You are right Ludwig ol’ mate. Tailgating is a real bastard of a thing to deal with when driving. You are not just being nitpicky over some insignificant aspect of road safety, as one of your friends suggests.

Not only is the magnitude of the tailgating issue evident by way of its close association with the most frequent types of motor vehicle insurance claims and hence accidents, as you point out, but it was also the clear number one complaint of drivers in Queensland in two separate polls undertaken by the RACQ a few years apart. Think of all the annoyances you face when driving – and there are many – and tailgating came out as the worst.

So then, why on the planet don’t the police deal with it?? They could so easily add it to their publicity campaigns, and they could just as easily book people for it as they can for speeding

The relationship between police and magistrates is another area that deserves harsh comment.

I have had very limited experience, having only gone go court once over a traffic matter, which I chose to do following a totally ridiculous charge. But that one instance was enough to stain my respect for the law and police very deeply and irreversibly. (No it wasn’t the trigger for my road-safety comments. My comments started a many years earlier, including many letters to the editor in my local paper.)

Everyone; the police, legal system, RACQ, government, etc, say that you have to be proven guilty or at least deemed guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in order to be convicted. Well, in my experience, this is patently not the case.

It seemed to me that the magistrate was determined to hold solidarity with the police officer, virtually no matter what. Now I realise that that’s a hell of an allegation….. but it is the straightforward truth.

Even though this happened more than four years ago, I am about to take forward official complaints, because the effect that it has had on me has been severe, and has not lessened with time.

The ONLY thing I did was to slow down in front of a chronic tailgater, and keep my speed slow and uniform until he could pass, end of story. For that I was charged with failing to show due care to other road users, by an officer who clearly had no concept of the danger or illegality inherent in tailgaiting, let alone very deliberately aggressive and dangerous tailgating.

So what do you do when one of the most fundamental points of decency and law gets shown to be an out and out fallacy? Yes I’m referring to the notion that you are innocent until proven guilty, and that you have to be proven guilty or at least shown to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before you can be convicted.

You flop around in a state of shock and bewilderment for four years, and then you launch into tough action. Maybe. One thing is for sure, if you believe in justice and you are concerned about things such as social coherence and aspects of it such as our appalling road carnage, then you don’t just let it be. I have tried to live with it for four years, but I can’t. Of course I can’t. So whatever action I can take will be taken.

This particular police officer did a few things not befitting his position, which amounted to very different treatment of myself and the other party, both of who went to the police station of our own volition to complain about each other’s driving. But upon making a complaint about this officer after the court case, which I did in line with my legal advice, nothing happened. It went nowhere.

So I take it that the police are able to behave pretty much as they wish, regardless of due process or fairness, at least in some situations. Is that an outrageous statement? A few years ago I would have said yes, absolutely. But now I know better.

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Obviously I have had my confidence in the police and courts destroyed. I still have some degree of respect for both, as they can’t all be rotten apples, but I vow to stay away from them if at all earthly possible.

‘O well, they have done well then’, you say. ‘You won’t get yourself into any trouble again if you are that strongly determined to stay away from them’. Well, I got myself into no trouble in the first place. Trouble sought me out on that day in December 2001, no two ways about it.

The main problem with my intense desire to stay away from them is that I won’t be making any more complaints of any sort, unless absolutely necessary. As I said in an earlier post, I have made a string of complaints to the police about dangerous driving over several years. Well, never again. That is most unfortunate, because I will maintain that the public have every right and indeed a duty to complain about dangerous and otherwise illegal activities, and expect the police to act on them.

This is not the only instance of rotten police behaviour that I have witnessed. There have been a handful of other incidents, all of the same very minor nature in themselves, but certainly not minor when the cops play up. There have been some fair and reasonable interactions too, thank goodness.

So I was screwed by one particular police officer and then screwed by one particular magistrate. Meanwhile, the driver who perpetrated the situation, who had his wife and two kids in the car at the time, remained free to wipe himself, his family and one or more innocent people out with his extraordinarily bad driving.

I wonder how many people face situations like this? Probably many. And most of them can’t do anything about it. Their issue is either not worth pursuing through the courts due to a highly disproportionate expense of time, energy and/or money, and/or a lack of confidence that justice will prevail. Or if they do go to court, they find that the onus is actually on them to prove or very strongly indicate innocence, rather than the other way around.

It seems that with very minor offences, and that includes most traffic offences, this is our reality.

So how many wrongful prosecutions get thrust upon us? How many essentially good drivers get driven to drive in a rougher manner in order roll with the flow and not risk riling people and suffering road-rage or risky-driving incidents? How many drivers just turn a blind eye to bullsh.t antics on our roads when they should go to the police with an official complaint?

Needless to say, I am fundamentally and utterly disgusted with this whole scenario. The police and courts have got a hell of a lot to answer for.

Incidentally, a friend of mine who had just travelled a few hundred kilometres as a passenger complained that the driver was a chronic tailgater, often sticking very close to the vehicle in front and not overtaking when he could. There you go. Some people just drive like that….because they haven’t had a significant accident yet or because they are so dumb that they don’t appreciate risk factors and safety margins and don’t learn with time, until they have an accident…and BECAUSE THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN TRAINED.

Alright then, to the next issue: roadworks.

I’m afraid I just cannot escape levelling scathing criticism over this issue.

Wot’s me gripe you ask? Well, it’s the use of temporary speed limit signs without any semblance of enforcement. In just about every instance this means that the signs are interpreted as nothing more than a crude indication to slow down a bit.

Why do I hate this so much? Because of the awful conflict it places the law-abiding or police-fearing driver under. If you slow down to anywhere near the temporary slow speed when you come to the signs you almost always get the vehicle behind you coming right up your bumhole, very strongly telling you that you are a fool for slowing down so much. The same applies on the other side of the actual roadworks area, before the signs that return you to normal speed. This is so chronic that you can often be travelling as much as 40kmh faster than the signs indicate and still incur the wrath of drivers behind you for going too slow.

It is a greatly heightened example of the schism that exists between the actual lawful speed and the speed that you can get away with, on any urban or rural road, highway or freeway…, which I have elucidated, in earlier posts on this thread.

At roadworks the police have essentially trained us to NOT obey the signs, but to do some ethereal speed well in excess, just so long as you slow down a bit. Then every so often they will actually monitor a roadworks site (very rarely) and book people for doing exactly what they have essentially trained them to do.

Quite frankly, I would rather travel well in excess of the stated temporary limit in order to not get tailgated or rile drivers behind me, than to stick to the law and get treated as though you are scum by other road-users.

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