Hmmmm
This character had double the alcohol limit and was a disqualified driver - ok. No new laws were going to stop him, just give him more to break
Now Ele has a post about improving road safety ideas from the AA and there are things that can be done but speed cameras, red light cameras, stricter enforcement, higher penalties, lower blood alcohol limits yadda yadda will not do a thing, will not save a single life.
They will however increase revenue by making more citizens into law breakers and subject to arbitrary taxation penalties.
You want to reduce the road toll to zero - don't let anybody drive!!
You want to bring it down - build better roads, oh wait, that costs money and doesn't generate revenue.
The court heard evidence that both men had been drinking at a party before getting into Mr Cuthbert's orange Chevrolet ute in the early hours of February 15 last year.
The ute was travelling at between 90 and 100km/h in a 50km/h zone (speed cameras working well I see) in the Auckland suburb of Glen Eden when it crashed into a retaining wall.
The ute flipped and Mr Cuthbert was flung from the vehicle and was pinned underneath.
This character had double the alcohol limit and was a disqualified driver - ok. No new laws were going to stop him, just give him more to break
Now Ele has a post about improving road safety ideas from the AA and there are things that can be done but speed cameras, red light cameras, stricter enforcement, higher penalties, lower blood alcohol limits yadda yadda will not do a thing, will not save a single life.
They will however increase revenue by making more citizens into law breakers and subject to
You want to reduce the road toll to zero - don't let anybody drive!!
You want to bring it down - build better roads, oh wait, that costs money and doesn't generate revenue.
Andrei:
ReplyDeleteMy children have to use those roads, and frankly your attitude is incomprehensible to me.
I want people to be punished for driving beyond the speed limit because the faster you drive the greater the damage if you crash.
Speed makes stopping distances longer, it increases the chance of losing traction on corners, it gives drivers less time to react to what's on the road, etc.
Alcohol and driving is a recipe for mistakes. Even driving under the limit, some people will be impaired.
If people are going to run red lights, speed, drink and drive then I want them punished. If they keep doing it I want them off the road.
My loved ones have to use the road too and I don't want them injured or killed because some arrogant cock-sure driver thinks they are Peter Brock and a few more km's on the speedo and a few beers under the belt supposedly doesn't matter.
Many years ago in Sydney, I was almost run over by a car speeding through a red light. I was in a crowd of people, so couldn't see the traffic properly and was about to step out onto the road except something was physically stopping me (must have been my Guardian Angel). A second or so later a red car whizzed right past. At the time I thought, boy, that was lucky that I couldn't move!
ReplyDeleteSure, a red-light camera wouldn't have stopped the idiot who ran the light (same lights where a cyclist almost crashed into a pram I was pushing a number of years later), but at least he would have been caught.
Personally, I have no problems with red-light cameras. I'm more worried about people who run red-lights.
The problem as I see it is that concentrating on minor infractions, trivial in terms of road safety is lucrative and thus that is where the focus lies - rather than dealing with the real problems that cause the real deaths.
ReplyDeleteSo, for example on New Years Day the police where targeting a steep downhill section of motorway, where nobody has ever been hurt or killed to my knowledge, instead of out on the highway dealing with the real pests including the idiot in the campervan wobbling all over the road at sixty-five kph with a line of twenty cars behind him and the other idiot who was overtaking the cars in the queue one at a time and forcing himself in to his new higher position in said queue.
I don't see speeding or running red lights as trivial. I see it as behavior that seriously endangers other road users.
ReplyDeleteA slow vehicle is annoying that is true, but if people were patient and slow drivers pulled over to let others pass then it wouldn't be such an issue.
Slow driving isn't illegal, although the road code does say that slow drivers must "keep as close to the left side of the road as possible" and "pull over as soon as it is safe to let following vehicles pass."
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/roadcode/about-limits/speed-limits.html