Thread: Lowest road toll in 90 years - why?

It annoys me how quickly the government is to whip out the yearly road toll, along with the whole 'speed kills' spiel and associated revenue raising agenda, yet the number of deaths by suicide in this country is still not being addressed.

Higher numbers, very preventable, but no $$$ to be made, so no care by the government.

Sorry for the rant.

Campbell's Safety plan +1kph and you are gone and cable driven speedos have a 10% error factor will be interesting when one of those goes to court,just hope the media are there.

Yes, they can make money from fining people for speeding, but there's no money in suicide.

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It doesn't get votes.

Lowest road toll in 90 years -why?

Because less people died

Speedos have to read faster than the actual speed by law or the vehicle is unroadworthy so, as long as you set the cruise control on the speed limit, you know you're actually doing less than the speed limit.

Re. the comment about votes and speeding, you have to wonder if that is really true. There must be an awful lot of people out there who have been annoyed by being booked for minor speeding, say 5-10 km/h over the limit. However, many people have yet to make the connection between their being booked and who they voted for at the last state elections, since state governments control road rules. You have to wonder what would happen if motoring orgnizations got some balls and ran a campaign against government harassment of motorists - for example, if they attacked the idea that people can be fined for going 1km/h over the speed limit. In England, there was a big motorists' backlash against speed cameras and a lot of them were removed a while back, I recall. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen as the motoring organizations are run by people who are afraid to do anything which could have them acused of being irresponsible.

Imagine what would happen if the motoring organizations backed a campaign to have every mnotorist refuse to pay any speeding fine for going up to 5km/h over the speed limit, on the grounds that road conditions constantly vary and its inevitable that everyone will occasionally slip over the limit by a small amount, so booking them for that is harassment and not really about road safety.
The number of unpaid fines for doing up to 5km/h over the limit would skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands within a few months. What are governments going to do? The amounts owing would quickly rise as payment deadlines passed. Are state governments going to arrest everyone with one of those unpaid fines? Really? Imagine the TV news crews lapping it up as average people got dragged away in paddy wagons for not paying a fine for being 5km/h over the limit. Imagine the government politicians getting nervous about alienating all those voters.
There comes a point when a bad law is worse than no law at all. There also comes a time when people are entitled to resist bad laws. Have we reached that point yet?

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Yes, they can make money from fining people for speeding, but there's no money in suicide.

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Why not? They should fine them. Repeat offenders should get jail time.

Originally Posted by UncleHo

Campbell's Safety plan +1kph and you are gone and cable driven speedos have a 10% error factor will be interesting when one of those goes to court,just hope the media are there.

+3kph was introduced in Vic. The sky didn't fall in but the civil compliance industry does collect a lot of indirect taxes for the government.

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Why not? They should fine them. repeat offenders should get jail time.

That would require a change of legislation, Mick. Whilst suicide is a crime, the attempt of suicide is not.
I wonder what the penalty for suicide is, I don't think anybody has been prosecuted for it recently.