"Do as I say - not as I do" - Speed kills, yeah... right....

DIO



Well replied.

TAC should be setting an example. However the articles says that 37 fines were issued over a two year period. That there are 700 people employed by TAC who drive the vehicles.

Yes TAC employees should set an example. To err is human and we all make mistakes.

It appears that it is a case of the media trying to beat up a story.

F4Phantom



The issue is not the ability of vehicles to cruise at 150 km/h. The issue is the ability of the drivers to drive safely at those speeds.

I think its both, you woudnt catch me in an EA falcon doing anything close to 100kph. Obviously drivers would need to be trained, a good idea could be to have a special high speed licence after advanced training all paid by the user.

F4Phantom



A better idea would be for all drivers to have to do a defensive driving course. The knowledge and better road craft would make our roads safer.



Tjilpi

Perhaps it just depends how cynical one is about governments "having our best interests at heart" and similar sugar coated warm fuzzy things they preach... me...? I'm at the far end of the cynic scale....

Mike Harding

Hi Max

"As for the nasty useless road rules - NSW had the lowest number of road deaths in 2007 since 1946 or so - something must be working!"

All your bad drivers must have come to WA, LOL our 2007 road toll was the worst in 11 years and 2008 is already higher than the same time last year, not good statistics.

Chees

D

Yep. Something is happening. The average build years of the older cars on the road are every year getting further and further into the years that saw some of the biggest safety changes in the last 25 years.

Newer cars which are far safer are far cheaper due to massive vehicle depreciation rates.

Black spot programs have reduced the risk at the worst of our intersections and many roads that were high risk have been modified in the past 10 years.

Safer cars and safer roads do more for the road toll dropping than driver behaviour.

Dave

Dave

I have to challenge that one I'm afraid.

First Dunworkin's comment implies that there is something different in the West. Well their cars and their roads are at least as good, but they don't have the endless infuriating "tax collector cameras" that we do over east, nor the relentless booze bus roadblocks that are put on in holiday times.

In 1974 I was in NZ when the first oil crisis hit and they nearly ran out of oil. In November theyy imposed a speed limit of 80 k on the roads to save fuel. The road toll that Christmas was halved. Same old bomb cars, the same dreadful narrow roads. It was only behaviour that changed with a little help from enforcement.

I was involved in safety in may last few years at work - the training was you must do both - improve behaviour AND improve conditions, but the quickest & most spectacular gains in performance come from the behaviour changes.

The cameras give me the shirts, I got a bluey from a meanly placed camera a few weeks ago, but I do have to acknowledge that they do more than raise megabucks for the Govt.

Max

Hi Max,

It was supposed to be a reply to the original post rather than a follow up. My error.

Even so, I'll stand by what I say. I have a keen interest having worked at GM involved in testing automotive safety engineering development in the 90's, and then undertook a complete career change to become a Paramedic.

I've seen the work that goes into both preventing the accidents, and done the work that goes into cleaning up afterwards. It gives some interesting perspective to both jobs.

There's no question that work started to try and slow people down late last century has had an impact on the road toll. I won't deny that.

But you can't change the behaviour of all of the drivers all of the time, and you can't take driver error out of the equation.

The biggest developments in mortality & morbidity reduction in the past ten years have been in vehicle safety, and road safety improvements. The same as the biggest single factor in the reduction in the 70's was as a result of the introduction of compulsory seatbelts, the big factor now is improved crumple zone design and supplementry restraint systems.

Road design removing gravel shoulders to allow a nearly certain crash to become a near miss, and armco or rope barriers to prevent cross over head-ons on divided roads or excursions into trees or off embankments, and fixing bad intersections and off camber corners or those with changes in radius part way through have contributed and will continue to contribute more in the next ten years than people slowing down by 5kmh.

The double fatal I attended last week was on a bad off camber corner on a national highway with gravel shoulders, which has been the cause of fatals in the past. The double fatal before Christmas was on a corner that is on the same highway further toward the border where a car coming around a corner that tightens as it progresses, and is slightly off camber, crossed the double lines.

5kmh wasn't going to make a significant difference and while there is an element of error on the part of a driver or driver in any crash - there's no suggestion at this stage that excessive speed was a factor, and had the driver passed through a speed camera half an hour or 5 minutes before the ticket would arrive after the funerals are over.

East of home all the way to the border there are so many poorly designed corners - off camber predominantly being the problem - on the highway. It's not surprising that several of them are marked with crosses.

Governments won't admit that roads and automotive safety design have a more significant impact on the road toll than speed cameras as it doesn't support their argument for that form of tax collection.

I'm not exonerating the drivers. Driver error or lack of judgement is a factor in most crashes, but there are other contributing factors that cause the error or lack of judgement to become a crash rather than a near miss.

ABS Brakes, Electronic Stability Control and road design promote an increase in near misses subsequently reducing crashes, morbidity & mortality.

I don't condone speeding, but I don't condone tolerances on speed cameras that are less than the ADR tolerances on speedometers either. I do fully support changes to government policy on road design and blackspot prevention.

An interesting read on the issue can be found here:
RACV Lifeline. Situation Critical: For Victoria's Rural Arterial Road Network

Dave