Australian Car Advice | News Blog

The Sunday Age reports Victoria Police will go all the way to the Supreme Court to prosecute speeding motorists that have been let off by the magistrates court.

Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby confirmed that police would take every single successful driver’s appeal to the Supreme Court, as long as it was not backed up by technical evidence.

In other words if you can prove to the judge, on your own and without expert evidence, that you were not speeding, Victoria police will see you in the Supreme Court. A move which will leave many motorists scared of challenging their speeding tickets.

Mr Ashby also reinstated that Speed Cameras are all about road safety and not revenue raising, despite the Victorian government making in excess of $200 million per year from Traffic Camera Office tickets alone.

Millions of motorists have now been caught speeding Australia wide, but with the rising road toll, we have to ask, if Victoria police wants expert advise to beat a speeding ticket, we want solid, independent expert advise that speed cameras save lives in Australia!

We are waiting…

We’d all like to find a loophole out of those damn speeding tickets, and the man who can make it happen in Europe is Nick Freeman. His job is to help high profile (and rich) clients evade nasty Speeding Tickets, his latest client was topgear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson.

Clarkson was caught doing 132 km/h in a 85 zone (50 MPH) in an Alfa Romeo Brera press car. The authorities had sent the ticket to Alfa which had in turn forwarded it to Clarkson, and Clarkson being Clarkson, refused to name himself as the driver.

It all went to court, and Mr Freeman was there to lend a hand. Mr Freeman argued that Alfa Romeo only had details of who the car was loaned to, not who the driver was.

“If someone had looked at this process properly it would never have come to court” Mr Freeman said.

The prosecution failed to offer any evidence to prove Clarkson’s involvement and the court dismissed the charge.

In Australia there is one man who shares many similarities with Nick Freeman, his name is Scott Cooper.

Apparently it’s a case of not what you do wrong, but whom you are when it comes to getting off speeding tickets.

Cricket legend Mark Waugh is likely to keep his license despite being pulled over by an unmarked car this May for being 43km/h over the limit. His mates Mark Taylor and Alan Jones defence seeming to mean more to the Gosford judge than the facts at hand.

He received a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of six two-hour sessions of the traffic offenders program but will neither be fined, nor lose demerit points with the incident being cited as an “err in judgement”.

Had this been you or me (or a motor sport identity), we’d have had our car confiscated, license cancelled, and been severely fined. The judge also has the power to make us see some time behind bars.

I feel this sends the wrong message to both cricket adoring kids and the general public, and that a dangerous precedent has been set in allowing those of privilege to be above the law.

What do you think? Would the judge be so lenient on you?

If you thought we had it bad, our friends in North America have long ago realised the true nature of speed cameras. Although in the U.S. state of Texas, speed cameras were recently banned, in Ontario, Canada, a new law has just passed for motorists caught driving 50km/h over the speed limit to be automatically charged with “street racing”, even if they are the only driver on the road.

Street racing in Canada is subjected to a $10,000 fine and the possibility of six months in jail. Canadian authorities have previously labelled street racing as “organized crime” - showing unwillingness to understand the problem and find a solution. Like most Australian cities, Ontario car enthusiasts have limited access to race tracks and drag strips and many wrongfully live out their passion on the road.

Fortunately, we don’t live in Canada, as the new rules also give Police officers the power to take away a motorists’ license (for 7 days) without an appeals process.

The Canadians are going to extreme lengths to insure drivers are not speeding, with speeding tickets set to pay for a high-tech surveillance airplane to track motorists. Looking to the side of the road is no longer sufficient, Canadians now need to check the sky before heading out…

It seems the RTA are not even trying to be subtle with their latest ad campaign.

I realise how ridiculous this sounds, but this is a completely RTA endorsed advertisement and can be found here on their website.

With the apparent success of their initial pinky-wiggling campaign, the RTA have thrown caution to the wind and blatantly connected speeding (better described as hooning) with poor endowment.

Even more strange it seems, is that the RTA is apparently a Capricorn - and single, ladies. That is according to their MySpace profile. No, you read it correctly, in order to connect with our youth the RTA have aimed this campaign directly at young male driver’s through MySpace.

Since Hollywood has made us all but immune to blood and gore, traditional RTA scare campaigns no longer have an effect, so it seems they have had no choice but to resort to shocking the audience with these controversial ad campaigns.

Perhaps it is time they moved on from blatantly targeting male drivers (one of the tags associated with the MySpace video is simply ‘male’) and came up with new, more appropriate campaign slogans such as, “Yes honey, you look fine…” which deals with the dangers of applying make-up while driving. Followed by “You know, like - whatever” condemning teenage girls using mobile phones whilst driving.

So far Myspace users have ridiculed the ad and the RTA’s advertising methods. Mypace user Alex said “The RTA are oblivious” while a more comical response came from Brian who said:

“Driving slower wont increase the size of your *****, but speeding will decrease the size of it (if I read the advertisement correctly). So for guys with 20″ ******* that scare chicks away, speed more and your **** will become 8 inches!!!”

What the RTA fails to realise is that no matter what, young males will always be just that, young males, who are inherent high risk takers.

So I still retain that encouraging the use of public race tracks rather then continuously condemning speeding would better suit both parties. Since it seems advanced driving courses are out of the question, how about subsidising public race tracks and allowing driver’s to teach themselves by taking their cars to the limit in a controlled and safe environment?

George Skentzos

Victorian residents beware, the State government’s latest and most expensive speed camera has been proven wrong, by a bus driver. Victoria Police admitted last week that the new point-to-point speed camera system recently installed on the Hume Highway had issued a ticket to an innocent man.

The new system works by photographing a vehicle as it passes between two camera stations, it then calculates the time taken and works out the average speed of the vehicle! At least, that’s what it’s suppose todo.

The system recently caught a bus belonging to Seymour Coaches driving 123km/h in a 110km/h zone. Although the $250 fine didn’t bother the driver, Seymour Coaches managing director Peter Louchnan wasn’t going to admit fault, especially when all his buses are speed limited to 100km/hr!

After indicating the company was going to fight the fine, government inspectors came and verified the limiter prevented the bus from exceeding 100km/h and the charge was dropped.

Victoria Police Superintendent Shane Patton was quick to put the blame on human error and not the camera equipment. Mr Patton told reporters two similar buses with similar number plates were traveling on the road at the same time. Mr Patton blamed the ticket on human supervisors who are supposed to verify the automated ticketing process.

Source: The Age

If you thought you were hard done-by the new P plater restrictions, stop worrying, its not only Australia that is going mad with P plater laws. The U.S. state of Massachusetts has introduced new laws to mandate anyone under 18 hit with a traffic ticket to:

• pay the original fine plus a $50 surcharge,
• 90-day license suspension,
• Pay $500 to attend a State Courts Against Road Rage three-hour “attitudinal retraining” seminar designed primarily for hardened criminal offenders.
• Redo her written and practical test.

The system works by sending all under 18 criminals to the three-hour course before allowing for a license renewal. So far lat month the traffic police sent 785 under 18s to attend the course, raising $392,500 USD.

One such unlucky soul who had to attend the course was Jackie Crawford, a recent high school graduate who was issued with a $100 ticket in April for driving 55km/hr in a 40 zone (35 MPH in a 25). Not only did she face the speeding ticket and the surcharge, but she also had to pay $500 to attend a seminar which left her horrified and now also has to redo both her written and her practical examination!

Thankfully though, in every corner of the world there are those who see the illogical association with harsh first time penalties. Tim Cooney, executive director the Central Massachusetts Safety Council said:

“I think the public should be educated about this new law and police should use more discretion. In some respects the law is good. But to be punished like this for a first offense is a little harsh.”

The new laws have caused a public outcry by young drivers and safety advocates alike.

Source: Telegram.com

South Australia police are set to reduce the margin for error in their speed camera equipment to around 5km (previously believed to be 8kms). SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde last week stated that official margins would be reduced.

For the majority of road users, Australian Design Rules (ADR) state that a car’s speedometer needs to be accurate to around 10km of the actual speed. This means vehicles can be traveling at 70km/hr while the speedometer only shows 60km/hr.

Interestingly, South Australia police department’s own speed detection adviser Lex Felix, is warning the police department that motorists will be unfairly fined due to lower margins. Mr Lex Felix is part of an organisation that also advise NSW, Victorian and QLD police on speed detection issues.

Mr Felix, who also trains police officers on the use of equipment, labeled the latest move by the SA police as “a money-grab off innocent people“.

“The bloke in the street has no chance with these tolerances. They have no way of knowing the true speed of their vehicle. There should be a tolerance level of at least 8km/h in a 60km/h speed zone.

SA Police Minister Paul Holloway has refused to comment on the issue, noting that it is strictly a police matter.

We suspect the latest move by the SA police department is another attempt at raising more revenue from speed detection units. South Australians be warned!

Source: News.com.au

There are many ways you can beat a speeding ticket, the general population believe that speed detection equipment used by police are accurate and guidelines and procedures are correctly followed.

Not so, according to Brett Pownceby who recently beat a Speeding ticket by providing speed data from his GPS satellite tracking device to the issuing police station.

Having examined the evidence, the Police then withdrew the ticket, despite having argued previously that their guns were accurate. After the media covered the story, fearing a massive public outcry of citizens contesting their speeding tickets, the police changed their story once again, and informed us that the ticket should not have been withdrawn.

The police informed the media that other motorists should not simply expect to have their speeding fines withdrawn by producing satellite tracking records.

Of course the Police were only protecting their back side, but the events took another turn in the wrong direction when a Sydney court threw out a speeding case once GPS readout where issued as evidence.

Opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder said the case in point casts a big shadow over the accuracy of police radar guns.

“How many innocent motorists who lack onboard GPS units have been wrongly fined by Steve Bracks and Bob Cameron’s dodgy police radar guns?” he said.

Victoria Police spokeswoman Natalie Webster argued that other motorist attempting to have their speeding tickets revoked using GPS data would be unsuccessful.

“The production of a GPS report alone to avoid any speeding infringement is insufficient, and any application as such will be rejected,” she said.

Fortunately for the rest of us, there are some guidelines to follow when pulled over for speeding, you can find the guidelines here.

Source: News.com.au

Speed cameras - or cash cameras, as they’re more affectionately known - are meant to save lives, we all know that. Well I’ve found the proof - I really have!

Have a look at the photos below. It’s two times now - in the same week - that this stretch of road near Geelong, Victoria has taken me over 25 minutes to travel through. Normally, at the 70km/h speed limit, it shouldn’t take any longer than 45 seconds. The reason for the delays? Workers operating on the speed/red light camera located at this major intersection - during peak hour.

Don’t worry, you’re not seeing things. These morons (that’s the nicest and least offensive word I could think of to describe them) have blocked off the right hand turning lane, along with one of the two lanes on the opposite side of this major road.

Again, you’re not seeing things. That loaded truck is stuck in the middle of the intersection trying to turn right during a red light due to the blockage of the right hand turning lane - during peak hour.

Out of all the speed cameras in the world, this has to be one of the only ones saving lives. Why? Because traffic doesn’t actually have the chance to move above 20km/h, so the possibility of a death is nil - unless of course the worker falls off his/her ladder.

It’s nice to see that the Bracks Government has its priorities right. Forget fixing some of the appalling roads throughout Victoria and concentrate solely on fixing a speed camera which is bound to earn millions of dollars over its lifetime. Makes sense.

Paul Maric

A keen reader recently emailed us regarding the ironic state of our government’s approach to road safety. On one hand, you must always keep your eyes glued to the speedo - since speed is the killer - on the other hand taking your eyes of the road (to say, check your speedo or read the sign below) is also a killer.

To compound the problem, Road Safety signs warning drivers to NOT take their eyes of the road or to slow down are adding to the problem. The Victorian government published a report in 2006 titled “inquiry into driver distraction“. The report suggested that advertising on the roadside has been linked to higher crash risks.

Although no Australian study has been undertaken to show the extent of the linkage, A 2004 Canadian study found that 90% of drivers glanced at one or more signs for at least 0.75 seconds, while 20 per cent glanced for a duration longer than 2 seconds. A 2 second distraction can easily lead to a head on collision or any other type of accident.

So if the State/Federal governments are really keen to reduce the road toll, why are they selling more and more government owned space for road side advertising? And more importantly, why are they advertising - road safety messages - on distracting road signs?

In 2005 The Age reported a survey (conducted by AAMI) of 2400 drivers across Victoria and found that just under half of the Victorian respondents said they had been distracted by roadside billboards. The survey also found Victorian motorists to be the most cynical in the nation about speed cameras. 60% of Victorians believe that Speed Cameras are not reliable while 89% admitted to sometimes speeding.