Police to ignore minor collisions (NSW)

Hi.

Well as if it wasn't bad enough that if you are involved in an accident in NSW the first thing you have to do is go on line to find out if the other car is registered to start with.

Now you have decide if the other Driver is over the Drinking limit , if you suspect they are on drugs , if you think they are you can send for the Police. !!

Exchange licence details without the police checking at the scene to find out later it was fake or a suspended Driver , great.

What a crazy situation.

So whats the story here. The Police only want to man Booze Buses and drive around with Radar units.

What about community help, some older people in particular with TRAUMA of an accident won't be able to check all the above.

Police can't be that busy , or get them more members.

Would they find these things in your vehicle?

Just wondering, given it seems you think everyone else has ;)

Baz - The Landy

I didn't say anything of the kind, that is you twisting my words around.

What I am saying is that people who run into you are more likely to be doing something wrong, which is making them worry about being caught, which lowers their attention level to their driving.

That "something wrong" is quite often, driving a stolen vehicle, driving under suspension, driving drunk or drugged, driving an unregistered vehicle, carrying drugs or other contraband, or carrying weapons.

Random traffic stops are a big part of policing - and they ALWAYS find at least one serious offence, and often multiple offences, being committed by a motorist, within a short time after stopping a line of traffic.

Huge drug busts and large money-laundering operations are found every week via random traffic stops.
In many cases, the police have no intelligence knowledge of the crime and are completely surprised at what they uncover.
BIL (recently retired Snr Sgt) told me how they caught a bloke for a suspicious traffic offence in a random traffic stop, and decided to search his home.

They were staggered to find $300,000 in cash in this blokes home, the results of a sizeable (still-running) drug operation.
The police had no inkling whatsoever of this blokes illegal operations, he was completely unknown to them, and had been exceptionally cunning in keeping a low profile.

Um, so if you run into someone, that someone might be thinking you are doing something wrong...

Your words, not mine!

Ron, you draw a long-bow, most times!

Well, you'd have to admit, if you run into someone, you ARE doing something wrong!

You're either distracted, not obeying road rules, guilty of careless or negligent driving, guilty of driving through a red light, tailgating, or guilty some other offence.
In nearly every crash, at least ONE party ends up (or SHOULD end up) being charged with a traffic offence!

I'll freely admit I've run into a couple of people, and caused damage. They were both low speed accidents, and the damage was less than $250 - and I'll freely admit I was careless with my driving!
I should have been charged with careless driving - but because no-one called the cops, I wasn't charged.

All I'm saying is that if someone crashes into you, you are well advised to call the police and let them take over investigations of any other offences that might be associated with the crash.

Even sighting someones MDL is no guarantee that the person has a legit MDL. The amount of fraudulent MDL's around is surprising, they can be copied with ease with sophisticated modern day electronic equipment - and there's numbers of people making a living out of supplying false MDL's and passports!

If a cop turns up to a smash, they have the computers and ability to check on the legitimacy of people's information and credentials. The average Joe like you and me doesn't have that ability.

A large % of people are yapping on phones and distracted when they run into you. I've been witness to a number of accidents where I've seen this happen clearly.

If you SAW and KNOW that the person who hit you, was yapping on a phone right before they hit you, what happens when you don't call the police?
That's right, they can walk away without penalty.

If you call police, and provide witness statements as to the phone use whilst driving, then that driver is charged with using a mobile phone whilst driving and charged and penalised accordingly.

If you suspect that the other driver is drink or drug affected, only police can check that out precisely and act accordingly.

Even police can get it wrong, it takes a combined effort to get to the source of the problem.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I was walking back from the beach into the beach car park and suddenly saw a bloke in a car coming down the entrance into the car park, tooting his horn with spasmodic jerks, and jerking and swerving the car from side to side.
I watched with some amazement as he drove slowly in an arc and ploughed straight into a parked car with a loud crash!

I raced over and whipped the door open and said, "Are you right, mate?"
The young bloke was hunched over, semi-conscious, and jerking and saying "whassat?", whassat?, whassat??", over and over again whenever I spoke to him.

I dragged him out of the car and called 000 and the police were there in about 3 minutes, and the ambos in about 4 minutes, much to my surprise.
Meantimes, I was trying to keep him breathing and conscious and trying to figure if he was having an epileptic fit, was drunk, or had taken drugs.

I couldn't smell any alcohol on him, so I dismissed that and concentrated on the epilepsy and drug angle.
He didn't appear to show the right signs for epilepsy (and I'd picked up a bloke in Broome once who was throwing an epileptic fit on the footpath, when he'd forgotten to take his pills).

So, I concluded this bloke who'd crashed his car was on drugs.
However, when the police turned up, one aggressive young copper decided he was drunk, and started to try and shake him up.
I had to restrain the copper, and tell him he wasn't drunk, he didn't smell of alcohol, and I thought drugs might be the problem.

When the ambos turned up just a minute behind the cops, the ambos took about 5 mins to get the info out of the young bloke, that he'd taken some LSD pills, and then gone for a drive!!

God knows how he made it from his house to the beach, high on LSD, without hitting anyone or anything! I guess a lot of people were practising good examples of "defensive driving"!

Tim, your post is spot-on. Fortunately, the road toll overall is still steadily declining on an annual basis, based on deaths per 100,000 of population - however, it's still way too high.

Surprisingly, pedestrians being skittled still make up a sizeable percentage of the road toll. That is simply due to people taking no care whatsoever with their personal safety.

How many times have you had people walk out in front of you without looking, walk across the road with inadequate time to cross, making you brake, walk across the road distracted by yapping on a phone?

I don't know what else can be done to make pedestrians exercise greater attention to their personal safety - the authorities hammer it, in road safety messages weekly - yet many people just seem to have little interest in preserving their lives?