Tour de France officials concerned about camera phone users causing crashes

I should have written about this a few days ago when I saw it on picturephoning.com.  Camera phone users at the sidelines of the Tour de France have been stretching out their hands to photograph riders and causing them to crash, according to an article in the Sun.

There have been three crashes in five days blamed an camera phone users trying to take a photo.

The Sun reports, “Sandy Casar collided with a spectator holding a mobile, Thor Hushvod smashed into a board held by a fan and Tom Boonen hit a supporter’s camcorder.

“Furious Frenchman Casar said:  ‘It’s crazy. Everything was going smoothly and then suddenly, bang, I was thrown off my bike and sent into a black hole.’”

Warnings

This is a new situation for the world famous bicycle race, where camera phone users stretch their arms across the barriers.  So far, Tour de France officials haven’t banned camera phones. 

They have issued warnings and there haven’t been any other problems. 

But it’s still a concern.  “With this phenomenon the risk is now everywhere,” according to Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme. 

“We are conscious we have to do something and for the time being we concentrate on prevention.”

Take a digital camera!

This is one of the times when people should take a digital (or film) camera with a zoom lens.  If you know you want to take photos of sporting events there’s no substitute for a digital camera with a 3x (or better) optical zoom and a fast shutter speed to capture the action.

Several months ago my girlfriend and I went on a boat cruise to photograph whales off the coast of Cape Cod (Massachusetts).  I took my Olympus film camera with three lenses but, fool that I was, I didn’t check the batteries that I had changed (recently, I thought).

The batteries, though, were dead and I didn’t want to use it manually, although I guess I could have.  I used a camera phone and the photos were, predictably, pretty poor, although I did get a few snapshot-type images shots of whales that were close to the boat.

Comments

[Red Ribbon Bakery]

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arrielle green