Tomorrow is Fatality Free Friday – an initiative to raise awareness about Australia’s roadtoll and greatly reduce it.

http://www.fatalityfreefriday.com/au/pdf/noticeboard.pdf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/2009/05/14/2570470.htm

http://www.fatalityfreefriday.com/au/about/background/index.htm

For some strange reason the whole issue of road safety gets very little response on OLO. I’ve started new threads a number of times. The first received precisely no responses. The latest one I started four days ago has only two respondents apart from myself: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2775

So it seems that the greatest problem in dealing with our disgusting road toll is complacency. This is just extraordinary given the enormous consequences of road trauma for people, families, friends and society…and given what I will maintain are EASY solutions, if we could just put our collective minds to the task.

So, what do the good folk of OLO think about Fatality Free Friday or the issue of road safety overall?

oh dear how clever, fatality free day...lol
given that 3 times as many..[as die on the roads..]..die from work accidents every day..7,000 plus

and 2 times as many die from suicide
and 20 times from adverse events from drugs[19,000 per year just from smoking[near 4000 from booze..

cant we look at this road death issue in context?

its intresting govts..use revenue raising practices to oppress road death...that media flaunts it in our face...as prime news[when its not news but conditioning

[but now its got its own day...lol
[to celibrate the income [govt revenue]..it raises?

Dear Ludwig,

My husband and I lived in California
for close to ten years and both of us
learned to drive and obtained our driver's
licenses in Los Angeles.

Licenses in California are renewed
every three years and
a written test must be passed before the
license is re-issued. Citizens of pension
age have written tests every year.

Driver offences in most cases are punished
by sending the offender to driving school.

We found that driving in California and
generally in the US and Canada, for that matter
even in Mexico, was less stressful then in Australia.

For the first few years on our return to Australia
from the US, we were appalled at the state of driving
in Australia - and the mental attitude of drivers,
until we learned to treat everybody as
a potential hazard, and even then have been unable to
avoid minor accidents.

We should learn from the Californian system
and introduce far more vigorous testing of drivers
at regular times during their driving lifetime.

My husband has always said that he encountered
while driving in Los Angeles, one or two dangerous
drivers a month, in a city of 12 million people. Now
he encounters four or five a week in a city of
3.8 million.

My mother who is 88 and claims to have a perfect
driving record, despite her several accidents a
year, had her driver's license recently renewed
for another 10 years without any testing whatsoever.

It's time that the Government woke up to the ever
increasing condition on the roads and introduced
stringent regular testing.

Sorry Ludwig,

It is a nice thought but the public are used as a cash cow not a source of information and input on road safety. I don't build roads. I don't design cars. I can't change government policy on driver training. There isn't a great deal left when you take out those things. Sure a few people will top themselves from dope driving, drunk driving or hooning but even if I could stop them it wouldn't fix the main problems. Its a lot easier to just sit and watch governmental attempts to persuade us that speeding ticket revenue raising is a magic bullet that will some day work (or go to their website for more propaganda by following a link from those people you cited) than to rant in here without anything changing.

I'd add to one under god's comments that there is even less attributable to road accidents than there appear to be. A significant number of road fatalities would be suicides anyhow. It stands to reason that a male youth wanting to top himself would put his foot down and line up a tree. Most people don't have guns, and don't have access to the tops of buildings, and if they take pills they could end up getting their stomach pumped or end up just throwing them up and feeling sick which is pretty disgusting. The road approach would be an obvious thing but unless there is a suicide note it will be labelled speeding.

Foxy, your comment, 'treat everybody as a potential hazard', is very relevant in Australia.

I learned that during the time that motorcycles were my main means of transport. After surviving a very bad crash with surprisingly few injuries (caused by a ute that wanted to be where I was), I gave up two wheels. Love the freedom of the bike - not so the ambulance rides.

Drivers here don't look. Don't think. Have no idea of the basics of sharing the road. Courtesy - whats that?

What do you expect when it's so easy to obtain a licence here. The ridiculous system where no official test has to be passed as long as a log-book is completed is to blame. I know someone who went through a red light on his final check and still passed.

Bad habits: most days I see drivers coming out of a side street to turn left. Where are they looking? To the right with no thought of looking left. Accidents waiting to happen.
Another one is when drivers indicate and pulll in dangerously in front. I stopped one for this once and he looked at me and stupidly asked, 'didn't you see me indicate?'. It appears that a common misconception is that giving a signal is all that's required before barging in. I always thought that the rule was 'signal in plenty of time then, when safe to do so, maneuvre'.
It may be a revenue-raiser when one uses a phone while driving but what about being absorbed by the GPS? Or eating? Drinking?

Foxy

Your experience in the USA, resonates with mine. Drivers are much more aware of their responsibilities on the road. If you indicate to change lanes, then the driver in the other lane will let you in - instead of speeding up as happens here.

Also, I found that if emergency vehicles (ambulance, fire) were on the road, immediately people would pull over and come to a complete halt after hearing the siren. Here drivers usually just slow down a little. Some stop - they all should stop to allow emergency vehicles through.

AP - have to agree with you about motorcycles, I learnt very quickly to treat every other road user as capable of doing anything at any time without notice, when I used to ride. Thanks to starting out on motorcycles, I learnt to anticipate and avoid. While I may have a bad back now, that is nothing compared to how I could've wound up.

I find Australian drivers (male and female) to be the most aggressive in the Western world.

It has to be about education, because I don't think our culture is any more aggressive than in the USA.

Ludwig,
I applaud any strategy that draws attention to injuries and carnage cost the country dearly . Unfortunately I have little confidence in it achieving significant long standing improvement.

Understand that Any improvement is better than none.

I wonder if foxy isn't partly right.

Many people see cars as an extension of their egos and driving a 'right'. I reject both.

First the young get licenses simply by being able to drive in a controlled environment and answer a test successfully all in under an hour. Usually lacking ability of what to do in an unexpected circumstances. Skids, emergency stops etc. are ignored. Any sense of maturity (suitability to drive) is also neglected.
Many rely on their superior eye hand coordination, a sense of invincibility and a need for excitement. the end result is the disproportionate numbers of under 25 involved in serious accidents.

In no way does this mean older drivers are much better. in fact a survey I saw indicated anger, impatience, preoccupation, scheduling constraints and complacency tend to account for the 28-48 yo accidents.

Beyond that age come complacency and “I deserve respect” attitude. Here it was clearly indicated that respondents were more indifferent/ignorant of road rules etc. “I know the area”, “I've been driving for 30 years etc.” and even “I drive a good (cutting edge technology) car it's the average divers in their average cars that are at fault" prevailed.

In latter ages the fear of being 'dependent' or not independent made these drivers often drive beyond their ability to be truly safe. However the degree of actual ability was subject to great variation.

With this and other information I think licences should be more strenuously tested and skill levels mandated. The youth should be limited in power like was the case with bikes. 4WD, trailers, boats, caravans, trucks should require a separate endorsement as they all require different skills to drive and in emergencies, turning, breaking etc.

I accept that the implications of my suggestions would be profound and depend on how serious we really are or is tokenism enough to salve our consciences.

Hey Fractelle I thought of a culture aspect; here in Oz I noticed a slowdown in traffic on wet days and on all corners every day.

Might be where I am that the Aussies aren’t as used to the conditions after years of drought and are more comfortable with the abundance of straight roads?

But in NZ they are crazy drivers at the best of times and we have some amazing hills to hoon over or off and my gawd when there is a huge truck blasting its way down a steep winding road it makes you cringe – especially if it is behind you and coming up fast. You usually overtake the person in front on a blind corner just to avoid it.

You wont see anything much past a brick wall slowing the Kiwi’s down.

In Christchurch (and only there) Nuts with Manners… they will stop on a main road with cars behind them because they spot some poor bugger on a side road waiting to enter the main road in busy traffic. Must have something to do with the culture?

Here I also notice you guys aren’t too good at getting out of the way of emergency vehicles. At least in NZ and OZ no one toots all the time like in the states and in Suadi they did it too. Oh my god – you should see the driving practices in Ryhad.

The Americans built the roads… no gutters for water, they probably forgot it does rain sometimes even in the desert.

So it’s Friday, are we fatality free or was it going to be a different Friday? Or were they going to wait for one that worked and then announce that FFF? Fully F'cken Fluked.

The sad thing about a "Fatality Free" concept is its inevitable failure, and a consequential double-dose of pain for the surviving relatives.

"You wouldn't believe it, but he was run over on a supposedly fatality-free day. The government should do something about it..."

But I would like to point out that Sydney drivers are politeness and good manners personified when it comes to merging traffic. Where there are two lanes going into one, it is extraordinarily rare to see anything except one from this lane, one from the other, right the way down the line.

You don't see that in many other countries. I'll offer France, England, Italy, Spain and Greece as examples of devil-take-the-hindmost, with Germany and Switzerland (naturally) as fishtail conformists.

As for mad drivers... try the coast road from Positano to Sorrento.

Wear dark clothing, the stains don't show so much.

Oh dear OUG, such negativity. Of course there are numerous other areas of concern about health and safety across our society. So does this mean that we should just cop the road toll and not make any significant attempts to improve road safety? Of course not.

Foxy, thanks for the American comparison. It seems that they don’t do anything special over there. They just have a more sensible level of education and policing and a somewhat better requirement for drivers to show that they are competent in order to get and keep a licence.

Mjpb, we need to get right away from the notion that the regulation of speed is all about revenue-raising. It is an easy excuse for those who are inclined to speed or practice various other risky antics on the road.

Austin, agreed. There are just so many basic bad habits practiced by many drivers. It there was a better level of education in order to get a licence and a requirement to re-sit a rigorous test every five years in order to retain a licence, then this sort of stuff would probably be reduced to a small traction of its current level.

The other thing that we really need is to be taken seriously by the police when making a complaint instead of effectively being strongly discouraged from making complaints unless an accident has actually occurred.

yes im sorry about the negativity ludwig..but the facts are the facts
we NEVER hear all the deaths/suicides/work accidents in a single day..yet ALLWAYS hear the road deaths in every news broadcast

we dont hear our masters in govt decry a war on deaths at work[or a war on suicide]nor see blatent revenue raising and cameras in workplaces monitoring saftey of the worker's[ok we see cameras in the work place but they are there to protect the boss not the wage slave

the revenue raising is appartent, most fatalities occur in the dark[yet breathalising occurs most frequently in the police down time[en mass in the morning to get the numbers up..[not when the drinking clubs are closing]

govt needs destractions and there is no beter way for a politition to face the media than say we being tough on drug users[or extra points, or crack down on road fatalities by revenyue raising..[while they in the back room are selling off our water or power to their buddies]

its hard not to be scepticle when the numbers speak for themself

Well FFF has come and gone. Didn’t hear anything about it on the news. Didn’t see a mention in the weekend papers.

Presumably Friday wasn’t fatality free across the country.

Apathy towards road safety is alive and well.

And so it goes.

Just thought of another 'mad drivers' situation. Rush hour in Penang. Zingers going on both sides of the road. Cars, buses and trucks thundering along and my pedi-cab driver weaving in and out of traffic.
Thank christ I wasn't sober any of those times.
Worse still, if there were a few of us, we would have a pedi-cab race by offering a bonus to the winning driver.