Slow Down Stupid – QLD Transport

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By Alborz Fallah | November 24th, 2010

Once again we’re nearing the holiday season and that means the state transport departments are gearing up to cash in on our holiday travel. First up, Queensland Transport has continued with its “slow down stupid” campaign now focused on the financial cost of speeding.

In an email sent out to discourage speeding on behalf of the “here for life” team, QLD Transport states that 58,919 drivers were issued with speeding tickets just last December (in QLD). Let’s do the maths. Even if all the tickets fell in the smallest penalty group for speeding (less than 13 kilometres per hour over the speed limit – A$133 + one demerit point) QLD transport would’ve still collected a cool $7.8 million. Not bad for a month’s work.

The entire email makes no mention of any other road-safety issues except excessive speed. If the email is taken literally then as far as QLD Transport is concerned, so long as you don’t speed you won’t have an accident. This is somewhat misleading given that only 1/5 fatal crashes are caused by excessive speed.

Unlike some states, Road Worthy Certificates are not required on a yearly basis for vehicles registered in Queensland. Hence, one has ask how many lives could be saved if focus was shifted from just targeting speeding drivers to other equally or more important issues.

Perhaps QLD transport could really be “here for life” if it educated drivers in:

Making sure their vehicle is ready for travel – checking tyres, brake pads, vehicle fluids, windscreen wipers, etc…
Refreshing their understanding of road rules.
Encouraging participation in advanced or defensive driver training courses.

What ever the case may be, it’s clear that despite this year’s road toll showing no significant drop (even with extra speed cameras) the authorities have once again began their fear campaign to justify the existence of more and more speed cameras on our roads.

Nonetheless, things haven’t been all that smooth for QLD Transport so far this year. In June the state’s Police union publicly opposed the introduction of covert speed cameras with Queensland’s police union president Ian Leavers stating that covert speed cameras are “poker machines on wheels”.

How much faith can one have in the “speed cameras save lives” campaign if there is no data to suggest any correlation with the increase in the number of speed cameras and a reduction in road toll?

If you’re interested, you can watch QLD Transport’s new TVC here.

AMPboy

QLD Transport has very little idea what to do, they just get told to reduce the road toll but never given any authority to try something new, so they just keep pumping out the same incorrect message over and over again…
Vince

Anti Spam word: Speed… gold.

Speed cameras line pockets not save lives.

http://Facebook Jerome Jackson

They only put these over-the-top and ridiculously expensive ads out in an attempt to justify the increased use of cameras over the Christmas period. It’s a slap in the face to each and every one of us. Just ignore them, use your common sense on the roads and you will be fine.

Shak

How can the government so blindly back a measure that is every night blasted across our TV’s as being a bad thing. Do they think the electorate is more likely to listen to them over the cheery TV host who is backing up their story with facts and figures. When people like the MB head of safety, and even our own Skaife publicly criticise the Government over this speeding issue, how do they expect to retain their power. Either listen to us or bye bye from parliament.
Jimmy

All good points, Alborz. I think a year long trial for speed cameras whereby points are deducted without monetary fines being issued would be interesting. If the toll remains constant or drops, they would have no defence against fining speeding drivers. If the revenue raised from speed cameras is such an essential part of the state’s budget, then incorporate it into registration and/or tax. I’m happy to pay for necessary services through these means, but when the government is dishonest in how they solicit these funds, that’s when citizens start to lose respect and messages such as “slow down stupid” fall on deaf ears.
Adam

Perhaps they would be better off with ‘Slow Down: Stupid’.
DON

NSW ELECTION IS COMING EARLY NEXT YEAR. SOMEONE SHOULD SET UP AN ANTI SPEED CAMERA PARTY. I WILL GIVE MY VOTE TO THIS PARTY.

Radbloke

I think your caps lock is on, chief.

Jabba the Hutt

Revenue raising = Here for Life!
Save It for the track

Shak. If you’re going to try and use the recent visit of the MB safety guru as an example of criticising speed-limits or speeding, be more realistic and quote more of what he said (and was NOT widely reported).
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I believe he stated that roads ‘such as’ parts of the Hume, should have higher speed-limits, but he also (as I have constantly pointed out) stated that there should be LOWER urban area limits.
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It’s always people cracking out the autobahn analogy, but failing to mention the speed-limits and conditions on German B roads or urban and inner-city, and residential roads, many of which have limits as low as 30km/h.
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I certainly agree that many a state road authority focus solely on speed is missing a larger area of road safety. Again as I have REPEATEDLY pointed out on this site, if states like QLD, Victoria and SA had yearly inspections for registration for example, that MAY help with the road-worthiness, of all too many heaps of rubbish with those states plates getting around on the roads. I certainly do my bit when I see them polluting the roads of NSW. Yet we have some states worrying more about introducing quarterly or half-yearly registration. If people are struggling to afford their rego, how the heck are they going to maintain their vehicle in a roadworthy condition? Answer, too many don’t, especially from VIC, QLD & SA.
.
I’d be very interested to see if there were any figures available from states like Victoria (whose road toll is up this year) mentioning if vehicles in injury and death collisions were roadworthy or not, or had some sort of defect. I’d be willing to bet there’d be a large amount of Vic crashes with vehicles whose tyres hadn’t been looked at for who knows how long.
Popeye

The Queensland government has just one agenda and that is revenue raising. If they were serious about reducing the road toll they would firstly provide proper training for new drivers, secondly they would put police back on the roads instead of hiding behind trees waiting for someone to commit an offence. I am sure each one of these dipsticks has heard their grandma say prevention is better than cure…get out there and get noticed and stop pretending to do your job!
Nelson Muntz

Never ceases to amaze me here in sunny Brisneyland how many cars you see with bald tyres and broken (or missing) lights. Oh, and don’t get me started on use of mobiles…
Alex II

And here we go again, the message here is “as long as you are not speeding, everything will be ok”, forget about inattentive driving, fatigue, poor driving habits and the list goes on. Don’t get me wrong, speeding can cause accidents and no matter what, the faster a vehicle is going the more damage it does to the occupants when it comes to an abrupt halt, but come on QLD transport (every state transport authority in fact) you need to get a more balanced message out to the driving public.
Homer

Alborz for f sake the word is maths. Just how lazy and American can you get?

Jimmy

With such obvious grammatical perfection displayed by you, Homer, I’m confident Alborz will take your comment with a grain of salt.

Homer

My apologies Jimmy, of course it should say for f’s sake. You have a nice day now.

Yonny

It’s a bit laughable (in a sad way), but all these extra speed cameras have coincided with increases in the road toll. Either a) the cameras have no effect on road safety or b) it proves more cameras are needed. Guess which one of these the various state governments are most likely to believe.
Patrick

There a re a lot of issues here.
1. I agree cops shouldnt be punished or fired for not meeting thier quota on the number of tickets they write. What if the entire population obeyed the law would all cops get fired for not writing tickets?
2. registering points to lose license instead of fines could be a good way to avert any accusations the police are revenue generating, and still get speeders disqualified.
3. Why should everyone have to know they are in a radar zone? the roads are public, shouldnt they be able to privately monitor your speed so you dont have the chance to know to slow down for the zone then speed up after the zone, isnt it about following the speed limit all the time? if you been speeding and are close on points and dont know where the radar zone is, your more inclined to stay under the speed limit all the time to keep your license. By removing the revenue generation arguement by not putting monetary fines but rather points only then you have less reason to identify the radar zones allowing people to speed outside of them.
3. You call the police about hoons or speeders in your neighborhood and there is no action and your told there is no reason for them to come out. the police do not respond to anything other than offenses already commited such as a child being killed by a speeder, rather than r esponding to the calls about him speeding first.
4. The amount of effort the ordinary person has to go to and the extreme efforts required to get someone to act before the speeder kills someone is something that should be changed in order to prevent death, not force police to respond to the death after it happens.