Without responding to particular posts -
Mick-Kelly - You left out that there are more deaths due to suicide than road accidents - even without counting the road statistics that really are suicide. And keeping strictly to the laws will not reduce the accident rate to zero, although this would certainly reduce them. And even more laws will have little effect. As has been established many years ago in aviation, accidents do not have a single cause, so addressing a single factor will not help.
Road accident death rates have actually been decreasing for the last thirty years, with the major improvements being compulsory seat belts and random breath testing (actually the resulting change in attitude to drink driving), plus the steady improvement in roads. A very small amount may be due to better car safety, but this is probably counterbalanced by the greater power weight ratio and less sensation of speed with newer cars.
The reason power limits on inexperienced drivers are ineffective, is that for the limit to have any real effect, it would have to rule out most of the cars sold today - power weight ratio of cheap "basic" cars today is similar to that of high performance cars of thirty years ago. So we have silly rules that for example ban a P plater from driving a V8 County but allow them to drive a Defender which is virtually the same vehicle but with a diesel engine producing 40% more power!
Speed limits apply to P plate drivers in NSW, but their effectiveness is cast into doubt by the total lack of any consistent difference in statistics compared to states such as Victoria where the limits do not apply. In fact, because most of the main roads in NSW are two lane, I believe that the lower speed limit on P plate drivers teaches them to ignore speed limits - by the time you have done a few kilometres with the bullbar of a B-double a metre from your back bumper, your speed will creep up to the same speed as everyone else - with the result that by the time you are off your p plates you will have little regard for any speed limit.
Unrealistic and inconsistent speed limits also do not help - the 50kph was originally introduced for residential areas but is now applied to long stretches of state and national highways in rural towns and villages, where in the city anything that is anything like a main road is 60 if not 80, even if lined with houses. The same applies to any unrealistic laws. In the USA courts have struck down speed convictions where it can be shown that 80% of drivers are over the speed limit!
Another interesting law is the ban on mobile phone use. Obviously it is dangerous to use a mobile phone while driving - right? There is actually a good way of testing this using published data. Some states in the USA ban them, most don't, and mobile phones were rare until about ten years ago - now just about everyone has one, and in those states where it is not illegal they are very commonly used while driving. So, since they are so dangerous, the accident trends should show up clearly distinguishing those states that have bans from those that don't. But in fact they don't. It shows up in neither road deaths nor notifiable accidents, the trend continuing down in both cases in both states that do and don't have the ban. The only conclusion is that either they are not dangerous or the law is ignored (or both). I suspect the answer is that those who are going to allow the phone use to distract them will allow something else to anyway.
John
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
Originally Posted by Utemad
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That's 15% of all deaths. 
untill someone gets hurt then the goverment say what can we do to save lives
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