Safety and Propaganda.
The NSW government’s road safety office has saved a squidzillion on PR spin doctors over the last decade as they continue to repeat the same mind dangerous mantra of “slow down, speed kills” and have added “distractions aren’t the problem”.
Not once though has any statistical analysis shown anything more than 43% of crashes being related to excess velocity for the conditions. According to the NSW Centre for Road Safety it was 40% in 2017. Let’s face it folks, that’s really what speeding is. Too many roads and areas are limited to what really should be a higher velocity over distance. But of course it’s due to a spurt of fatal crashes in a the space of a week or so late in 2017 that drives (no pun intended) the monotonous drone from the pollies and certain police PR people.
Let’s go simple for a moment: speed doesn’t kill. If it was the underlying reason then deaths on Australian roads would be in the thousands per day. Here’s what killed people: Crash causes NSW 2017 What’s disturbingly noticeable is how high a proportion of fatalities were country roads based and on a non-straight road, followed by head on impacts.
What does kill are drivers that Simply Don’t Care. They don’t care if they pull out in front of you. They don’t care if they stop in a merging lane. They don’t care if they’re on a motorbike and will travel at twenty below a posted limit whilst shaking their head at the driver behind them. They don’t care about amber and red lights. They don’t care about having headlights on when they should. They don’t care about indicators. They don’t care about you, themselves, and they certainly don’t care about road rules. The link above shows that speed may be factor but it’s nowhere near as big as the real reason: bad driving.
Don’t laugh at this seemingly innocuous statement. You’ll hear of “cars losing control” and unless the car is fully autonomous and has a does of the HAL 9000s, it’s utterly wrong. Any decent driver training organisation will tell you, without smiling, that it’s the failure of the organic component of a car that causes crashes. Not accident. Crashes.
This is why people die on the roads. It’s stuff-all to do with excess velocity. It’s got plenty to do with attitude. It’s got plenty to do with the tunnel visioned focus of governments and road bodies that are in it to promote ONLY their way of doing things.
Speed doesn’t kill. Government refusal to see past speeding and acknowledge they’re wrong, and people that don’t care, kill.
What’s needed is a complete and utter wholesale change to how the government sees road safety. A massive rethink is needed, and, as hard as it may appear to see, a reversal of the “speed kills” policy. Back to basics. Check the standards of driver educators. Educate and inform people that the basics that are being overlooked are why higher levels of driving standards that should be followed. Mandatory driver training sessions with properly accredited groups should be paired with a minimum of ten hours.
Driving a car at any speed isn’t hard. Driving appropriately isn’t hard either. But speed doesn’t kill. Bad drivers do.
Level 2, 9 Help Street
GEORGE QUITTNER says:
Everybody knows who the bad drivers are….it is the OTHER guy!
We could easily select “BAD” drivers for Re-education by reporting the number plate whenever we witness stupidity and dangerous driving
10 reports by unrelated entities should result in compulsory driver training.
GEORGE QUITTNER surviving family doctor. 90 Avenue Road Mosman,Sydney AUSTRALIA 2088. PH 02 9968 2222 MOBILE: 0407 968 007 george@mosmandoctor.com
January 25th, 2018 at 11:44 am
Roy Wyss says:
I could not agree more, given the huge revenue produced on speeding fines for people travelling10 or 20 klms per hour over the speed limit ( in keeping with traffic movement)I have grave doubts these words of wisdom will ever promote change for those making a fortune from the current BS regulations.
January 25th, 2018 at 11:49 am
Bev Webbe says:
I agree. Driving slightly over the speed limit on highway in good conditions does not necessarily cause accidents. It is drink driving, drugs or inattention and distractions within the car that are the worse problems.
January 25th, 2018 at 1:19 pm
J Layzell says:
Good to find someone prepared to look at the problem. What ever happened to the NRMA. Confidence in Aussie political parties is gone so no help there. In my work life I was a chartered Engineer, I did a fair bit of highway engineering and sat on some traffic committees We all want safe high speed roads and indeed increased productivity from transportation to lower costs. When I look at the road furniture installed on some of our roads I dispair. Obviously governments solution is to slow down traffic as a cheap political solution and then use the traffic police to catch drivers for speeding where no speed control is necessary providing funds for governments and frustrating the hell out of drivers and increasing the disrespect for the the government and police.I’m afraid our political parties have become too sophisticated to be of any use to the democratic main stream spending much of their time on taxpayer funded surveys to ensure re-election with least effort.How is it that many of our local representatives are parachuted into our electorates from the party’s seniority or similar lists and know nothing about us and us them.
Good luck
January 25th, 2018 at 5:02 pm
BERNARD WILSON says:
i think one of the problems is peoples attitude.their seems to be so much anger out there.you take car parks,how many time are you half way at reversing out of a car park and somebody drives behind you.if they stopped and let you out then they could have your car park
January 27th, 2018 at 9:06 pm