to ask correct questions (this has one drawback: if something goes wrong in the communication, it requires tremendous imagination on the part of the questioner to realize that one or more of the previous answers of the mute were actually wrong). The subteams used a CSMA/CD protocol to communicate with the mute: basic Aloha. Just listen to the others and ask the question; if questions are asked at the same time, shut up and try again later.
The parallel triangle generation consisted of two methods of creating the triangle: one was simple to execute but needed interaction with the mute to position two of the corners; the other was slightly more complex, but needed only a final confirmation of the mute as a doublecheck for whether the triangle was correctly laid out. As such, both triangles could be laid out simultaneously.
Our team won this one.
The last assignment was to stage out each of the five Company Values in groups of five people: enterprising, urge for realisation, respectfulness, realism, and professionalism.
The day was concluded by having people compliment each other.
Dinner was good.
The first activity of the day was a getting-to-know-you session; the group was divided in two manageable parts of 13 people each and the goal was for each person in the subgroup to have a short face-to-face with all the others in the group, with 5 minutes per conversation. It wasn't just a conversation to have, but to determine one nontrivial common trait; tell each other something special about oneself; and set an expectation for the day.
This was a good opportunity to learn something new from each other. Apparently, I'm no the only biker in the team, there are some former-bikers and wannabe-bikers as well. There are also a number of people who share my passion for DIY and tinkering with stuff. And there are some who can appreciate classical music as well.
The second activity was a practice for some quick on-the-spot team work: a small competition between two subgroups of 13 people. The assignment: get all 13 people on a 2x3m piece of polytarp, cut away as much as possible, and flip over the tarp. All this without anyone setting any foot outside the plastic. The winner of the two teams was the one with the smallest piece of plastic left.
It was oficially called an ex-aequo, but our team actually lost.
Lunch was good (smoked salmon).
The third activity was a larger and complicated project, requiring some planning: Mute and Blind. Again the group was divided in two teams of 13 each. Each team would have one mute person and twelve blind ones, all working together to reach an objective. The assignment was: divide the team of blind people into two subteams of 6, have each subteam find a piece of rope, have each subteam lay out the piece of rope in an equilateral triangle with one point touching one end of a narrow bridge, get each subteam inside their triangle, and finally get each subteam to cross the bridge to the other side.
The mute guy can see everything, but cannot move or touch anyone and thus has to steer all the blind people around on the field using non-verbal signs (clapping hands, whistling, etc). The blind people can talk (to each other and to the mute guy), but not see anything.
An operation of this magnitude needed some preparation of course. We were given given some time to agree on some sort of strategy to get the job done. Admittedly, the preparation of our team was complete and utter chaos, until somebody took the bull by the horns and started making some decisions. We finally ended up with a distributed control system and parallel triangle generation.
This means that the leader of each subteam asked simple yes/no questions to the mute and the mute had only three available instructions: two replies and one interrupt (1 clap for yes, two claps for no and multiple claps for full stop). The control system was distributed in that the mute did not send out instructions (central control), but rather relied on the intelligence of the subteam leaders to ask correct questions (this has one drawback: if something goes wrong in the communication, it requires tremendous imagination on the part of the questioner to realize that one or more of the previous answers of the mute were actually wrong). The subteams used a CSMA/CD protocol to communicate with the mute: basic Aloha. Just listen to the others and ask the question; if questions are asked at the same time, shut up and try again later.
The parallel triangle generation consisted of two methods of creating the triangle: one was simple to execute but needed interaction with the mute to position two of the corners; the other was slightly more complex, but needed only a final confirmation of the mute as a doublecheck for whether the triangle was correctly laid out. As such, both triangles could be laid out simultaneously.
Our team won this one.
The last assignment was to stage out each of the five Company Values in groups of five people: enterprising, urge for realisation, respectfulness, realism, and professionalism.
The day was concluded by having people compliment each other.
Dinner was good.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
On the road again
Yes indeedy, my bike is finally repaired! It was originally promised for february 14 and later postponed to march 2, then march 6, then march 8, then march 10 at 1100, then march 10 at 1300, then march 10 at 1130 (after an angry phone call).
But all that is past now; today, 85 days and 5 traffic law changes after that fatal moment, I have made my first bike trip of the year. It is still a bit chilly outside, but the sun put in an effort and when driving not too fast, the temperature was comfortable enough.
After almost three months of pedestrianism, I had to get used to driving again. I took it slowly, driving from the garage straight towards an empty parking lot to practise some manoeuvring.
Afterwards I did a larger, completely random tour that also took me past the place where I crashed into the scenery. There was not much to see there, though; the road was in excellent condition (compared, at least, to the average Belgian road).
But all that is past now; today, 85 days and 5 traffic law changes after that fatal moment, I have made my first bike trip of the year. It is still a bit chilly outside, but the sun put in an effort and when driving not too fast, the temperature was comfortable enough.
After almost three months of pedestrianism, I had to get used to driving again. I took it slowly, driving from the garage straight towards an empty parking lot to practise some manoeuvring.
Afterwards I did a larger, completely random tour that also took me past the place where I crashed into the scenery. There was not much to see there, though; the road was in excellent condition (compared, at least, to the average Belgian road).
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