Australian Car Advice | News Blog

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.

You might all be getting a little sick of our Road Safety agenda here on Car Advice but we believe it to be an essential topic that needs as much attention as it can get. We have said it countless times, with Australia’s road toll not improving, and higher infringement fines not having any effect, better driver training and education is the only way to reduce the road toll.

Whilst this message has been echoing slowly across the aussie motoring world, transport authorities refuse to take on the challenge. After all, its hard work to train all motorists. Or is it?

According to German manufacturer BMW, driver training will reduce the road toll as well as cut down on the enormous cost that road accidents have on our economy.

“We have invested a lot of money and resources over 30 years because we know it saves lives,” BMW board member responsible for safety Dr Klaus Draeger said.

BMW training recently turned 30, and with the data collected by BMW it seems that although driver training does not lead to accident free drivers, it dramatically cuts the trained drivers accident rate.

“We can’t say that people who have been with us are not involved in accidents because they still are. But they are involved a lot less than others. The problem if you are working from a purely academic perspective is how do you count accidents that do not happen?” Dr Draeger said

He also went on to admit that no amount of driver training would make inherently bad drivers… good drivers, and there is obviously the natural ability which comes into play.

“The problem is both the mindset and the skill of the driver and changing that takes a long time. The earlier we start the better it is and the better we can get them to drive,” Draeger says.

Dr Draeger took the words right out of our mouth by asking the state and federal governments to enforce compulsary advanced driver training for all drivers, specially those just starting out.

“Governments should make it compulsory to go through driver training schools” Dr Draeger said

Its obvious that BMW is also fed up with the lack of government action to tackle the road toll. Whilst the government blames speed as the single biggest cause of accidents, little is done to actually teach drivers how to stop in an emergency situation.

“How can governments claim people can drive safely when none of them knows how to stop a car in an emergency? People are released on to the road without learning what happens when it goes wrong. They don’t know how to do an emergency stop and this is the biggest problem.” Dr Draeger said

Unfortunately for Dr Draeger, he is preaching to the converted, we whole-heartedly agree with everything he has said, and yet despite all our efforts and all the efforts of our friends at RoadSense.com.au - the authorities refuse to act on the issue. No one wants to take the responsibility to enforce better driving training.

“Studies reveal that, on average, every person is involved in nine accidents during his or her life. That’s an accident every five years and he or she actually causes an accident every nine years.

“And the reason for 95 per cent of accidents is human error. Assuming that each participant in a driving safety course was involved in only one accident less during the course of their lives, that would be a wonderful achievement.” Dr Draeger said.

Given these figures, its statistically obvious that driver training is essential to ensure a safer road environment, even if accidents are reduced by 1 accident per person, the effect would be enormous!

Arguably the most successful German manufacturer in the last decade, BMW is a little reluctant to directly blame the road toll on the authorities lack of understanding. However Dr Draeger was willing to cast doubt on the state government Road Safety plan which refuses to conceed that driver training will reduce the road toll whilst favouring older drivers and lower speed limits.

Thank you BMW, you have earned our respect.

Thanks to Gary Hughes from The Australian we came across some vital statistics. Australia’s road toll figures show Australia falling behind the rest of the developed nations.

In 2005, Australia Ranked 7th best out of 15 nations (OECD nations) for road deaths per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled (0.8 deaths). That might sound good, but in 2004 Australia ranked 4th and in 2003 it was 3rd.

What has happened in those few years that have caused this trend? The government has little to hide behind and its obvious that the new state (and federal) government’s road safety agenda is failing - badly.

If we compare Australia to a greater pool of nations, we are ranked 11th. Nations performing better than Australia (8 road deaths per 100,000 population in 2005) were:

1. Netherlands (4.6),
2. Norway (4.9),
3. Sweden (4.9),
4. Great Britain (5.5),
5. Switzerland (5.5)
6. Denmark (6.1),
7. Japan (6.2),
8. Iceland (6.3),
9. Germany (6.5)
10. Finland (7.2).

Full table :

Between 2004 and 2005 there was a seven per cent fall in the developed nations median road death rate per 100,000 population, but Australian’s rate rose two per cent.

There are lots and lots of data that you can find here, but it all goes to show the current road safety policy is failing. Only yesterday we wrote about higher not deterring motorists from committing further driving offenses.

If you are interested in learning a new approach to road safety, you can do yourself a favour and check out RoadSense.com.au - an non profitable organization outlining the facts, based on Government data, as to how and why the current policy has failed, how we are being mislead (speed kills) and what needs to be done to save lives on our roads.

Some hard evidence was made available recently showing that increased fines do very little to improve road safety. The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics recently released a report titled The Deterrent Effect of Higher Fines on Recidivism: Driving Offences which reviewed some 70,000 motorists in NSW who received court-imposed fines for driving offences between 1998 and 2000.

And the result? The study found no evidence for a statistically significant relationship between fine amount and the likelihood of motorists finding themselves with a new driving offence.

In other words, it doesn’t seem to matter how much the infringement notice costs, some drivers simply do not care.

“The present analysis … failed to find any evidence for a significant relationship between fine amount and the likelihood that an offender will return to court for a new driving offence,” the report concluded.

Of course, NSW’s road minister Eric Roozendaal was quick to dismiss his own governments report that showed the current system was not having the desired effect. Mr Roozendaal said the report was not “at all convincing” as a reflection of the habits of most motorists.

Before we even got a chance to criticize the NSW government’s revenue raising scheme, Mr Roozendaal pointed out that higher fines were not about raising government revenue but about ensuring road safety. We plead with Mr Roozendaal to prove this, and do away with the monetary fines imposed on drivers, and instead double the demerit points for each ticket!

So for those of you thinking where is the evidence supporting our claim that the majority of speeding tickets are simply a revenue raising scheme? Well how about these figures: The Bureau of Crime Statistics report shows the average fine imposed by NSW local courts (for driving offences) has increased by double the inflation rate, rising from $358 in 1993 to $608 in 2005!

Apart from the figures, the report found that age, gender and cultural background were the best factors to determine an drivers’ chances of being caught again for speeding, drink-driving or driving while disqualified.

But we like to keep the best bits till last, the report found a very ironic fact, motorists who are disqualified for speeding offenses where far more likely to speed again. Even more amazingly, the longer the licence disqualification the more chance of speeding!

Unfortunately though, the message has not got through to the transport authorities! Finally there is a legitimate study conducted by a government body which shows, for the first time, that higher fines do nothing to deter offenders. Yet the solution? Even higher fines, and more Police, more, more and more fear.

“The best way to reduce the risk of recidivism amongst driving offenders is to increase the perceived likelihood of apprehension,” Bureau director Don Weatherburn

Mr Roozendaal rejected calls for higher fines to be reduced given their ineffectiveness. He also pointed out that 75% of NSW motorists are demerit point free, which shows the current system is working effectively.

“I think it’s important we look at the big picture and that is that it’s a combination of fines, demerit points, potential loss of licence and ultimately, even a jail sentence,” he told reporters.

NRMA president Alan Evans put in his 2cents as well, urging the NSW government to increase the number of police highway patrols to deter motorists from breaking road rules.

It is truly amazing that nearly all motoring authorities are eternally blind to the bigger picture, fear is not a positive deterrent.

When will this madness end? When will the state governments stop putting revenue before safety? And seek a new approach to road safety. When will some money be spent on upgrading Road conditions and infrastructure? Speed Camera’s do not save lives. Educated & Skilled drivers do!

It is essential for authorities to understand that it is far more effective to teach motorists the limits of their driving capabilities in a controlled environment in the hope of improving driver skill as well as changing driver attitude from

“Don’t speed here there might be a camera” to “Don’t speed here its a blind corner“.

Our friends in Texas recently banned all speed cameras as they were found ineffective.

Laws passed in the States have usually never made us sit up and take notice but when we heard the good news, we couldn’t help but to smile.

The people of Texas have finally stood up and had their way. The Texas state legislature gave final approval yesterday to a bill banning speed cameras and requiring red light camera warning signs.

The bill says

A municipality may not implement or operate an automated traffic control system with respect to a highway under its jurisdiction. The attorney general shall enforce this subsection.

And incase you think Automated Traffic Control means just fixed speed cameras, dont worry the Texans have made sure there are no loop holes in the legislation.

Automated traffic control system means a photographic device, radar device, laser device, or other electrical or mechanical device designed to record the speed of a motor vehicle; and obtain one or more photographs or other recorded images of

• the vehicle
• the license plate attached to the vehicle
• or the operator of the vehicle.

As for red light cameras, the authorities have will invalidate any red light camera ticket if motorists do not have advance notice of the presence of a ticketing machine at least 100 feet before the intersection. Both laws are all but passed, only requiring the signature of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Although we can’t be sure, this appears to be the first case (and hopefully not the last) whereby authorities have banned speed cameras!

Source : Texas Government Legislation - The speed camera ban, HB 922, on May 2 and the warning sign bill, HB 1052, on April 19

Australia is not the only country suffering from the transport authorities Revenue Raising Agenda, the British are also suffering at a dramatic rate.

The issue has gotten so out of hand that yesterday one of Britain’s largest car insurance organizations, Swinton Insurance, (with over two million customers), began ignoring demerit points for drivers who have received automated speeding tickets.

“Pointed drivers are no longer automatically penalized at Swinton as a result of the increase in the number of motorists now saddled with penalty points,” the company stated in a news release.

“The move reflects a change in attitude by the insurance industry as the estimated number of pointed motorists tops six million.”

This is a big move for Swinton as insurance companies in general have been earning nearly a billion dollars a year on rate rises from infringement notices.

British statistics show that on an annual basis, insurance company profit from camera tickets are around at £375 million (AUD $900 million) - this is in addition to the £135 million (AUD $323 million) motorists pay to the government for the actual fines - revenue raising? Of course not…

However, it only takes one company to take the move and the rest will eventually follow. British Road safety advocate Paul Smith, founder of Safe Speed, argues that this is an example of what he calls the “collateral damage” of speed camera policy.

“Clearly the Swinton announcement means that we are giving out fines and points to drivers at random, if we gave fines only to risky drivers then the risk would be clear in insurance companies’ crash statistics.” Smith said.

You might be thinking, just how much does insurance premiums increase for a British motorist with just a few speeding tickets?

After some research we found out that for an 18 year old motorist driving a 1.4-litre Renault Clio (less than 100 horsepower) in London, insurance cost would increase around £1250 (AUD $3000) each year after receiving three automated speed camera tickets.

Mr Smith from Road Safety (UK) argues that the once worthy demerit point system has been taken for a ride with the humongous number of speeding tickets issued in the UK.

“It just goes to prove that speed camera fines are pointless.”

This might be revolutionary in the UK but in Australia one company has already taken to ignoring demerit points, Just Car Insurance.

Its one thing to deliberately speed, but its a whole different game when electronic speed signs are fooling motorists into believing they are going under the speed limit, only to be hit up with a Speeding ticket down the road.

Thats exactly whats happening to drivers in Geelong, Victoria. Three fed up motorists took their case to court yesterday arguing they had looked at electronic signs above the Princes Freeway on the Avalon Road overpass, and adjusted their speed accordingly, before being issued a speeding ticket a few hundred meters down the highway.

The electronic speed signs reported they were driving significantly under the speed limit.

“When the speed check sign said 93km/h and my car said 100km/h (62 MPH) I felt I could speed up,” Colleen Stephens, the recipient of three tickets in the same location, told the court,

State authorities dropped one of the tickets issued to Stephens without giving any explanation. Furthermore, the part which caught our attention was the refusal of authorities with the state Department of Justice to disclose the results of any tests or calibration of the speed check sign on the overpass.

Andrew Giftakopoulos is another victims of the revenue raising agenda, he received six tickets in the mail, all from the Avalon Road overpass and all on the same day. Three of the tickets were for some reason or another canceled.

“I tried to find out why three were withdrawn but no one would tell me,” Giftakopoulos said. “Today I found out that the demerit points had already been added to my license even though the matter hadn’t been heard.“

Its a sad day when authorities are more concerned about convicting innocent drivers as oppose to finding a real solution to the increasing road toll.

Source : Geelong Advertiser