The new fix....... QLD

Very sad news mate! I heard a clip that we might be getting some kind of incentive to reward good driving, but other than the highlights package never heard anything about that again!

Does anyone know of that being used anywehere else? Say if you don't lose any points or get any fines for a year you get a small reduction on your rego or some similar incentive?? Did it work? I'm just curious - I mean insurance companies use the rating system, why not Govt with fines etc? Oh yeah, less revenue! HA! What WAS I thinking! ;-)

Cheers,
Scoey.

Yes Reiner (spelt correctly this time) I thought exactly the same when I saw it on the news last night. Any mug can be punitive but we pay our pollies to be a bit creative I thought ! Wrong again . The way I see it the problem revolves around the general attitude of people these days , is my generation of parents to blame for raising rsole kids or am I simply more sensitive to an issue that always existed?

I want a package and retirement.

Dave L.

I don't think that we parents have much to do with that. For some reason the kids today have this desperate urge to impress each other and show off in gerneral. The coolest kid has the most horsepower and so on.
Why do we have a 250cc limit on motorcycles but a 18 year old kid can drive a 200HP Commodore?
We used to drive 6V Beetles and you had to wind the windows up if you wanted to go faster than 80km/h :-)
It would be very easy to have a horsepower limit on cars but I wonder if Mr Holden and Mr Ford have anything to do with that.
I don't think that the kids today are out there to kill somebody it's just that they think it wont happen to them and they don't know what they doing.
They need proper driver training.
Our politicians think taking a license of somebody will stop them driving, that is very very naive thinking. Taking the cars away wont work either, they buy another bomb for $500 which is much more dangerous than the one they had before.

I better go and do some work now :-)
cheers
Reiner

Good philsophical point Scoey, Crikey, I usually have these discussions after a bottle of red or 2 .

Dave L.

Good old pete is trying to take the headlines away from the health system.

R.

Rewards ! from a poly - wash your mouth out with soap & water, what were you thinking !!!

Local high school gave kids $50 if they never missed a day during the year. About 15 kids qualified last year and the parents went ape about giving money (out of the parents donations) to the kids. after all the kids were only doing what they were suposed to be doing - going to school !

So, why do you expect a reward for doing what you are suposed to be doing - obeying the road rules !

Increasing penalties will not solve the problem. Having a massive penalty, say $10,000 fine or gaol for 10K over the limit might decrease it, but that would be stupid. The gaols would be full from unpaid fines and we would need a 3 strikes and you are executed policy to keep the penalties progressive and prevent overcrowding.

After all, the death penalty has not stopped murders in USA, or drug trafficing in Indonesia and Singapore.

This must also be kept in perspective. Of course we should aim for zero road fatalities, but that is impossible to achieve with current technology. Back in the early 70s, I was living in Victoria. There were 1034 people killed on the roads one year. I remember it well because the government ran a road safety campaign called '1034 campaign'. Over the past 20 years, the number of deaths has been well below this level despite many more vehicles, much faster cars and many more young drivers (few 18 year olds could aford a car back then). Most of the improvement was in the early days, long before speed cameras etc.

I suspect that given current vehicle technology, road construction etc, there is a 'natural level' of road deaths that will occur regardless of what is done with penalties. A bit like unemployment. Around 5% unemployment is widely believed to be as low as it can reasonably go without draconian measures like removing the dole, forcing people to accept available work or move to get work.

Another point. Queensland does not have annual vehicle safety inspections. Inspections are only required when selling or re registering an unregistered vehicle. How many accidents are caused by poorely maintained vehicles? I'd rather not have to get annual inspection, but is this simple measure likely to be more effective than doubling fines?

And finally. With the right attitude, kids can be safe drivers. I have 2 kids in their mid 20s. Both have been driving since 18. Neither has had an accident and the only 'driving offence' was when my son lost his muffler when he went camping one time. Got defected on his way home. They NEVER drink (even one drink) and drive.

I don't mind big penalties for serial offenders (particularly serial drink driving offenders) or for driving 30kph or more over the limit. But doubling penalties for 5kph over the limit will do nothing other than increas government revenue.

Bit of a ramble. Sorry about that. But I had my say.

They've missed the bleedin obvious....

Put more coppers on the road!!! Take them out from behind their desks and cameras and have them actually patrolling the roads. A copper in a patrol car cruising down the freeway is a far better deterrent than a speed camera hidden behind a bush.

Oh, silly me. That would COST money, not MAKE money... What WAS I thinking???

Seriously, back in the bad old days there used to be heaps of Q (plain police) cars on QLD roads and no-one dared to speed. You'd come over the border from NSW and everyone would slow down to the speed limit.
Most of the Q cars are gone...
Cameras are more revenue efficient......

The number of people getting killed on the road is going down for the last twenty years and the pollies know that as well as we do........it's all bull#% so they have a reason to book us more and increase the fines. They don't give a stuff about road-safety, it couldn’t be any more bluntly obvious.
We have very smart people come up with real good Ideas, you see them ones and they disapera for ever....wonder what happens to those good ideas?
Reiner

Seems this edbate will gon forever throughout a fair bit of the world. I'm only young but even still just with experience and observing things around me there is no real easy solution. Increased fines and penalties really don't do a lot they may work to a degree but it's like putting gaffer tape over a hole in a tube, it will stop the leak for only a small amount of time. In my opinion we all should be taught on how to drive correctly none of this learning road rules and how to park nonsense that should be the first part of a more elaborate means to egtting your licence. You should be taught how to controle the car you are driving in different situations hence defensive driving courses. I just think that it all should be intertwined together with learning the road rules also. It doesn't matter how slow you make the roads it doesn't matter how high fines and penalties are people will die. Everyone makes mistakes it just seems some are more than others. Maybe if the politicians were serious about reducing road deaths with young people aybe they should introduce a 'horsepower' limit at what they can drive. It also doesn't help with peer pressure and trying to be cool either. You will never stop young people trying to impress their friends or soemthing they will always want to outdo each other and maybe the government should think about creating events where it is free for the younger people or even a fairly cheap option of just letting of somesteam at a drag track or something. the government is intent on spending millions upon millions each year on ads for these things when maybe they could pump those funds into something that will allow the younger people do what they want and show off to their mates in a 'controlled' environment. It's going to get to the point where people won't drive anymore and what will the governemnt do without revenue from fuel taxes,fines and registrations when more and more people stop driving. It's all being done wrong and the wrong people are suffering.

Reiner,

I respect the laws and understand we should be punished when we break them, but the poor bloke who drives in excess of 100 000km/yr has a much higher chance of a lapse in concentration to exceed the speed limit compared to the driver that does 9000 city km and 2000 highway km/yr. At present there is no compensation in the point scale to adjust for this, I don't think too many people would disagree with the punishment by means of fines and points demeritted from license. However those who have the most experience in highway driving are at greater risk of loosing their license by the very means that gives them this experience. Most of these people also depend on the license to provide income for their families to put food on the table, take this income away and we will have to be supported by taxpayers until we can find an alternative income source.
I have no problem with drink driving or drug driving penalties being severe (especially for repeat offenders) to the point of breath analysis before ignition can be started. Speed however, only takes a split second lapse to get a speeding fine. I know this is all it takes for an accident to occur as well but point scales should be reflected in km travelled each year. Also fines should be a percentage of one's income as this would be a truely equal deterrent accross the population. Someone on $150k/yr is not interested in a $250 fine but if it were say 1% (as is the case for some people) of his/her income I am sure they would feel different about it.

Good topic, regards Trevor.

Our politicians or anyone in a position of power need to be held accountable for there decisions, but how do we do this. Voting system is a joke. The people in SW Victoria may remember how many hundreds of millions of dollars Bracks wasted on the train line between Geelong & Melbourne so the "fast train" could do the trip a whole 5 minutes quicker and it fails to I believe. By car I can cut my travel time by much more by speeding a little & have been doing so for the last 10 years. Im still alive ! I havent killed anybody! Im finding it much harder to read traffic & other drivers now because I have to watch that I dont go over the speed limit by 1 km/hr because the new camera system measures time travelled point A to point B. Im getting very tired physically & mentally of concentrating on speed rather than tuning in to the traffic and anything other dangers ahead of me. Wheres my mate WODDONNEE!!!

I'm sure the lack of a visible presence is a key factor. Last weekend we drove from Yeppoon to Brisbane and back (approx 1600 km) and, apart from in Rockhampton and in Brisbane, did not see or pass a single Police car or speed camera on the highway.
Jon W

Premier Pete is only doing this to take the heat away from the hospitals and to raise more revenue to pay for the hospitals.

This is just more revenue raising, nothing else.
If they were serious about reducing the road toll we would see kids learning it as part of the school ciriculum.
Notice not one thing they're doing relates to driver education.
The M1 between Brisbane and the Gold Coast is one of the safest roads in QLD but they want to put fixed speed cameras on it.
This is just out and out revenue raising