‘Australia Talks Back’, ABC radio 13/04/06. All about road safety.

Some very good comments. I was pleased to hear a lot of the concerns that I have expressed on this forum.

A couple of comments:

The guest expert said that doing 65kmh is about twice as dangerous as doing 60. Well! I haven’t heard that before. But if it is anywhere near true, it is a pretty major reason for speed limits to be policed at face value (see my strong comments in the last post). And it means that the government is even more culpable for contradicting their ‘every k over is a killer’ message, by allowing all drivers to do a few ks over.

Tailgating was mentioned by a couple of callers. Better driver-training was a major theme. Good. These are two really big bugbears that I have expressed on this thread.

But nothing was said about the policing regime. What a pity. It seems that people just don’t understand that the policing regime is all-important. Without meaningful policing, a lot of people will do as they like. The law itself means eff-all. This can’t be more obvious than with speed limits, where most drivers do a few ks over in the full knowledge that they are breaking the law, but that the police won’t nab em for it.

Just seen a couple more Qld Govt road safety ads.

Yair good. A bit less confronting and emotive than the first one I saw. Good initiative Mr Beatty.

Now please can we sort out the duplicity with ‘every k over is a killer’ while a few ks over is acceptable.

Re: “We’re all idiots” (Courier Mail 13/04/06)
By Jane Fynes-Clinton

Great article.

The first few paragraphs had me in tears (which was rather embarrassing sitting in a café!).

“There is a definite sense that the same strategies are recycled year after year…”

Yes. And it is nowhere near good enough.

“Bombard learner drivers before they take to the roads, but also make drivers of all ages refresh their skills and sit tests when they renew their licences.”

YES

“Immediately limit the speed of all vehicles sold here”

YES!!

“It is time to do the gutsy thing and unleash everything we’ve got, and all at once”

ABSABLOODYLOOTELY ! ! ! ! ! !

The whole business of road safety should be the responsibility of the Federal Govt and should be uniform across the country. But if the Beatty Govt can take the initiative and really get this stuff happening, then surely the pressure will be right on Howard to follow suit.

The front page of the Sunday Mail (16/04/06) carried the most extraordinary story of a hoon driver who has accrued 121 demerit points and $10000 worth of fines in 5 years, but still holds a drivers licence. We are only supposed to be able to accrue 12 demerit points in a three-year period before losing one’s licence.

This is beyond extraordinary. Beatty and other pollies are with the highest priority trying to find out what went wrong here. Well of course. We’d expect nothing less. And we expect a head or two to roll when we find out. We also expect this character to lose his licence permanently, or at least for 30 years, given that he has accrued over 30 years’ worth of demerit points!

We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I hear and observe hoon behaviour very frequently. It would not be hard to take the rego number of vehicles and report them…. if the police were receptive to it and some encouragement was given to the public to do this.

THIS is one of the major issues – the nature of the policing regime – as I keep on saying.

Most reluctantly, after several years of making complaints, I came to the very solid conclusion that it is not worth my while going to police with a complaint unless an accident has actually happened, or some very brazen high-risk act of stupidity.

‘Normal’ hoon behaviour, tailgaiting, speeding or aggressive risky driving is just not reportable. This is WRONG. The public needs to be empowered to assist police. For me, this powerlessness factor to do anything about rank driving….when I am willing to take the time to make complaints and full statements….is crippling and enraging.

How can we possibly have a police force that actively (for all intents and purposes) discourages conscientious public from assisting in dealing with dangerous drivers?

Is it any wonder that I hear and see brazen hoon behaviour all the time, with the very small number of police on our roads, and the rank inability for the general public to play a meaningful part?

Just caught Beyond Tomorrow on Channel 7

All about distractions for drivers and the increased chance of having an accident.

Even off-hands mobile phones lead to an average slowing of reaction times of about 0.2 seconds for experienced drivers and 0.3 seconds for young drivers (50% worse). This is thought to be quite significant.

Presumably the same applies with any conversation in a car… and the more vigorous the conversation the worse the effect on the driver.

We are seeing more and more gadgetry in cars, which provides more distractions.

The solution was touted to be regulation of this gadgetry. But it was also expressed that it would be extremely difficult to determine which accessories were too distracting and which were acceptable.

I think they are barking up the wrong tree again (or perhaps barking mad!)

The best way of dealing with this business is driver-training….. with emphasis on safety margins and risk factors.

We cannot eliminate distractions. And any regulation of distracting circumstances is rendered just about useless due to our inability to adequately monitor or police the situation, as has been shown with mobile phones. The policing of in-car conversations would surely be impossible, and yet this is one of the biggest distractions of all.

We need to educate drivers on how to deal with them, by always maintaining healthy safety margins and constantly monitoring risk factors, and make sure they get the message by way of exhaustive testing BEFORE THEY GET A LICENCE, at the next licence renewal for those who have licences, and retested for everyone at least once every five years!! !! !! !! !! !!

I just registered my support for the Qld Govt’s ‘Enough is enough’ campaign on their website, and left a link to this thread.

To the lucky person who looks it up, I make one powerful point - the Qld Govt has GOT to stop the duplicity over speed.

What duplicity you ask? The duplicity of saying that “every k over is a killer”, while allowing us all to do a few ks over!!

We need to know what the speed limit is, and it certainly isn’t what is stated on the signs. It seems that the majority of the time, if not all the time, it is 10ks over. This seems to be acceptable to everyone including the police who won’t book you on the highway and probably anywhere, unless you are doing 11ks over the stated limit.

We need to either have this formally announced, or we need a campaign announcing that speed limits will be policed at the face value of the signs, or something in between, such as a 3 or 5 k leeway.

The bottom line is – the public HAS to know where they stand with speed limits (and various other road rules that aren’t dealt with at face value). Until they do, the police and government are being duplicitous.

They cannot expect to run a highly respected and effective road safety campaign while there are such obvious contradictory elements.