Thread: Road Safety or Revenue?

Maybe I'm cognitively challenged but I have found that if I am driving & talking on B/Tooth neither the driving or conversation are getting my full attention.
Most calls I get while driving are work related, involve a problem & need me to concentrate on the solution, easier & safer to do while pulled over with a fag in my mouth.
I don't smoke in cars.
BTW I also talk to passengers very little while driving be it SWMBO, kids or someone else.

As for touch screens I don't use them while in motion either. Either the passenger does it or it can wait.
I much prefer pushing a button that I have used 100 times before & it's location & use has been memorized/automatic muscles memory.
Hence a D2 suits me.
To me, maybe due to some history, driving is a serious business & needs full attention.

Jonesfam

Originally Posted by Saitch

If speed cameras are catching more and more people, could one assume that they are ineffective in road safety?

100%
Because the systems that we generally have in place are mainly put in place by arbitrarily focused agencies depending on who's got an interest or not amongst other things such as community concern etc

Why do some areas have 80, 70 and 60 zones in residential areas yet other areas are down to 40 now in the same types of areas?
Why does a road that is sign posted at 50k have a 20k speed hump?
Why do vehicles that are completely and readily capable to go over the maximum possible speed limit get certified as acceptable Australian standards?
How can a specialized trade that had stayed licensed continuously since 1920 still be current?
Why is it that you can call multiple government agencies associated with the same basic service and have different rules and regulations that don't apply to each agency?
Etc etc etc

I don't care if cars can go fast or any of this really I just think there's so much hypocrisy in law because nothing is law until you make it a law and just because the marketing campaign says it's to stop speeding and make the road safer doesn't make it true

Originally Posted by jonesfam

I don't smoke in cars.

This is something I'll never understand. Why is it legal to smoke while driving?

As for driving distracted. I drove tour busses for many years. My job was to literally talk and drive and interact with the customers and point at stuff. All with a mic in my hand. Which is legal!

You forgot the apostrophe.

Originally Posted by BradC

'cause he's a dickhead.

Originally Posted by Eevo

def not the case in SA. had a taxi driver who was lost and using high beam at night with no cars around, tying to read street signs for the freeway. copped a fine. no common sense from the cop or the magistrate.

I use high beam (with driving lights) every time I drive at night around the suburbs. Has never caused an issue, never been pulled over for it, I make sure I dip them for other road users.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Correlation and Causation aren’t the same.

No, but lack of correlation is a strong indicator that the two items being compared are not cause and effect.

If you want a really good correlation that strongly suggests causation, consider that around 40% of fatal accidents have a driver affected by alcohol as a factor, and compare this with random sampling of drivers almost never finds as much as 1% affected.

But there is another factor involved in speed and mobile phone cameras - both speed and phone use can be detected without intercepting, stopping and testing the driver, and can be done pretty much automatically, just with a human review. This might be a good pointer to their popularity with governments.

Originally Posted by jspyle

You forgot the apostrophe.

I did. I thought about going back and editing it before I walked out the door this morning, but decided I needed to allocate all of today's "****s left to give" elsewhere. Thanks for the correction though.

Back on topic, I went through 6 revenue raisers today, but each time remembered to take my eyes off the road to double check the speedo.

Tins is obviously from his posts a much better driver than the rest of us who try hard. I too have travelled many miles transporting people in taxis and buses but admit to only occasional truck driving and never with a trailer except in the bush on road jobs. Talking to passengers is distracting and I just stop when approaching roundabouts etc where a bit more concentration of what the other idiots is doing is required.
Maybe I'm getting old but I find all this crap in modern cars are a distraction for many of those I see on the roads around Perth daily. If it's not the gadgets it's other stuff they do..... eating, drinking, driving with a dog or kid on their laps, all sorts of stuff.
Yes the death rate over the last 40 years has dropped tremendously but that I think is due more to decent brakes, seat belts and safer built cars than enforcement or better driving.
As for cops being well trained, I doubt that as I live near the local police academy and their standards are much the same as the average driver from what I see, sometimes bloody awful. But most trainee cops put down their first preference as traffic because and as senior sergeant said to me not long ago "They won't join if we don't give them a pretty car to drive".
Just don't speed in WA as that's considered the worst of all crimes on the roads even if it's a minor infringement such as when overtaking which is far safer to do that than sticking to the posted limit.
AlanH.