“I think that Ludwig would probably find that incidents where he is tailgated would decrease markedly in frequency if he stopped pissing other drivers off by acting like a wannabe cop…”

Jeez Ceej, you are a naughty child: asserting something that you completely don’t know the veracity of.

If you stick to the letter of the law in terms of speeding, you’ll get tailgated a LOT. Even if you roll with the flow on the open highway, at a few kmh over the limit, you still get a whole lot of d!ckheads coming up behind and following way too close.

It makes me wonder what sort of a driver you are CJ if you don’t get tailgated regularly on the Bruce Hwy and other main highways…. Or do you only regard tailgating as having a vehicle right up your coight at a distance of one metre or less at 100 kmh??

Anyway, you are at stark odds with the general views on tailgating and the significance thereof in terms of accidents and trauma, as I presented in the opening post.

You might also like to note that tailgating has come out as the top concern of drivers in repeated RACQ polls and is considered to be the major cause of nose to tail accidents and motor vehicle insurance claims.

It is just silly to play it down.

Continued

The sincerity of politico-bureaucratic interest in road safety, as contrasted with revenue raising, can be assessed by asking what the effect would be if moveable roadside speed cameras were routinely used at roadworks sites in conjunction with existing point-to-point average speed recording technology. All accompanied by signs warning motorists of the operation of BOTH types of cameras as they approach these sites.

Its a no-brainer. The vast majority of drivers would scrupulously observe the roadwork speed limits at all times at which they applied. Few fines would be incurred. Road and workplace safety would be greatly enhanced.

Any speed camera infringements of roadworks limits accompanied by a point-to-point camera infringement at the same site would put paid to any claim that might be made in a contested matter that the limit was only 'momentarily' exceeded, or that the driver was 'slowing down' to observe the limit and was unfairly booked. For those foolish enough to earn a speed camera fine, the point-to-point record showing the driver's face would negate the spousal privilege defence that could otherwise stymie collection of a fine: the police or traffic authority could in all likelihood identify the real offender with the aid of the photograph in a visit to the premises of the registered owner.

All this talk of clamping down on tailgating with 'tailgating cameras' is hogwash and whitewash. The politico-bureaucrat covey do not wish to own up to the legislative ineptitude with which they introduced speed cameras. They wish to correct their mistake without acknowledging it, and protect, and maybe increase, the revenue they are deriving in fines. Most of all, they do not want the community to become more aware of their heritage of the right to spousal privilege and from where it derived.

The trite catch-all that "If you don't want the fine simply don't do the crime" will become irrelevant. You will be relatively unable to plan to avoid the offence of tailgating because you will be precipitated into it by what amounts to entrapment.

TBC

Ludwig,
I guess it's the naughty corner for me being negative.
That wasn't my intention. As I said the idea in principal is sound but in practice it is fraught with all manner hidden pit falls.

I don't think that the status quo is acceptable by a long way try driving on the Gateway in Brisbane or the city highways in Melb tailgating etc are as common as toads in Nth Qld.

It seems to me that the difference between the police and say me, is authority and training.
Current police training is to train police to deal with everything, time consuming, costly and not value for money when dealing with “trivial”/more mundane issues.
I wonder if we couldn't have a sub force of officers (like the Transport Regulation Board Officers [TRBO] who police trucks).
These people could have the authority to set up cameras and issue fines related to vehicular violations. In say a team at a blow station there may be one regular policeman a few TRBO and citizen police assistants(CPA) to do the paperwork. A speed or tailgating site there could be a TRBO officer and two (CPA) for the paperwork.
More bodies on enforcement, both the serious stuff and more on traffic enforcement, less cost more public involvement with the law and process..... may help bring down the us and them mentality. All these bodies exist now in most states. Even Qld has community PO with limited powers.
This is just a top of the head idea
What could go wrong? Wait, I'll put on my bump hat. There, now it's your turn. (I'm out of posts)But I'll read your response with interest.

Continued

Let's consider these proposed 'tailgating cameras' against the statistical background that is being claimed justifies their introduction. Ludwig reports in his opening post, with respect to Queensland, that:

"More than 1600 crashes a year are caused by drivers not keeping a safe distance from the car in front."

Such a statistic is not necessarily reflective of tailgating. More likely a significant proportion of such crashes which occur with these insufficient separations between vehicles involved do so because there is a sudden and unexpected change at the front of a traffic stream. Traffic in which, although perhaps heavy, no driver could be claimed to be 'tailgating', that is, deliberately closing up on a vehicle ahead in an intimidatory manner.

Let's imagine a situation in which a driver driving in the kerbside lane of a two-lane road sees parked vehicles ahead, and indicates a lane change. A packet of three vehicles traveling relatively close together having just driven off after a light change is in the centremost lane a little distance behind the driver attempting the lane change. The lead driver of the packet eases off and lets the lane-changer in. The other two drivers in the packet anticipate this courtesy and also ease off at the same time as closing up a bit. OK so far.

A short distance after being let in, with the three courteous drivers now passing a line of parked vehicles in the kerbside lane, the recent lane-changer props and hangs an unindicated left turn into a car dealership driveway. The lead vehicle of the three-car packet slams on the anchors and narrowly avoids colliding with the protruding rear of the left-turner, but within seconds is involved in a three-car pile-up. No tailgating involved, just three courteous drivers.

The driver that precipitated the one incident,but THREE crashes that now form part of the statistics, is unable to answer the attending policeman's first question. Or the second: "Where did you get your license, Canton or Shanghai?" He doesn't have one word of English.

Lying statistics!

“I wonder if we couldn't have a sub force of officers…”

Examinator, you’re onto something. I agree that the administration of something like tailgating and similar road-safety matters could be carried out by people with far less skills than fully trained police officers.

I can’t see that the people who administer these complaints would need anything more than fairly narrowly focussed skills, which are probably not much more complex than administrative qualifications plus basic photo-interpretation and anti-fraud skills.

Afterall, it would be the public that is doing the frontline stuff.

There is no way in the world that we are going to get a significant increase in police numbers on our roads, as much as those of us who care about road safety desire it. So we need to concentrate on technological advances and empowerment of the community.

As you suggest, the same principle could apply with the administration of a greatly increased number of covert speed cameras, tailgating cameras and the like.

And it should also apply for non police officers to be able to book people for speeding through roadworks sites.

“More bodies on enforcement, both the serious stuff and more on traffic enforcement, less cost more public involvement with the law and process..... may help bring down the us and them mentality…”

Yes yes YES!! And a much better standard of road safety….and a reduction in all manner of illegal activities as well!!

“It is in part a traffic calming zone, slowing traffic down both leaving and coming on site.”

Belly, the long distance between the actual end of roadworks and the return to normal speed, that is emplaced at just about every roadworks site, could hardly be called a traffic calming zone if drivers either completely ignore it which happens 99.9% of the time or feel compelled to adhere to it and angered as a result of its stupidity, at the car behind them tailgating and/or overtaking and at the schism between the law and commonsense!

Sometimes there might be a justification for continuing with a long slow zone. But most of the time there is NONE!

Each site should be signposted according to its specific requirements, rather than having to conform to this utterly stupid rule of always having to have the outward bound slow zone matching the inward bound slow zone on the other side of that particular stretch of road!