With all the talk of trying to reduce the road toll by implementing roadside drug tests, restrictions for P-Platers, more speed cameras, lower speed limits etc a mate of mine raised an interesting (and quite contriversial point)..... when will the road toll be at a level where realistically, its not going to get any lower?

I agree theres morons on the road. P-Platers in $100,000 SkyRines is a joke and theres obviously a lot of common sense things that can be implemented to reduce the moron-deaths on the roads, but is the government going to stop and think at some stage "well, shits going to happen. there is going to be accidents and people are going to die on the roads. thats life." and stop trying to implement all these laws to reduce the road toll? Theres also the issue of, no matter how many laws are in place, it doesn't mean people are going to abide by them.

According to a 2004 stats summary I just found, theres 10.8 deaths per 10,000 vehicles per year in Australia. Thats .1% of vehicles.

In comparison with other countries (list of 'highly motorised countries')

Worst - Portugal - 21.1 = .2%
Best - IceLand - 3.7 = .03%

ps. stats are from http://www.factbook.net/EGRF_Regional_analyses_HMCs.htm

Would be quite interested in doing a more in depth analysis of accident/fatality rates in other countries but then also looking into their respective road rules and see if there was any correlation between speed and accidents and fatalaties etc.

eg: found it interesting that in the US where highway speed limits peak out at about 55MPH from memory, " Highway crashes cause 94 percent of all transportation fatalities and 99 percent of all transportation injuries", but in Germany, where theres the Autobahn, yet it costs about $3000 AUD to get a licence, their fatality rate is 1.9 per 10,000 cars/year, coming in one place worse than Australia.

If anyone has access to some stats that may make a compilation of these facts easier t'would be appreciated.

Sorry for the ramble, but just interested if people had considrered the fact that we're never going to have a clean road toll, and at what level is it going to become a "we've done all we can"?

its an interesting question but i think it comes down to more human nature though how do you make people drive safer

mmm. i think if anything it is our licencing that needs to be addressed. if we can get the people who cant drive off the road (and i seem to have seen more mothers in wagons and 4x4s who cant drive then i have P-platers) then the roads will be safer for everyone. if idiots didnyt drive we wouldnt need idiot rules to keep them alive on the road.

our licensing system does need an overhaul there needs to be a class for most 4 wheel drives between passenger cars and light trucks. but to quote jeff foxworthy "stupid people should wear a sign that way you would know they were stupid and wouldnt trust them" but i think thats just another form of segregation

good logic, when is the limit reached. as baybus said, if the rules are designed to protect the average person, if we lift the average persons standard the rules can be changed. I really think that there is no reason to put in place so many rules and reg. ppl understand that driving is dangerous, its also dangerous jsut to step out of the door each morning. the only time i don;t like that theory is when somebody who may have been doing something rite is taken out by a drunk driver, but then again accidents do happen, and you know it may happen when you go driving.

Another this is that ppl are being less responsible for themselves. eg the number of ppl in coursts trying to get money, eg if i fell of a swing at school, well i was stupid enough to fall off, but now ppl take this as the school was not doings its job to protect ppl, its the same with driving, its shouldn't be up to mr police man or the laws to protect yourself, ppl should help protect themselves.

jsut my 5c worth!

Reailty is as few as humanly possible but at some stage we have all lost sight of relaity at some stage and done stupid things.. Those of us who survived are lucky and those who didn't well they got planting or BBQ.
It's the innocent ones though that we all feel for because of the brainless acts of others - You are not Immortal :jesus

Agreed,

but when you look at the number of idiots that are driving unlicenced because they have lost theirs due to: DUI, speeding etc. Is it too hard to try and police that side. Should they make owning a car harder? maybe not more expensive, but just a lot more obvious if you are rego'd or maybe a tag showing your licence in some way?

On the 4wd front, I def agree. Some members of my family can be included in the offenders. They live in a city, don't go bush. Why have a 4WD? safety? of who? This is one area that I think should be hit to reduce the numbers of them around where it is just a status symbol. (particulalry after someone in a BMW 4WD just about ran over me the other night when she couldn't be bothered to look left before turning left from teh right hand lane!!)

Someone (I can't remember where or when) said a long time ago that traffic accident damage would be reduced if all cars had bumpers at the same height. Wonder why car manufacturers weren't forced to adopt this?

the other thing we can do take the freight off the road and back on the trains. that would help with the rougue truckies

Maybe, but in my driving around this way its regularly the cars that can't drive around trucks. Its almost like the people are afraid and so cringe away and almost hit each other. These are some of the people that I think need either retraining or not be on the road.
Reducing trucks for some areas would be good, but for some palces just not workable, but then you would have smaller truck legs due to rail use, so I guess it would help the overall situation.

mmm the 4wd drive matter. 4wd drives should be allowed on all roads, but ppl should be trained to drive them properly. eg have a lisence for a ll vehicles over 1.5t up to a truck lisence (this would also include falcons etc?) if you going to start banning 4wds? does that include subaru foresters? they have offroad ability? and have 4wd? where do you draw the line? what about the new dual cab holden utes, they are big heavy vehicles?


mabye have a lisence similar to motor cycles.

car up to 1.5t, then 1.5t to light trucks. And to get to next level, include testing or training on skid pans etc?

The best method for reducing the carnage on public roads is regular visible police patrols. No fixed camera or random check slows people and makes them think more than knowing that on almost every trip you take you will see at least one cop driving around.

Of course this will never happen as that would cost money where as random checks, cameras, radars hidden behind bushes etc make money. And shit loads of it!

Of course when the cost of insurance claims and increasing premiums, health care and rehabilitation, administrative costs for fines and imprisonment and all the other costs of accidents are added up the incoming funds compared to the outgoings for the proven effectiveness of regular visible patrolling is a false economy. Bring on patrols and bring down the carnage.


(it's a sad world when an anarchist can see the benefit of lots of cops on the road and government think tanks cannot)

[Edited on 23-12-2004 by HotRodMatt]

I will have to see if i can find a very good discussion on the froggy forum. Its quite good over there, they seem to be able to have logical, adult debates over topics, which don't have some of the mud slinging matches or the small band imature ppl here.

i think it should inlcude all vehicles over a certain size, inlcuding large sedans.

Ahhh , ..... speed cameras , ...... my pet hate!

At Kempsey (on the mid north coast) in the 4-laned, 60km/h zone there used to be a speed camera car there about 3 times a fortnight, and nearly every day during holidays.

I really got the shits with this cause from memory I could never remember a bad accident along this section, let alone a fatality. So contacted the RTA in Grafton and got the accident stats for the previous 5 years from Fredrickton to sth Kempsey.

The stats revealed some ineresting points
*total accidents = 164

*fatal accidents = 6

*injury accidents = 58

*non-injury accidents = 100

*90% of accidents causing injury occur at or below the posted speed limit

*66% of fatal accidents occur at or below the posted speed limit

*the highest speed accident didn’t result in a fatality (141km/h in 100km/h zone)

*highest speed differential accident didn’t result in a fatality (120km/h in 60km/h zone)

*only 10 accidents out of 64 accidents (injury or fatality) had speed recorded as a factor (Police reported)

*2 of the 10 “speed related” accidents occurred with the “key unit” travelling at between 10 and 20km/h BELOW the speed limit

*and last but not least, only 2 of the fatal accidents involved vehicles travelling ABOVE the speed limit (1.2% of all accidents resulted in fatality with the vehicle travelling above the speed limit).

So I sent letters to the local Highway Patrol who passed the buck on to the Traffic Branch.

Since then the speed limit in the section where the camera car used to always sit, and go flash, flash, flash, has been raised to 70, and the sections of 60km/h zones with 90 degree bends has been reduced to 50.

In the letters from the police they said that they like to use the camera car due to high visibility, and actually wrote in the letter that they condone drivers warning other drivers by flashing their headlights!

That's my rant.
:party

that makes sense cause how would you apply it otherwise

Too many issues in one thread really.

If your legal then you should have no worries. Licensed , insured , not high or drunk etc. If Mr Policeman does pull you over , so what!

As for drivers on P's in fast cars , well thats just dumb!

4 wheel drives need a different license . Spend an arvo in Vauclause/ Double Bay and you'll see what i mean.

If there's anything i've missed my answer is just shoot um , shoot the buggers , the lot of um!!

Dan

:P

and let god sort um out hey danny

yep, 4wd licencing is a big grey area. one way to do it is ride height. yep, a falcon may weigh the same as a forrester, but with the big difference in ride height - especially if the forrester has a bit of a suspension lift and bigger wheels - surely the forrester is more likely to roll over.
It is especially scary when a soccer mum gets out of the lancer into a landcruiser and thinks that they will corner at the same speed. our suspension lifted, body liftes, lungle trekker tyred patrol has bloody awful corner behaviour. especially when the corner tightens half way round...

ive see those corners down there and some of them scare me in a bug

Interesting,
a similar thread is on the mtor sports board at work (yes, barls, I am still here!!) This one is about unmarked cars etc:

QUOTE [ "Believe it or not, but the idea behind unmarked cars is not to catch you out. Unmarked cars are meant to be deterrent from doing something stupid.
The concept, whether you agree with it or not, is that if you know that any car on the road could be a cop you're more likely to drive within the rules, whereas a marked patrol car will see people only behaving when there is an obvious presence. If you know only marked cars are patrolling and there isn't a marked car to be seen, then certain people could take this as the cue to drive like an idiot 'cause no one is around to catch them.
Maybe a lot more unmarked cars on the road would make a difference. Would people drive differently if every second day or so you saw a car pulled over with an unmarked car behind, blue light on the roof and you knew there were unmarked cars around on a regular basis?
If you truly thought that each and every car had a chance of being an unmarked cop car, would you be more likely to drive within the limits than only believing you had a chance of being caught if a marked car is around?
Whether unmarked cars are actually being used this way and are patrolling the roads and freeways regularly is another story, but the concept of unmarked cars acting as a deterrent to stop speeding and stupid driving, rather than being sneaky and waiting to catch you to raise revenue remains."]UNQUOTE

I agree that more uniformed police would be a good thing.
BUT, The cost of just putting more uniforms on the streets to my mind is horrendous. It takes a fair bit of time to get someone to a point where they can work, regardless of industry, and to get that many new cops would be along time. Then there is the cost of putting them on the streets, their cars, medicals, super, uniforms, ongoing training, administration, facilities. The additional costs for enforcing the fines, actioning every other duty that police do, such as break ins, shootings, assaults, lost children etc.
I am not sure that our society can currently afford the level of service that we seem to believe that we deserve/want. If people want better schools - it costs $, better roads - they cost $ as well, better hospitals - $ etc etc. So a determination has to be made to 'risk manage' (wan*word!!) and it seems that numbers of uniformed police is one of those things that is 'managed'.
Could this be why there are so many rules and regs nowadays where in the past a cop used to just pull you over, give you a verbal boot in the bum, then you went on your way? If one form of control can't be provided, then the use of another form is required. In this case, can't afford uniromed police = increased rules and regs and speed camera etc.

Thoughts?

i wasnt going to say anything mate but its good that someone is there to defend the country

Pppffftttt:P

'yeah its clear to land, come on in, want the jeys for it all??? just don't scratch my car when you unload the tanks and stuff and drive out of the airfield ..... the city, why its that way, big place, can't possibly miss it....'

that would be me as well mate so your not alone

Yes, I agree that to drive a 4Wd that weighs over a certain weight 1.7 tonnes ?? [wild guess] You need to have a special licence and driver test [inthe car]...
and that the bumper height be raised... or should say standardised ... but then most cars nowadays don't have bumpers... ??

The RTA in NSW has the answer for everything.....

Lower the speed limit... where : Every bloody where...
How Low... How low can they go??
they will be all happy when We are limited to 50kmH...
and there are No fatal accidents... anywhere....
then how will they raise the revenue to bui;d new roads and keep the current ones under repair....

The NSW Police are loving every minute of it... $$$$$$$
as You leave Scone to go South [at 50kmh] Once outside the town limits where the 100kmh sign was and the overtaking lane still is, there is a 60khm sign.... You have to wait for a couple of kms to get to the 100kmH sign.... so many locals have been fined doing 100kmH where they have been doing it for all their life.
Only Now its 60 Kmh... so You are doing around 40 kmH over the speed limit... Now these aren't speed crazed demons, just ordinary country people going about their business...
If You happen to have an accident at 60kmH and run off the road, apart from a wire fence there is nothing to run into....
well, maybe the odd cow or Kangaroo....

Making Us drive at ridiculous speeds is plain stupid....
I'm sure in the USA & other countries , every time there is an accident they don't lower the speed limit....

Most goods will end up on the Rail in NSW as the speed limits are going to slow the trucks down too much....
Maybe that is what they are doing... there should be different speeds for different vehicles..... Just because its dangerous for a heavily laden truck to go round a corner at 100kMH... Why Make everyone SLOW down to 80 KMH or whatever??? when a car can go round at 120 KMH....

Lee

yes unmarked cars work very well. For a while in around the brissy CBD, there were 2 Q cars, working. and must say everybody seemed to behave themselves. 1 Q car could do alot better than having 5 marked cars or 1 speed camera?

The problem with unmarked cars...
How many people see them???
on the side of a road in Brisbane or Sydney.. Yes OK...

But in the country... maybe everyone who sees the unmarked car is travelling OUT of the area or thru the area..
so no one knows about them...

My Son was booked by an unmarked police car recently, Yet I never knew it was in the area... [neither did My son]..
and probably no one else in the town knows of it...
We see plenty of Marked Highway Patrol cars and I think they are the way to go.....
but please keep the speed limits "realistic" ....

I read yesterday that there are 300,000 MORE cars on the road since 1998... and the ROAD TOLL Has NOT gone UP by the same amount percentage wise....

so leave the speed limits alone....

I love soapboxes...

Agree with the country roads bit as well Lee.
Have done lots of country driving (lived behind the olice station for a while too - In holbrook too, the buggers) and word only gets out that the hwy patrol is out, not unmarked cars. Nothing slows down cars on the Newell like a car with roofracks that look like a lighting bar

Who was mentioning lowering speed limits? and with that 300000 more cars, is that rego based? or have they done sampling and multiplied it?

admittedly not all 4x4s are bad. i learnt to drive in a 96 Pajero. they have great clutch movement, enough body roll to teach u the limits of corners, and breaking ability that out-does our brand new Magna. that car taught me much better driving habits then the Auto Laser that i am driving at the moment has. i agree with Barls' dig at SOME truckies. i have recently been nearly squashed off teh road by a semi that decided it wanted to change lanes, far from being in a blind spot i was SITTING NEXT TO THE CAB when he decided to move! i have also been talking recently to another friend who had the same thing happen to him, and after tooting to remind the truckie of his presence was simply given the finger then run virtually off the road.

in all honesty though i think the best and safest drivers are the most passionate ones. i love the freedom of driving, and i love cars, which means that i feel my cars and i drive within their limits, this means greater safety and longer lasting cars. i think the people who are most dangerous on our roads are those who are not at all passionate about driving, and do not think enough about the act to consider doing it in a correct and safe manner

My mum bought a pajero cos she needed a 7-seater, didn't want a tarago due to lack of impact zone at the front and therefore had very few options.

Not justifying soccer mums by all means (hell, she probably is one!), but there are cases where a forbie might be one of the only realistic options.

They do drive me nuts though.