News flash "Idiots skateboard through Heysen Tunnels on South Eastern Freeway"

THREE men - including a Western Australian - caught skateboarding on the South-Eastern Freeway through the Heysen Tunnels this morning were fined $171.
The men - a 23-year-old of Kingscote, a St Morris man, 22, and a South Fremantle man, 20 - were captured on security cameras riding longboards through the Heysen Tunnels about 2am.

Police later stopped the men and issued on-the-spot fines for riding a skateboard on a road at speeds over 50 km/h, riding a skateboard at night and riding a skateboard on the freeway.

The tunnels are constantly used by hundreds of vehicles, including heavy trucks.

The misuse of roadways should be reported to the police, Constable Kynan Lang said.

"This (skatebording) is not appropriate and will be dealt with accordingly," he said.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/idiots-skateboar...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/19/3070736.htm

http://au.news.yahoo.com/australian-news/a/-/australian-news/834952...

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Permalink Reply by Matt Ryan on November 19, 2010 at 23:08

Merrick Wildash said:

I think that is was fucking hilarious..

Who wants to go first..

*Scissors, Papper, Rock*

what happens now... hahaha

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Permalink Reply by leighgriffiths on November 20, 2010 at 1:10

Matt 'Manchild' Ryan said:

This is fucking stupid! sure we all know they weren't in any real danger...but we ride skateboards down hills! 99.9% of people think going down a hill on a skateboard is suicide....fair call? so when people see that on the news what are they going to think??? theres good and bad publicity, and in the long run that bad publicity will hurt the aus downhill community as first impressions last. what would be a better first impression for some one whos never hear of the sport...? seeing skaters on the news being fined for breaking the law. OR seeing skaters rip down mount panorama in an organised race.

I'm not saying you shouldn't skate public roads, fuck i do, i'm saying don't get catch and publicised cause it brings a bad rep for the sport

i had know idea the story was gonna turn into a lead article and its not like we haven't skated this road before, we just haven't for over a year. at 2am its a motorway with nothing but a few trucks usually going much slower than us. so in the past we've never seen any cops, but we were told after that they recently installed a new "special" security camera system down the whole freeway that can detect oddities in traffic movement. once we stopped our car off to the side of the road they sent off a cop car and we got two runs in before they found us.
we rarely ever get caught on our hills as we never see any cops.

it was all just unlucky.

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Permalink Reply by speedy canuck on November 20, 2010 at 5:26

We just went thru all of this in NZ a ferw months back. The bottom line is, 'any press is good press'. Its all about how you handle it. And thanx to what happened we've seen a huge boom in the number of longboarders in NZ, and thankfully to this point no-one has been seriously injured. People just have to use their heads when they sk8.

Matt 'Manchild' Ryan said:

This is fucking stupid! sure we all know they weren't in any real danger...but we ride skateboards down hills! 99.9% of people think going down a hill on a skateboard is suicide....fair call? so when people see that on the news what are they going to think??? theres good and bad publicity, and in the long run that bad publicity will hurt the aus downhill community as first impressions last. what would be a better first impression for some one whos never hear of the sport...? seeing skaters on the news being fined for breaking the law. OR seeing skaters rip down mount panorama in an organised race.

I'm not saying you shouldn't skate public roads, fuck i do, i'm saying don't get catch and publicised cause it brings a bad rep for the sport

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Permalink Reply by Paul Stone on November 22, 2010 at 11:03

leighgriffiths said:This is fucking stupid! sure we all know they weren't in any real danger...but we ride skateboards down hills! 99.9% of people think going down a hill on a skateboard is suicide....fair call? so when people see that on the news what are they going to think??? theres good and bad publicity, and in the long run that bad publicity will hurt the aus downhill community as first impressions last. what would be a better first impression for some one whos never hear of the sport...? seeing skaters on the news being fined for breaking the law. OR seeing skaters rip down mount panorama in an organised race.

----
You can't say someone riding a skateboard downhill at 90kms an hour is not in any real danger, come on - one little mistake or big stick/tyre on the road or if your body is not totally in control the whole time and you are in real danger going at that speed, its an extremely dangerous thing. A guy over here broke his collar bone recently, there was the news thing about someone in canada getting killed recently. It is definitely dangerous but thats the risk people take

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by The Dave on November 22, 2010 at 12:01

Until we're classified as road users (like bikes) and not pedestrians, we're always going to be forced to be clandestine for anything other than tooling around in side streets at low speed. Seems that 2am is about the most ideal time for anyone not wanting to be caught. Just unlucky here.

7pm project are clearly not very good at comedy.