Road Safety - How to get policies for safer roads, not increased revenue.

[Gazilla]

One thing to do would be to look at what other countries have done. Are there any countries in the world that have a brilliant model of driver lisencing, policing etc that we can nick ideas from? Maybe have a look at some european countries and see what they have done. I heard canada was forced to remove static speed cameras, how was that achieved? Germany has autobarns that seem to work really well, is it just brilliant german road engineering or is there a great lisencing system to make sure all germans can drive at 170km/h without spearing into a ditch?

Instead of thinking to hard we can just nick the good ideas from everyone else to make a model that works for us (ie our roads will probably never be as good as a euro road etc)

[Ben Wilson]

Southo - Can you have a look at vehicles under 100kw/tonne like was suggested on the radio this morning?

[Southo]

A4 Turbo is at 99.6
Forrester GT Turbo is at 89.0 (one is at 85.0)
Liberty RS Turbo is at 104.7

[Jim]

Southo, any chance of a complete list of new cars available on our market that are under 100kw/t? I'd love to reprint this in ADG for reference.

[hamish]

Last thing we should be doing is making any "property damage" or "comprehensive" insurance compulsory...

If policies were compulsory, that means all people can be insured - even those that are such bad risks that they cost insurance companies FAAAR more than they ever pay. So unless you want to sudsidise these people out of your own pocket (ie, thru much higher premiums) then don't even joke about making this insurance compulsory....

If you don't beleive me - look at the costs of other compulsory insurance schemes and the "great" record they have in keeping premiums down....

If we introduced it, it could be a way of identifying "problem" drivers, an inneficient one admittedly

Speaking of problem drivers, I imagine crashes follow the Paretto Principle, in that 80% of crashes are caused by 20% of drivers, perhaps drivers who fall into this group so be the focus of remedial action, govts would get the best return for dollars spent if they focussed resources onto the people causing most of the damage. Just a thought.

Southo, some pretty quick cars listed there, reflects the general increase in performance of most cars over the last decade or so, what's the figures for stock 6cyl Falcons & Cdores?

[ST]

How would p/w ratios be policed in older cars and with the modified cars? Would this be at the whim of the police?

Also how would p/w ratio laws be implemented? Would it be starting with new licensees or forcing people to sell up "over powered" cars for something suitable?

These are just a few questions which should give an idea about how feasible an idea will be to introduce effectively.

[Brenton_s15]

in that 80% of crashes are caused by 20% of drivers

One very minor, little, teensie-weensie flaw in that assumption Hamish.
You are assuming they live long enough to have multiple crashes.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that most drivers in the really narky fatals, only get one crack at it.

[jesus]

I would have to disagree about the insurance thing, I think it should be compulsory. In Canada there is only one insurance company and its government owned and its compulsory to use it. And the rates were genuinely cheap and they were very easy to deal with for claims. From memory my friends corvette, a brand new car was $600 a year to insure, and my viper also brand new was $700

My mate stacked his corvette, not bad just sorta sideswiped this other driver two tow trucks came took both cars to the assessment center, sent both cars to different pre assigned repairers based on the model and everyone had their cars back a week later

He had to fill out one small form and pay a small excess was easy as pie

However short of killing off all the insurance company’s here (witch isn’t going to happen) I couldn’t see that working here. Immediately you would have X amount of workers in the insurance industry out of a job and you would have 200,000 repairers around the country no longer getting insurance jobs. Would be quite a disaster come to think of it

[Brenton_s15]

Saw the same concept proposed somewhere else. One person even thought it through and devised a scheme whereby a person would need to produce a "High Performance Vehicle" Drivers License before they were allowed to buy or register the car. Obviously, there are lots of people with larger brains than ours working on the problem.

[Brenton_s15]

you would have 200,000 repairers around the country no longer getting insurance jobs

Getting Insurance jobs wouldn't affect them Rollin7. So long as you still allow them to organise one or two a month, they'll be sweet.

[hamish]

One very minor, little, teensie-weensie flaw in that assumption Hamish.
You are assuming they live long enough to have multiple crashes.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that most drivers in the really narky fatals, only get one crack at it.

Ok ok, that would skew the figures a bit..... but I was thinking more of non fatal accidents, and making the assumption that people who make the mistakes that lead to a number of small crashes would be more likely to make a mistake that causes a fatal one. But I am thinking out loud, and am quite happy for my ideas to be shot down if they are crap

[Brenton_s15]

I didn't mean to shoot you down Hamish, as I really don't know either. I think it would be safer to assume that people who have more than one smash are more likely to have lots of little low-impact fender-bender type bingles, rather than the big ones.

It's quite interesting how Governments and Media distort figures when it suits them though.

Check out these pages where they give them selves a pat on the back...
NSW RTA Follow the link at the bottom of the page to find the real stats.

It seems that 2001 was the lowest figure for 50 years and while 2002/2003 were a little higher, it wasn't by much, so overall, the figures are still quite low.

[Brenton_s15]

Sorry to pull stuff from another thread into here, but it is probably more relevant here. While researching a message which I felt sure was an Urban Myth, I discovered some interesting data.

From the NSW Legislative Assembly Hansard, 1st September 2004 Link

the latest statistics from 2001 show that there were 258,561 licence holders in the 17-year to 20-year age group. Fortunately, there were not hundreds of young people killed; there were 30. I accept that it is 30 too many, but it represents 0.01 per cent of all licence holders in that age group. We must be sensible and look at the statistics.

From the RTA stats for 2001

Link to PDF

There were 51,814 recorded road traffic accidents in New South Wales during 2001. Of these, 23,168 were casualty accidents. There were 524 persons killed and 29, 913 injured.

It seems that P-Platers were involved in only 5.7% of fatal smashes.
If we look further, we see that they also represent 5.8% of license holders.

4,394,600 License Holders in total (source 2001 RTA report)
258,561 License Holders 17-20 years of age (source NSW Hansard)

From this, one can conculde that any measures taken should be applied evenly to all license holders and that P-Platers should not be singled out for any special treatment, other than the fact that whatever needs to be corrected could be done easier while people are still learning.

[SuperBoRi]

if you are going to comment on this, and discredit someone on the fact that their figures are misleading: make certain you don't make the same mistake.
Fact is: I would assume (assumption being mother of all fuckups) that the P platers are doing less kms.
The undeniable proof would be a table of average kms and death rates.
Simple: average kms for 17-20 year old group multiplied by the number of drivers, divided by the number of deaths.
Do the same for other groups.
This may change the results again to show that young drivers ARE dieing at a higher rate than older people for the amount of kms they do.
The next thing to do is look at injuries requiring hospitalisation, and use the same formula.
Have all these numbers on hand if you ever intend on going onto TV or anything and arueing our case. This gives you a good baseline to start with, and people will believe we are a serious organisation.
I can always find a statistic to suport my arguement, I could simply say I have never had an accident and I am 21, therefore no people under 21 have ever had accidents before. Fact is you sound like an idiot unless armed with the correct numbers.

[GT4_Jase]

dammit - lost the friggin post i just typed out....

Anyway, gist of it goes: I think P plate drivers would do quite a considerable amount of km's per head compared to the next age group/any other age group.

Think about it: most of the people you see out lapping at night are P platers. Just got their licence, just got their own freedom. Wanna show off the new car to the chicki-babes/car sluts...

Combined with the usual travel to/from work, and it does add up to quite a bit.

It's certainly that way around my area.
This isnt based on any scientific research, but I'm sure any research done would draw this conclusion...