Three Words for the Federal Government - Federal Discrimination Act

On the ABC's website, today, an article about how people on the autism spectrum are now required to report their autism and seek assessment for fitness to drive. the new laws came into effect nationally last year. Most states don't have a fine for not reporting, but Western Australia has a $500 fine and Queensland has a $9000+ fine for failure to report a health condition that affects driving.

Image courtesy Australian Brodcasting Corporation.Image courtesy Australian Brodcasting Corporation.

These laws are reasonable for diabetes, heart conditions, etc, as these conditions can lead to a driver passing out at the wheel. They also make sense with people who have poor vision who may be driving without appropriate prescription glasses. For autism, though?! It's a soft fascism. It's like the early, pre-Reichstag fire, reign of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. It is ablist and descriminatory, aimed at demonising a group of people who actually tend to drive very well.

You see, people with "the 'tism" are my people. I have no formal diagnosis but have lived a path and had experiences like so many of my autistic friends. I exihibit montropic behaviour in my workflows. I hold facts in my head that amaze even me that I remembered such trivial points, and hold friends and family to account on those facts. I shall certainly never seek a formal diagnosis as a result of this new Australian driving law.

This new law is also a clear discrimination against perfectly "functional" people under the Federal Discrimination Act. Highly autistic people would struggle to pass a driving test, but those with autism who can pass a driving test are likely to hold rigidly to driving law and assess conditions with rigour. This is how autistic people are, we have a bit of Sheldon Cooper in us. we find alternatives more willingly if we feel convention is inappropriate for a situation and we hold to convention when it's clearly appropriate. We also often understand the physics of driving better than most "normies."

These new standards are an undue, unfair discrimination. Simple as that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Because I'm That Kind of Crazy

Image
Something I've always been fascinated with are those people who build wooden bikes and trikes. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, too. So, while I wait for other projects' parts to arrive, plug on with yet other projects and generally mess about while I wait for reliable weather to weld my lean steer, steel trike, I decided to design an Ackerman steering plywood trike. This one... The core of this baby is the curved crossmember, or the "wing", as I call it. This render doesn't yet have its brace developed, and the main frame is still the crude draft and needs shaping, but you can see the idea taking shape. The curvature of the wing gives 12 degrees at the steerer head hole centres. It also allows for a single piece wing without having to angle two sides, having a weak point in the middle or having to drill complex angle in flat pieces of wood. All of the correct angls are developed in the shape of the spar and the curvature of the wing. Ot
Read more

I Am a Man of Many Projects

Image
Some might argue, "Too many!" As individuals, we are the sum of our ideas, that equation for me results in "technological Trotskyite with a twist." Endless revolution is consensus anarchy in loose collectives, for example the best of the best of free, free, open-source software. Such a group works tirelessly to create an app for community benefit, rewarding significant contributors with "commit privileges" on the version manager where the project is maintained, the collective of contributors having voting rights on who is doing well as a maintainer. The titles are not very anarchistic, but they actually don't have to have any meaning other than the role a person chooses to take on the project. If a fee is charged for the app, the maintainers and regular contributors, get an equal share of the profits. I just recently established a project like this, no bites yet, I've barely the skill to flesh out "HelloWorld.cpp" yet, but I'm offerin
Read more

Meanwhile, Developing a MIDI, Tap-Tempo, Master-Clock Pedal...

Image
Kind of the other inspiration for the Robo-Drums, I've also been thinking about a MIDI Master Clock that started with the WAY TOO AMBITIOUS idea of a central 2-way, DINsync-MIDI-And-Back Master Clock, that I thought would be cool to add tap-tempo to. (Draws HUGE breath after that mouthful!) I dug out one of my Wio Terminal micros, promptly killed it on a distraction, dug out the other and started developing this concept. The left and centre buttons will probably have a gang reserved for straight switching of start/stop and pattern-select, as well as for triggering to Wio Term to do MIDI.sendStart/MIDI.sendStop (left) and MIDI.programChange. (Center.) The right button will be the tap-tempo button. The toggle switches will select normally-open/closed modes for the analogue button-out function. On the tap tempo stuff, I got to thinking about " Kilroy's Blues " •1 , a song I wrote back in the mid "noughties," and how it would be cool to "pedal"
Read more