Drivers normally travel at a speed that feels safe and comfortable depending on road and weather conditions regardless of the posted speed.

So a speed limit that’s below this comfortable rate means drivers sticking to the slower limit can disrupt the flow of traffic that’s found its own pace.

If you’re driving slower than the other cars, you might be the one posing the safety risk.

When motorists are all generally going at the same speed it’s a safer corridor and there’s not too many drivers sticking to the 70km/h and 80km/h limits on the Northern Distributor Road.

Why, then, is the Roads and Maritime Services refusing to approve a city council request to increase the limits?

The RMS says there’s been 26 accidents but federal safety authority figures show almost a quarter of cars involved in fatal crashes are unregistered or driven by banned or unlicensed drivers.

A similar number are drunk, drug affected or not wearing seatbelts.

Speed is not the real factor.

Modern cars have excellent road holding and good brakes and are safe to drive faster than the older cars of yesteryear.

How would you like your eggs for breakfast this morning? 

Scrambled, fried, boiled or free range?

If it’s free range you’ll no doubt be pleased the Federal Court has just decided free-range hens should be allowed to cluck around freely in a lush paddock everyday because some producers falsely claim their eggs are free range when they’re pretty well jammed in like sardines. 

That’s if chooks can be like sardines.

While there’s no legally enforceable definition of free range, the present industry code limits producers to 1500 hens a hectare and even that doesn’t give them too much room to scratch around.

But despite costing nearly three times the price of  ‘conventional’ eggs produced by hens in cages, people are now eating hundreds of thousands of free-range eggs with their bacon and toast each morning and paying premium prices as high as $9 a dozen because they think they taste better.

However, the Australian Egg Corporation says there’s no research that shows they’re more nutritious than eggs produced from cage or barn-laid production systems.

 Rather than being nutritionally superior, free-range eggs simply offer consumers another option from the wide range available.

“Spring is sprung, da grass is riz, I wonder where dem boidies iz.”

With apologies to the poem’s author Frederic Ogden Nash, we could modify it to read: “Spring is sprung, da grass is riz, I wonder where dem magpies is.”

Well, they’re spreading their wings, so to speak, and launching their annual spring dive-bombing attacks all over Orange.

They’re aggressive males defending nests and chicks in their defence zones, usually an area within 110 metres for pedestrians and 150m for cyclists.

They’ll keep up the bombardments until November so you should arm yourself with the traditional broad-brimmed hat, an empty ice-cream container with some eyes painted on the back, or go walking with an umbrella.

If you’re a cyclist, who the magpies seem to love, you can stick a bright flag on a pole.

But while we take the attacks light-heartedly, magpies can do serious damage to the ears, cheeks and eyes, so it’s best to stay away from their turf for a few weeks.

A coach full of Irish people are on a mystery tour and decide to run a $2 sweepstake to guess where they’re going.

It was won by the driver.

Orange certainly has its fair share of coffee shops. Around 44 at last count and more on the way.

So it’s big business but what does your coffee say about you?

It could reflect your personality according to new research by a clinical psychologist.

If you like your fix extra foamy like cappuccino you’re more likely to be obsessive and controlling while latte drinkers tend to be more neurotic and go out of their way to please others.

Black coffee drinkers were found to be no-nonsense people liking simple things but they can also be quiet and moody and set in their ways.

Being abrupt and dismissive are also common personality traits.

Instant coffee drinkers have a greater likelihood of being procrastinators and are too laid back.

Where do you fit in?

Police numbers at times are still scarce in Orange with officers from district stations like Woodstock, Canowindra, Cudal, Cumnock and Molong coming in to town to help out.

The budget no doubt is stretched to the limit so there’s little chance of getting reinforcements even though police response times can be slow.

But there’s another way the Orange boys in blue can boost their budget locally by leasing their fast V8 highway patrol cars to Bathurst 1000 wildcard teams, with the race likely to have only 26 starters.

When the cars are involved in a police chase the supervisor at the radio base 425 kilometres away at Tamworth always tells them to terminate and let the offenders go, so the high-powered cars they drive are pretty useless and small Mazda 2s or Ford Fiestas could instead do the job.

This would enable the highway patrol cars to be lent to race teams to bring in some welcome loot.

And they would be able to chase other cars on the racetrack and that’s more than they can do now.