4WD rolls into ####### river

Footloose
Speed is not always the factor, one could roll a car at 25Kph if your not looking where your going, which I would presume could be the case here, My firm belief into the cause of most accidents is in this order, Lack of concentration/attention, Fatigue, DUI, Inexperience.

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Doug we are going to have to disageee on this one I'm afraid.
Oh well. the world would be pretty boring if we all agreed all of the time.

Hi Doug,

I agree with you, and the statistics support this view. However, the overall actual cause of all crashes is driver error and/or poor decisionmaking, with your list being contributing factors. Vehicle failure is now so rare as a crash cause as to be nonexistent.

As for speed, the vast majority (Australian average over 80%, fatal crashes over 90%) of crashes happen when both vehicles are travelling below the speed limit, but obviously at a speed unsuited to the conditions - driver error again, not speed.

In my humble opinion it is time that the word accident was removed from any incident where a vehicle is involved as it is almost never an accident.

As defined by Wikipedia

"An accident is a specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, without apparent or deliberate cause but with marked effects."

If we see an apparent cause such as speed, driver fatigue etc, by definition it can not be ab accident. Until we convince the drivers of this country that they and they alone are responsible for the crash, nothing will change.

Sort agree there Lewis! - lots in fact!

We see lots or media reports of 'accidents between vehicles and trees, vehicles & stobie poles, vehicles & fences etc' so I guess all the inference is that these objects are deemed also to have blame therefore those objects really are a hindrance to the driver of the vehicle involved and should be charged and fined as well! :-)

Must watch out for that next tree which is coming at me at 100k/h and wants to jump into my path of travel :-)
In fact we do just that - always on the look out for those escape routes should what ever go wrong!
We have had some good defensive driving and off road driving training!

Mind you I feel sorry for the victims, friends relatives etc as they have to deal with the horrific aftermath stuff, BUT we humans ARE SUPPOSED to be the intelligent beings with the ability to CHOOSE how we go about our business!

Cheers - Mobi

Hi Lewis,

I concur. At the several defensive driving courses I've done, the instructors went to great pains to point out that 'accidents' are not accidental - they have identifiable causes and are often avoidable.

I also think these courses should be a prerequisite to getting and keeping a licence.

Totally agree Lewis as you have said in *most* cases (but I wouldn't go quite as far as Nic I to say that ALL crashes are not accidental)...

The other one that gets me is when there is a single vehicle "accident" where the "vehicle left the road". I'll admit I'm fairly young to driving but I've never had a problem where my car decided to leave the road without me steering it that way! I'm getting very worried though because I fear it's only a matter of time (TIC)!

As you have quite rightly said, until the responsibility is put more onto the driver, we won't see much change. It's always "poor you" instead of "why did you do that?"

Perhaps also the governments need to be less free in handing out licences. When the government outsourced driver licence testing to driving schools, people said that driving schools would end up passing students too easily otherwise they would get a reputation for profiteering by trying to sell more lessons. The "easy" driving schools would then get all the business. Guess what is happening? Ask around any high school and you'll hear people saying "I wouldn't go to X or Y driving school because it always takes more lessons to get your licence with them"

The whole purpose of a car is to 'speed'. Speed means to travel at more than zero kph. Aeroplanes regularly travel along runways at several hundred kilometers per hour without killing everyone on board. How so?

Lets get away from the meaningless term 'speed', and cliches like 'speed kills'. Going too fast for a particular situation will increase the risk of misadventure. Going too fast for your level of skill has the same effect. The faster you are going the more damage your misadventure will cause - in fact it increases with the square of the speed.

Sadly, 'speed' limits bear little relationship to the appropriate speed for the conditions, and are often set on the basis of the least skilled driver, in the worst handling vehicle, in the worst possible conditions.

I'd get these drivers and these vehicles off the road, and let the rest of us drive at speeds appropriate to the conditions.

I am unimpressed by the rigid policing of ridiculous speed limits for revenue raising.

A 17 yo kid was telling me today that a builder in a 4WD ute had a head on crash with him on his side of the road. The kid had the foresight to stop before the collision when he saw the approaching vehicle on his side of the road. The driver of the offending vehicle got out, had a quick check of his vehicle, then racked off. The Police were called but couldn't be bothered to attend.

The kid got the licence plate of the offending vehicle but the police are obstructing his efforts to provide details to the Insurer. The kid is going to wear a $1000 excess as a result.

Nice work ACT Police.

It must have been one of their mates...

Seriously, the young driver should only have to provide the rego number (and description of the vehicle) to the insurer and that should be enough to identify the 'driver at fault' - assuming the number on rego plates on the vehicle at the time match the actual registration number of the vehicle (so often they don't)

"It was very scary because I just started fishtailing"

Yep... I think that sums it up

Mark

Forgot to add, they are not accidents - collisions.