NSW Road Safety Breakthrough !!

I got nabbed 12 months ago in Sydney and did not even know. Was doing the same speed as everyone else,m except they knew where the camera was and slowed down. Iwas in a strange car on a strange road. Problem was it was double demerits so would have lost 6 pionts. I was in a work car so opted to pay and extra $100, and lose no pionts. Talk about coroupt.
Cheers Pete

Yep, Those Defenders are pretty scary at anything over 60 km/h

Jokes, just jokes


Cheers


A

Governments’ can’t reduce the road toll…only responsible driving can do that and that responsibility falls to every road user.

Governments’ can influence behaviour by penalising people for driving beyond what is acceptable and it can be called revenue raising or anything you like, but individuals have a choice as to whether they may incur a penalty based on the rules.

I’m no weak ‘bastard’, nor do I blindly accept that politicians will make good laws, but are you suggesting imposing speeding fines is not good law or policy.

Would it be more acceptable that everyone drives to the conditions without speed restriction?

I’m not trying to be provocative, but just where would you draw the line if you were making the laws?

Good luck out there…

Use your imagination,

Imagine what our roads would be like if speed limits were raised or not enforced !

Imagine what a drive on a highway would be like with mad max hoons screaming past in hotted up cars.

It would be an absolute slaughter.

Public roads are not a race track, if you don't want to give money to the government DON'T SPEED or break the road laws.

If people obeyed the road rules and drove safely government would save billions of dollars every year on health services for those crippled in traffic accidents.

Interesting comment you made Honky!

A quote from The Age editorial on 30/06/2009

“Compulsory seatbelts, alcohol limits and drug testing, anti-speed measures and road and vehicle improvements have all contributed to a reduction in the toll. Last year's 303 deaths were the fewest since accident statistics were first compiled in 1951. Even accounting for the weekend's terrible toll, deaths for the 12 months to yesterday are 6 per cent lower than for the corresponding period in 2007-08. And fatalities per capita and per registered vehicle on Victorian roads continue to fall: 5.78 deaths per 100,000 population and 0.77 deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles, according to the TAC's latest statistics. These place Victoria well below the national average, second lowest among the states on the former and best-ranked on the latter. A national push to have all new cars in Australia fitted with key safety measures from late 2011 — side airbags and electronic stability control — should reduce death and injury numbers further.

And yet, as encouraging as these measures are, for the thousands of Victorians touched by the road toll every year they offer cold comfort. The undeniable truth is that the road safety message continues to fall on many a deaf ear. Still, the majority of deaths occur as a result of single-vehicle accidents on straight roads. Almost one in every three drivers killed has a blood alcohol content above .05, adding weight to arguments for a zero limit. And, yes, 18-to-25-year olds continue to be over-represented in the statistics.”
Your proof for your assertion?

If newspapers can provide these statistics, (and I know The Age is a left wing commo paper and should not be compared with the epitome of intellectual thought in Australia,; the Herald-Sun) you should also be able to do the same and be able to provide statistical proof of them. I refer you to the Department of Infrastructure and the aforementioned TAC website; both have sufficient information to provide statistical information upon which to base your assertion. I'm sure other state departments could provide similar information

Of course, the statistics on these websites are just created by politicians and bureaucrats to support their own agendas.

Your allusion to Animal Farm obviously implies that all people who agree with this editorial are mindless sheep, bleating what the leaders promulgate.

Prove to us that you are capable of independent thought before you accuse us of being this (Baaaaa!)

303 deaths but the death toll is a tiny fraction of the total toll.

Airbags have significantly dropped the death toll but have increased the number of survivors with brain and spinal injuries.

Anyone who thinks speed cameras are revenue raising should take a visit to their local hospital rehabilitation unit and talk to the people who's lives have been bleep tered by these injuries ( if they can talk )

Many permanent brain injuries require 24 hour care for the rest of the persons life.

Not something anyone would look forward to. I see that as a fate worse than death yet it is not recorded in the official road toll figures.

"Demerit points, as we all know, are a direct reflection of the danger of the driving that incurred them"

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. They most definitely do not reflect this, as evidenced by the highly cynical actions of the NSW government in changing their value as a reaction to adverse publicity, and not on road safety evidence.

"Anything that saves a single life is worth it.........."

Do you really believe that?

Lets put some issues to the test and see if even a politician would do it.

1. If you drink, you don't drive. Period. Introduce Pilot drink rules ect.
2. Compulsory drivers education course. A seriously decent one too, which includes high speed. Refresh every 5 years.
3. Log books....to ensure fatigue is not factoring in crashes.
4. Graded licences.....bikes, cars, 4wd, vans, light trucks ect.
5. Stiffer penalties. You break the rules...you pay, big time.


Are you game enough?

"Anything that saves a single life is worth it.........."

In reality .... human beings are the most expendable creature in the planet. Its the overpopulation thats causing part of the traffic problem.

However, all that aside ......

Drivers who climb into a metal can and propel themselves down the road need to understand and accept the risks of that activity ... just as if you have a bad filling but you still want your ice cream .... its YOUR fault you get a toothache.

They also need to accept that their actions have to be such that they dont affect others ... but I guess our individual rights these days are more important than someone elses.

Only being able to buy a vehicle full of legislated, nanny safety features is not the way to ensure better drivers .... only worse ones.

And why all this stuff only on cars .... what about the poor ol motorcyclists, bicyclists, scooter and skateboard riders on the road .... dont they deserve the same level of legislated safety gear ??????

1. If you drink, you don't drive. Period. Introduce Pilot drink rules ect.
2. Compulsory drivers education course. A seriously decent one too, which includes high speed. Refresh every 5 years.
3. Log books....to ensure fatigue is not factoring in crashes.
4. Graded licenses.....bikes, cars, 4wd, vans, light trucks ect.
5. Stiffer penalties. You break the rules...you pay, big time.
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All of these I think anyone who is in charge of any vehicle on a made road should have passed a test and have a license. Especially pushbikes.

Anyone who tows any trailer should have an endorsement.

Anyone driving a 4WD should have to pass a 4WD test.

Make a sliding scale of penalties and enforce them, 3 strikes and you are without a car for a few weeks, end of story. do it again and the penalties just keep getting tougher.

D200Dug,

While I understand and can appreciate the sentiment, the reality is that by setting speed limits where they are and by choosing to invest what we do in road infrastructure, we, as a society, have already made a decision that we are prepared to kill off a certain number of our members each year.

I always find road speed discussions interesting because there IS a way to reduce the road toll to (virtually) zero. If the national speed limit was set at 5 km/h and was able to be enforced (which it could) then we would stop the road toll (barring freak accidents of course).

But, and it is a big but, the cost to society in terms of convenience, money, time is too great so we raise the national limit to say 50 km/h and in doing so accept a number of deaths each year. Still too slow for a country of such big distances I hear you say? OK we make the limit 100 km/h and in doing so accept that we are going to kill off more of our number each year.

What I find interesting is when our authorities (Police and Government) and our own society says that those who make the decision to go over the speed limit and cause death are bad, we forget that we have already made the decision to kill people with our speed limits.

So who gets to say what are an acceptable number of deaths and what are not? Why is it OK to travel at 100 km/h and kill 1600 people a year, when we could all go at 110 km/h and 'only' kill 100 more each year? Maybe if we travelled at 80 km/h we would only kill 1400 each year.

The trade-off is of course what we, as a society, are prepared to accept in terms of convenience and speed of getting from one point to another while going about our business.

When horseless carriages were first introduced, many countries required that in cities they be preceded with a bell to warn other road users and pedestrians. This was because the road infrastructure, level of experience of other road users and awareness of pedestrians (not to mention horses), was not up to the challenges imposed by this new technology. You could argue that the motor vehicle and society's expectations of its use, has again moved on beyond the point where society and infrastructure can cope with it. A bell is impractical, but perhaps (as happened early last century) it is time to once again seriously review the infrastructure (roads) and the training and awareness of those who use them.

Matt.

Matt I would beg to differ with your assessment. Given the safety features in most modern cars and the quality of most modern roads if the 40 kWh to 100kph limits were obeyed as well as all other road laws then our road toll would be very near zero with very few injuries.

When you look at the statistics for the vast majority of fatal accidents and accidents causing major injuries there is almost always 2 contributing factors.

Be they speed and inattention, drugs/alcohol and something like driving through an intersection. Speed and tiredness. no seat-belts and overloaded car. Tailgating and inattention.

Sometimes there is only one factor but usually there is a combination of factors in an accident.

Very very few people are killed by cars traveling at or under the speed limit (in good conditions ) by their cars suddenly leaping off the road and into t tree or oncoming traffic.

Please let me know if you have any examples of this happening but I can never recall hearing of a fatal accident that did not involve either a law being broken or some other error being made by at least one driver.

The only exception to this is the occasional accident were a driver has had a heart attack or the like and crashed into people or another vehicle.

Other than that there is usually someone doing something wrong that causes the "Accident"

Matt,

Perfectly accurate statement and well argued.

I posted a proposal below, which was totally tongue in cheek, but basically posited the concept that the real costs to the community for motor vehicle usage be placed entirely on the licence owners. My plea to cost this was an obtuse request to actually look at the cost to the community of every aspect of driving and, by inference, defend these

I agree with many of the posts in this thread; there are some truly abysmal drivers on the road, but there are only approximately 25% that are above average. (75% of readers of this thread will be average or below average drivers for this forum). Unfortunately, as with everything, road laws are based on the lowest common denominator.

The Landy’s response above is correct (as I interpret it anyway). Stop whinging and come up with some constructive mechanism to address these issues which is practical, enforceable and which treats every person fairly and equitably (funny concept, but as I see it is the underlying trait that defines Australia). Treat these as laws and punish those that break them appropriately

Rather than whinging about other drivers, road laws and politicians (I find the pavlovian response to blaming politicians for everything quite humorous) maybe some people should get off their backsides and actually be an instrument for change. Whatever you may think about our parliamentary system, a strong Government and Opposition has the ability to explore a mulitude of sides to an issue, debate passing laws and their cost to the community which would never happen under a one issue government.

Funny how people who are complaining about speeding fines they may have or could receive, are, by default, admitting 2 things. Firstly, they are admitting they consider themselves to be above the laws they are willing to impose on others. Secondly, they are admitting they are lousy drivers…they are not paying attention to the road environment to observe speed signs or have a relationship with their car whereby they are unable to detect any changes in their speed.

"Please let me know if you have any examples of this happening but I can never recall hearing of a fatal accident that did not involve either a law being broken or some other error being made by at least one driver."

I suspect the young family who dissapeared into the flood hole on the Gosford road because of bad road maintenance might beg to differ...

These road stats, usually propagated by semi-govt departments, very rarely look into road maintenance as an issue - not suprisingly since:

a. there's no revenue in apportioning blame here
b. it would cost more $$ in the road authorities are held liable...

my 2c worth.

Ooooh! that's cutting.
Probably true though, like lowering the minimum repayment on credit cards increased bank profits.

Spot on.

Isn't it funny they never tell you the real cause of an accident.

A car can have bald tyre and crash in the wet and they still say speed was a factor, you hear nothing about the tyres....if the car had good tyres the accident would of not happened.

The use of speed as a reason is a funny one, when someone hears speed was a factor in the accident straight away they think the person was traveling over the speed limit, this is incorrect..as soon as avehicle starts moving speed can be a cause, the police can use the word legally even if the vehicle was doing 10Kph in a 60Kph zone and had an accident......if the vehicle was stationary the accident would of not happened, so speed was a factor in the accident.

I think it has be drumed into us that speed kills and it is ok to fine someone for going over a limit.

It is revenue raising at it's best and we accept there excuse.

The advertising gurus that the govt use do a fantastic job.

There was a job advertised here in Adelaide a couple of years ago for the SA Police, they were looking for a "business development manager" and when I delved deeper into it it was for someone to oversee revenue raised and how to increase it.

Cigarette smoking is the biggest causes of deaths and sickness in Australia, so why don't they ban it.......It makes them lots of money!

You don't kill a cash cow.

The use of the term ‘speed’ is really a misnomer as it doesn’t clearly highlight whether it was excessive or not. So when pointing to statistics as to whether speed was or wasn’t a contributing factor in an accident, it needs to be looked at in the context of whether it was excessive for the prevailing road conditions and other factors at that time.

Driving at 110kph in a 100kph zone on a highway may not be excessive if the driving conditions are favourable to do that speed, even though it might be over the limit. And perhaps this is the point you are making.

But equally, 40kph in a 50kph zone may be excessive if the conditions are not favourable; in wet weather for example and yet you wouldn't be subjected to a speeding fine if doing 50kph.

The problem is how do you legislate for that outcome? You can’t because everyone’s interpretation of ‘excessive’ or ‘acceptable’ would be different and would be too ambiguous. So there is no choice but to put an actual speed limit on it and take any ambiguity out of it…and it follows that if you exceed it you could be penalised.

But how would you legislate road rules, and speed limits if you had the power?

As a footnote, I will add that authorities have tried to recognise that under certain conditions it may be appropriate to alter speed limits. The F3 to the north of Sydney has a section which is a notorious black-spot in bad weather and the speed limit is determined based on this. Not raining the speed limit is higher, raining and it is lower. I guess they could just make it the lower limit in all conditions……but they have given some consideration to motorists’ in this instance.

cheers

Hi Landy,

My suggestions are:

1. By all means legislate and enforce speed limits, but make that approach consistent with the relatively minor contribution illegal speed has on collisions.

2. Spend huge amounts of money on anti drink-driving measures and enforcement. This will mean upsetting the alcohol lobby (with things like breathalysing intending drivers in hotel carparks), which most governments have not been very keen to do.

3. Spend a lot of money on driver training, testing, and retesting, possibly funded by revenue from the above fines, and from big increases in the cost of owning a license.

Yes Nic1

Hand your carkeys over the bar when you arrive and pass the breathe test to get them back .... too easy huh.

Driver training should be part of the school curriculum starting in the first year of highschool ... theory and practical in later years ... including basic vehicle design/operation / physics / alchohol effects and using playstations / golf buggies / small cheap training cars like a mini moke or something.


Damn shame the govt has legislated cheap training cars out of existence though ....... much better to make unskilled / unqualified drivers pay for a car full of explosive pillows to make up for the lack of driver education.

Driving at 110kph in a 100kph zone on a highway may not be excessive if the driving conditions are favourable to do that speed, even though it might be over the limit. And perhaps this is the point you are making.

But equally, 40kph in a 50kph zone may be excessive if the conditions are not favourable; in wet weather for example and yet you wouldn't be subjected to a speeding fine if doing 50kph.
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In most situations doing 110k in a 100k zone is relatively safe. Yet how often do you see a line of drivers nose to tail doing 110kph with less and a car length between them? or a driver weaving through traffic at 110k because the main flow is traveling at 100K?

In a 40 k zone it is 40kph to lower the stopping distance incase a child runs out onto the road. By doing 50k you increase your stopping distance and increase the risk.

Speed limits are set for a reason, could you live with yourself if you were just doing 10 k over the limit and ran down a child ?

Not sure of your point D200Dug..

We seem to agree with each other?

You have some very interesting ideas there, and one of particular interest to me is raising the cost of licences, which could be also used to fund better training, testing, anti drink-drive, and other road safety measures.

This, and possibly other aspects of your ideas, are already being done in other countries, for example Germany, where the cost of a licence is the equivalent of several thousand dollars (please don't hold me to this, I have nothing but 2nd-hand info !), and some of this money goes towards the very extensive driver testing/retesting regimes they use.

The big problem could be - how do you make people actually have and pay for a license ? I heard somewhere that there are large numbers of unlicensed drivers on our roads, many of whom have never held a license (again, no attributable stats, sorry).

Speeding is obviously an issue, particularly with the youngsters. But I think lack of care and attention is a far bigger cause of accidents. If the RTA or police were remotely serious about reducing accidents they would put cameras and warnings in real blackspots, not just imaginary ones at the bottom of a hill with a handy hiding place for police. They'd also run education ads on TV to raise awareness of certain issues that are frequently ignored. Having lived in several countries including Germany for a short time where they have no speed limit in some instances, I would say there are more accidents here than there are over there per capita. On arrival here, I was really taken aback at the frequency of bingles on the Pac Hwy, Sydney where I initially worked. Lack of lane discipline and almost total disregard for proper mirror use are far more to blame, added to the fact that a large proportion of Australian drivers take it as an affront to be overtaken and act like a complete idiot in order to avoid being overtaken.

You really grasp at the little things hey D200Dug ....

If you had read or referred correctly to my post ... it would have been apparrent that the playstation component would be a small part of the education process.

Used as a training aid ... not a toy - It would have great benefits in regard to understanding vehicle position etc., on a road ... but not for actual vehicle control.