The Qld Govt has just released TV ads asking people to slow down at roadworks sites.

Well I suppose that is good, given the appalling attitude that most drivers have at roadworks….. just blatantly ignoring the temporary speed signs and at best slowing down a bit.

Bloody whimpish ads though. Why couldn’t they impress upon drivers to observe the temporary speed limits signs, instead of imploring them just to ‘slow down’. Every roadworks site is endowed with this signage.

But of course, as always, it will mean precisely nothing, in the absence of increased policing of roadworks sites, which the ads did not allude to at all…. because there will be no increased policing.

So, it means that money has been wasted yet again, in appealing to the public… the vast majority of whom will take absolutely no notice. Surely this money should have been spent on increasing the policing of roadworks sites as well as informing the public that such action was being taken

The Beatty Govt has just announced that drivers will be hit with double demerit points if caught exceeding the speed limit by 20kmh twice in one year.

Good.

But instead of piecemeal announcements like this, how about announcing a whole improved plan for road safety, including many of the things that I have written about on this thread.

At least, in conjunction with stiffer penalties for speeding, we could be told just what the real speed limit is (Is it universally 10 kmh over what the signs say, or what??)

We could start getting greatly improved signage of speed limits, so we know what bloody speed zone we are in all the time, instead of having to guess until we encounter a sign, or battle to remember what the last sign was, if we have been driving for a while through changing speed zones.

We could also get encouragement to report obvious brazen speeders and other dangerous drivers, thus reinforcing the community’s responsibility to not turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, and strengthen the policing regime by placing some power in the hands of the public. The weakness of the policing regime is one of the greatest problems. If any person can make a complaint and have it dealt with properly, the policing regime could be greatly strengthened, and the offence rate greatly reduced.

While I support this move, I have to say that it still seems like rearranging a single deck chair on the Titanic.

The Sunday Mail has a tiny 70 word article hidden away on page 18, telling us about double demerit points.

Not good enough! ANY changes to the law, or any governmental changes that are likely to affect more than the tiniest portion of the populace need to be publicised very prominently so that everyone gets the message. For the government to put out one round of press releases, which result in publicity over one or two days in newspapers and on TV and radio news, is nowhere near good enough.

The public is entitled to know exactly where they stand with all this sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, the new ads imploring us to slow down at roadworks (see my post of 1st April) have either stopped or are of very low frequency. I have only seen one and it has been 8 days since I saw it.

I have to ask, what is the point of doing any of these sorts of things if the message is not hammered home?

A wide range of in-car safety technology is being developed based on cameras and radar to detect danger: things such as the distance between your car and the one in front, pedestrians or other obstacles, changing lanes without indicating, etc.

Some of this sounds good in theory. But I fear that it is taking things in the wrong direction. By taking some control of potentially dangerous situations, responsibility and alertness of the driver is possibly being usurped.

The technology would have to be nothing short of brilliant to be able to foresee every dangerous situation without any false alarms. The potential is very much there for sudden false-alarm computer-triggered braking or evasive action to actually cause an accident rather than prevent one. The system would only need to do this once in the lifetime of the car to totally work against its very purpose.

With such gadgetry, drivers should be required to do extra training until they are thoroughly used to it, before they take their new vehicle on the public roads.

Surely the best thing to do is to greatly improve driver-training rather than rely on this sort of technology.

I admire the initiatives of Mercedes, Audi and others. Some of the basic stuff sounds good, such as radar that keeps your car at a safe distance behind the vehicle in front. Another really good idea would be radar-controlled maximum speed according to the relevant speed limit zone. But once you start mucking around with computer-controlled braking and the like, I’m sorry, but I can’t agree that it is the best way forward for improving road safety.

The Beatty Government is starting to get a little bit serious about road safety.

Today we heard another announcement: There will be a new charge of evading police for those who initiate high-speed chases.

Good. But I don’t get it! Apparently evading from the police or running from the police has not been illegal!! What? There has always been a charge of failure to follow police instructions. My mind boggles.

Qld Transport Minister Paul Lucas says that we aren’t going to really get on top of the road safety issue until people take responsibility for their own actions.

WRONG! You cannot expect a fair portion of people to take responsibility for their own actions on the roads, until there is a very effective police force to make them do so.

The keys to the whole issue are effective policing and proper driver-training. Effective policing needs two major things: greatly increasing police numbers, and a much less conspicuous nature, by making police blend into the community rather stand out like dogs balls. If they were to drive unmarked cars, then every reasonably new car would be seen as a potential police vehicle in the eyes of would-be offenders

Just seen the new Qld road safety ad for the first time.

Bloody hell. Don’t hold back Beatty will you!

Its all very well to pump some bloody startling images into the heads of all Qld TV watchers. Maybe it will make a few people slow down a bit…… maybe.

But let’s get rid the f...ing duplicity.

The bottom line in the ads is ‘every k over is a killer’. But the police, with the full backing of the government, allow us to do a few ks over, in fact 10ks over most if not all of the time!!

This could easily be interpreted as the government allowing people to speed and hence being responsible for bloody road deaths and trauma!

Mr Beatty, if you going to shock the driving public with ads like this, then how about having the decency to order that the law be policed at face value, and advertise that the there will be zero tolerance on speeding! Or tell us officially what the f...ing leniency margin is, so that we all know what the real speed limit is!

If you don’t do this, you are demonstrating utter duplicity!

You must realise that those who practice the letter of the law are held in contempt by other drivers, because they are driving 5 to 10 kmh slower than the accepted cruising speed. This causes its own dangerous circumstances by leading to impatience and hence tailgating and dangerous overtaking.

Cut the crap now and tell us exactly what the go is with speed limits.