Police getting tougher on speed tolerance

[R650R]

So why the angst? If everyone is as shit hot as they think, what's the problem?

You'd have to ask the angst ridden... For me I accept there are 'rules of the game' to follow and if on occasion I exceed/break any laws limits I accept that is my decision. For while we are on the govts plantation we are their slaves and bound to a canning in the big house if we misbehave.

I think the problem many people have with anything police related is they never get past the fairytale taught to you in kindergarten that the Police are there to protect you, which is a basic sense is true.
What the Police are really there for is to prevent the immediate loss of life or violent harm and to protect our leaders and any other visiting plantation owners. Any other minor stuff in between that is just filling the day in.
And then there's that word justice and all the grief that comes with it as some people mistakenly start believeing that implies a sense of fairness or common ground across penalties.

Its all TVs fault if we didn't watch TV we'd still be believeing that kindergarten fairytale and be smiling pleasantly everytime we ticketed as that nice policeman just stopped us from hurting ourselves.

[R650R]

For your driver licence nowadays you're expected to look at the speedo minimum of every 8 seconds this means that every 8 seconds there's 1-2 seconds of inattention & from the propaganda a decade or so ago we know "it only takes a split second for an accident to happen".

When I sat the HGV tests in UK you were expected to look in your mirrors every 2-3 seconds!!! And for the test this means turning your head slightly everytime so the assessor knows you are doing it. After the neck injuries subsided I realised it was a good thing. It massively improves your situational awareness and helps avoid incidents with those last minute overtakers or and lane changers etc.
It became second nature to me and still kept doing it when came back to NZ. Since then it has saved me several times, including once seeing sparks from a failing driveshaft knuckle and stopping before it exploded.
The mechanic said he was the only driver he'd seen save one so close to the point of failure.

[Gremlin]

This fascination with spending so much time looking at the speedo is a surprise to me.

I find that I can sit at 100 with the occasional glance. It's a skill of driving.

Staring at a speedo to the detriment of driving is for the paranoid unskilled.

Depends on your time in the vehicle as well though. I'd consider myself reasonably skilled, much better on a bike than in a car though. CB900, with a touch under 100k of experience I know exactly the speed to throttle relationship (within 1kph pretty much). BMW, almost as close, about 93k.

Cars are a different story tho. Drive infrequently, managed 8k in 1.5 years in the ute and I could easily pick up 5kph without realising. Open road much worse than suburban.

[Big Dog]

You'd have to ask the angst ridden... For me I accept there are 'rules of the game' to follow and if on occasion I exceed/break any laws limits I accept that is my decision. For while we are on the govts plantation we are their slaves and bound to a canning in the big house if we misbehave.

I think the problem many people have with anything police related is they never get past the fairytale taught to you in kindergarten that the Police are there to protect you, which is a basic sense is true.
What the Police are really there for is to prevent the immediate loss of life or violent harm and to protect our leaders and any other visiting plantation owners. Any other minor stuff in between that is just filling the day in.
And then there's that word justice and all the grief that comes with it as some people mistakenly start believeing that implies a sense of fairness or common ground across penalties.

Its all TVs fault if we didn't watch TV we'd still be believeing that kindergarten fairytale and be smiling pleasantly everytime we ticketed as that nice policeman just stopped us from hurting ourselves.

Aye, but now the police have a new problem. They have demonstrated that they can lower the road toll via aggressive assertive action. One year is not proof but it is what was crowed by the appointed talking suit.

How is that a problem? If they proceed and repeat the results they will be unpopular with all the road users who think they are an exceptional driver, around 80% of men and 70% of women think they are above average.
If they repeat the process but the results are different they have egg on their face.
If they don't repeat the action every man and his dog will blame the police for every speed related death.


Really backed into a corner. No, the only thing they can do is repeat the experiment and hope they can live with the outcome.


Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

[buggerit]

Aye, but now the police have a new problem. They have demonstrated that they can lower the road toll via aggressive assertive action. One year is not proof but it is what was crowed by the appointed talking suit.

How is that a problem? If they proceed and repeat the results they will be unpopular with all the road users who think they are an exceptional driver, around 80% of men and 70% of women think they are above average.
If they repeat the process but the results are different they have egg on their face.
If they don't repeat the action every man and his dog will blame the police for every speed related death.


Really backed into a corner. No, the only thing they can do is repeat the experiment and hope they can live with the outcome.


Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

The weather and the day of the week the statutary holidays fall on has more to do with holiday accident stats than speed.
And low speed vehicles with ignorant drivers cause a lot of accidents they themselves may not be involved in.
I wonder how many drivers never attain open road speeds outside the ruler straight motorway systems between xmas's?

[rastuscat]

When I started it was as a county mountie with the Auckland City Traffic Dept. We have a 20 kmh tolerance then, well, 19 actually. 20 over got you a ticket, less didn't even get stopped. Peoiple learned quickly that you could do 65 past a traffic car and not get pinged, so 65 it was. Over 700 died that year.

At the same time, in Invercargill the locals all drove at 52, as they knew that much more and they'd get nailed by the local countie mounties. I drove at the Auckland tolerance in Invercargill once, and the locals all looked at me like I was Evel Kneivel.

See, the tolerance sets what people drive at. If we have a high tolerance, we allow traffic in general (the 85 percentile) to creep up to it. After we standardized it at 10, it took a while, but mostly it caused people to drive up to thew tolerance. Especially in the lower speed areas, 50 kmh areas. We can drive around with the death ray reading general traffic around 50, and mostly less than 58.

It's taken us a very long time to wind things down to closer to the actual limit. From what I have seen, the 4 km/h thing might be the permanent thing. Over time, it'll become accepted. Not liked, just accepted.

The hard thing is to get cops themselves to enforce it. It'll take a long time to become common practice for cops across the board to be writing tickets at 5 over. Some buy into it straight away, others will never, but it will become accepted over time.

[kiwi cowboy]

This fascination with spending so much time looking at the speedo is a surprise to me.

I find that I can sit at 100 with the occasional glance. It's a skill of driving.

Staring at a speedo to the detriment of driving is for the paranoid unskilled.

Ticketing speeders for 4k over is fine but there's more dangerous shit on the roads than 4 k over that doesn't get attention.

Following too close for one- when I tow a small trailer to ch ch sometimes I travel at times close to just over the speed limit on my speedo which may be reading over but would still be slightly over 90.
I feel im safer doing this as even though im tecknicly speeding im staying with the flow of traffic so im not pissing others off holding them up BUT I make sure I have a great gap in front of me for manuvering should I need to.

Peoples attitude to driving and driving to the conditions should be more important but ticketing speeders is easier.

Making sure foreign visiters prove they can drive would be another.
Friend of mine talked to a pair of aussies that were waiting to rent a vehicle in queenstown airport when an Asian got the keys to her rental and went out side only to come in 5 minutes later waving the keys in the attendants face saying - you show how drive me not drive car like this before.
Two rounds of the carpark showing where the controls were and they were good to go so who's safer?.

[unstuck]

Two rounds of the carpark showing where the controls were and they were good to go so who's safer?.

Fuckin slow learners then.

[chasio]

Yes indeedy!

There is a very good blog post which I strongly recommend people to have a look at: http://nosurprise.org.uk/2014/11/19/...nt-bad-people/ . It’s a reasonable length but stick with it as I believe it’s one of the most sensible and evidence-driven discourses on safe riding/accident mitigation that I've seen. Some of the psychological aspects between different types of riders are thought-provoking and I’d guess that car and truck drivers have parallels.

Whilst I have my own biases, the post shows that quality up-skilling goes a long way to mitigating risk. It’s a personal view but it also reinforces that many state-led road safety initiatives are relatively ineffective, ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approaches.

Real food for thought!

Thanks, Geoff. That blog is excellent and has explained to me a number of things I do by gut feel. In other words I have realized that I try to avoid surprises.

And it has also reminded me to go and practice emergency stops...

Edit: Added link to sig

[Kiwi Graham:Me]

I think you missed the big picture ...




Nothing mentioned about "Serving" anybody ...

'To protect and Serve' it's a moto
Public servant a vocational job

You're welcome

[Kickaha]

'To protect and Serve' it's a moto

Of the LAPD, nothing to do with anything in NZ at all

[blue rider]

This fascination with spending so much time looking at the speedo is a surprise to me.

I find that I can sit at 100 with the occasional glance. It's a skill of driving.

Staring at a speedo to the detriment of driving is for the paranoid unskilled.

and that would be the majority of New Zealanders who received their one and only driver training from their equally unskilled parents, cuzzies and boyfriends etc.

People loose their lives and limbs in NZ because a. peeps drive like there is a war - me first, tail gaiting, queue jumping, b. they drive to fast - but then there are roads that have a limit of 100 that are basically donkey tracks - so go figure why no one is actually establishing speeding limits that are sensible, c. no one that drives a vehicle gives a flying poo about pedestrians - young or old, no one gives a flying shit about bicyclists, or for that matter motor bikes.

so how about the Police would argue for

a. compulsory driving/riding lessons with a proper test (i.e. tester and driving teacher in the car with the learner)
b. make driver licenses 'on probation' for two years (any infractions and one goes back to paying driving lessons)
c. create smarter speed limits, i.e. 10 km school zone, 30 km suburban areas with kids on the street, 50 km inner city, 80 km motorway innercity, 80 open road - donkey trail, 100 km standard motorway, 130 km major highways
d. have some smart advertising about merging into traffic (holland had a good ad on tv about merging like a zip), keeping distance in rain/fog etc. etc etc etc
e. use led signs to alert drivers of slowing down speeds when the motorways feeding into the city are clocked etc. etc etc.

all that would make more sense, than enforcing a 0 km tolerance that will only manage to reduce the speed limit by 10 km as everyone is going to not get a ticket, with the result that peeps are bored, tired, etc and will cause accidents.

[Kiwi Graham:Me]

This fascination with spending so much time looking at the speedo is a surprise to me.

I find that I can sit at 100 with the occasional glance. It's a skill of driving.

Staring at a speedo to the detriment of driving is for the paranoid unskilled.

Is this the acuratley calibrated speedo in your police car or are you referring to the inaccurate (in either direction) speedo in your civi car? If it's your civi car you may well be "glancing " at a 100 on the dial but you maybe doing 105 oops

[rastuscat]

Is this the acuratley calibrated speedo in your police car or are you referring to the inaccurate (in either direction) speedo in your civi car? If it's your civi car you may well be "glancing " at a 100 on the dial but you maybe doing 105 oops

105 indicated in my own car is 98 true. Toyotas do that.

[Akzle]

160 indicated on the GPS is... Oh wait on.
:Shutup: