Apologies Caspar, for misspelling your name.

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It seems to me Faustino… and I do not wish to offside you, just entertain friendly debate…. that those who drive fast correlate very closely with those who do not have sufficient awareness of risk factors and safety margins. Most of those who do have sufficient awareness behave in a cautious manner, which means not driving fast compared to others.

You accept that on occasion you will be fined for your speed. So clearly your fast driving is beyond the legal limit a lot of the time. This means that you don’t respect the law. It means you respect what you think you can get away with. It means that there are not enough police around to make you respect it, by raising the probability of being nabbed to such a level that you keep your speed legal, or under 10kmh over the limit, which seems to be acceptable to everyone including the police.

It seems to me that this is just the same mentality that hoons and people of poor safety conscience possess. I’m not implying that you are one of them. But it seems that you are not on the right half of the spectrum in terms of attitude.

Part of being a capable driver, on our public roads where there are all sorts of drivers with all sorts of abilities, is surely to drive within the law, or the acceptable extension of the law.

Ludwig, I disagree with your observation that “that those who drive fast correlate very closely with those who do not have sufficient awareness of risk factors and safety margins. Most of those who do have sufficient awareness behave in a cautious manner, which means not driving fast compared to others.” That’s not my experience. A bigger issue than speed on SE Queensland highways is drivers not driving to the left – often the left-hand lane will be empty while drivers proceed well below the speed limit in the 2nd and 3rd lanes (which, Pegasus, is a great way to reduce traffic flow). The police don’t seem to enforce the “drive to the left” rule.

I’m fundamentally concerned not to harm others and to help them. So I’m generally very law-abiding. But at the same time I exercise my faculties of perception, discrimination etc, if stepping outside the law harms no one and has some benefit, I’m prepared to do it – e.g. crossing an empty road when pedestrian signs say “stop”. As indicated, I don’t have speed related accidents, and in driving fast I don’t do so without reference to other drivers. Again, my experience is that many who drive fast have high levels of awareness and consideration. I also find that I‘m less safe when I drive well below my capacity – driving fast, I’m fully focussed; it’s hard to maintain that focus when dawdling. [In recent years, I’ve driven much less and more slowly because of illness, I recognise when my perception is affected by illness and respond accordingly, which at times in the early ‘00s meant staying off the road. And means I haven’t be incurring fines.]

And, thanks, but you won’t offside me with criticism which you clearly feel is well-based.

Excellent Faustino. You choose to exceeed the speed limit and claim there are no problems. How would you know that? You leave the damage in your wake, you get away but screw up those you speed past.
You don't see what you may have created do you?

You state

"So I’m generally very law-abiding."

How often do you drive? Once a year? If you drive every day you are breaking the law every day. That's not general I would have to say. Rather it's you choosing which laws you want to obey or ignore. What other areas do you infringe? Got a mobile by any chance? How about School zones? 40 too slow?

You also state that not driving to the left is a bigger problem than speeding. Rubbish. Only to those that speed mate. Give me stats showing speed caused accidents as opposed to drivers staying in the right lane (which also carries a penalty}.

Ask yourself why people do stay in the right lane. Any ideas? Could I suggest that a big part of that is simply they are concerned about speeding drivers who will overtake on the left if delayed for 2 seconds etc. How often have you overtaken on the left when blocked on the right? There are of course some that do that deliberately to annoy people who speed. Which is another result of you and others speeding.

As I said in my first post to you the majority of drivers do exceed the speed limit regularly so you are just one of many who choose which laws to follow and which to not follow. There are many who take those choices mate and that's what crime is all about. Failing to follow the legislative guideleines your democratically elected government has imposed, on your behalf as well as every one else.

Caspar, well done: your words are music to my ears - not so the grim reality behind them.

Australian regulations are threatening to bury us deep under. Some recent ones:

* One is no longer allowed to hire a "snake" to clear their own drains - the law now requires emplyoing an authorized plumber even to clear a 1m block in your shower.

* baby-sitting is no longer allowed without an official diploma.

* same for taking care of older citizens.

* children are no longer allowed in the pool of my gym, even accompanied by parents - a new government regulation.

* on a night flight from Singapore to Adelaide with a stop in Darwin, due to a new regulation all passengers were forced to wake up, take their belongings, get out of the plane to stand in a long and slow queue to pass again through metal detectors before being allowed back on the plane - the one they were already on anyway.

And as usual, especially for professionals, forms, forms and more forms, taking all the time away from productive work.

Of course governments have constitutional rights to impose this nightmare on their citizens, but no moral rights. It is not for honest care that they legislate those laws, but for the protection of their own back-side.

This evil and stupidity of punishing and humiliating everyone for the irresponsibility of the few, makes me sometimes start thinking that perhaps the idea of the law being equal to everyone has failed and we have no other recourse, but to re-establish classes, of those who are willing and able to be responsible for their own lives and actions and those who are not.

Faustino, if you drive fast as a matter of course you must come up behind slower vehicles all the time. They must annoy the whihoo out of you? If they are actually exceeding the legal limit but are under the cruising speed (which is often 5 or maybe 8 kmh over the limit), do they still bug you?

In my experience many drivers who drive at the upper limit show real impatience and aggression to other drivers, who may be driving only very slightly slower than them. That sort of thing bugs me endlessly.

Even if a fast driver comes up behind and doesn’t follow too closely, I still feel strong resentment because there seems to be one rule for the law-observers and one rule (or no rule) for a significant portion of people who think that the law only applies to other people. I get this every single working day on a particular stretch of road. This duplicity and the inability for you to do anything about it is enormously frustrating. I don’t like lawless fast drivers.

Thank goodness there are very few dual or triple lane highways in north Queensland. I’ve had enough bad experiences in SEQ to desire to stay right away from them. I think that the ‘keep left unless overtaking’ rule is a crock! It is effectively telling us to ‘keep left so that speeding drivers can have a clear run’. It should be something like ‘keep left unless doing more than 5kmh under the speed limit’.

In my experience, people don’t dawdle in the inside lane. If they are going slower than the speed limit, it is generally because they can’t change lanes due to too much traffic.

On the Bruce Highway north of Brisbane and on the Gold Coast freeway, I found it almost impossible to pull out into the inside lane to pass slower traffic, while keeping my speed below 110 in the 100 k zones or 120 in the 110 k zones, without being tailgated by some @#@#&%% who wanted to go considerably faster!

Yuyutsu wrote:

* One is no longer allowed to hire a "snake" to clear their own drains - the law now requires emplyoing an authorized plumber even to clear a 1m block in your shower.

There is a reason why 'do it yourself' plumbing is problematic, as it is for do it yourself electrical work. The work that someone who does not know what they are doing can, and does, adversely affect people around them:L

The classic example was the guy who installed his own toilet suite and cistern. He didn't install the valves correctly, there was a backflow, and for a week the neighbourhood had blue tap water from this guy's blue toilet cleaner backflowing into the mains.

And as for professionals: I would say that the patients of Dr Pattel would have preferred a few more checks and balances to be put in place, mainly because it seems that more people would be alive if better regulation was in place.

Or are you one of those 'professional' people who considers other people's lives, health and safety to be simply inconveniences that get in the way of your own ego and earning capacity?