There is indeed a glaring contradiction between the message from authorities that the public should do their bit by reporting dangerous driving, and the facilitation of such complaints……although I haven’t heard anyone promote the reporting of this sort of thing for a long time.

A while ago there was a push to dob in old bombs or smoky vehicles, to the Dept of Transport. But when it comes to the much more important matter of road safety and peoples’ lives, there’s been sweet FA for years!

The small number of times that I reported dangerous drivers… and they were only the worst cases that I bothered with…..five of them in about as many years…I received attitudes from the police ranging from enthusiastic assistance to complete disinterest and even a bit of brash negativity.

The only time that I have ever heard back from police, that is, the only they have ever acted on a complaint was when I put it in writing well after the event, as I expressed in an earlier post.

Subsequently I have not gone to the police a bunch of times when I should have…because I know that nothing would eventuate, unless I pushed the point.

I think this lack of facilitation of public involvement in policing is a huge flaw in the whole policing regime. If the police genuinely facilitated complaints, then the whole law-enforcement problem, as it affects road safety and all sorts of other things, could be vastly improved, because every person in the community would then effectively be seen by potential offenders as a potential cop, or surrogate police officer.

So, not only do we need vastly more police on the streets, we need them behind the scenes to facilitate the complaints process and empower the community to get involved in law enforcement.