Another Nasty One: Follow-up

[El Dopa]

That makes two News reports this week of an Asian driver killing someone while forbidden to drive. See today's DomPost about an overstayer Asian student who killed a woman in Mt Roskill in Easter, after having received 3 fines for driving without a licence.
Now we have another road hazard to keep an eye out for besides Road Revenue Officers, gravel, oil spills , Kids , dogs, cows. Now we have to check what type of person is driving that car close beside you.

You forgot 'rednecks who lean out of car windows and throw beerbottles at other road users and drive them off the road'. A story in the same edition of the Herald as the Mt Roskill overstayer you mention above. That particular dickhead was white, incidentally.

[slob]

If you look beyond the fact that he was asian, you may notice that there is the underlying problem that he had gotten away with driving without a license until the incident.

I reckon the Police, LTSA or AA (whoever is responsible) need to improve on 2 areas instead of focussing on gory ad campaigns:
1. Raising the standard of roadskill required to obtain a license (even a learners)
2. Perform more license checks (with bigger penalties) so assholes like the aforementioned driver would think twice before driving a car without a license

[MacD]

If you look beyond the fact that he was asian, you may notice that there is the underlying problem that he had gotten away with driving without a license until the incident.

Yep, this seems to be the fundamental issue, driving without a licence. It's just that in Auckland at least there seems to be a particular problem with people on short-term student visas driving without licences? Maybe this is a distortion produced by media reporting, but I thought the LTSA had admitted it was a real problem?

[spudchucka]

I reckon the Police, LTSA or AA (whoever is responsible) need to improve on 2 areas instead of focussing on gory ad campaigns:
1. Raising the standard of roadskill required to obtain a license (even a learners)

Absolutley agree.

2. Perform more license checks (with bigger penalties) so assholes like the aforementioned driver would think twice before driving a car without a license

The only way to do this would be having more cops on the road doing what so many people bitch about - stopping vehicles and talking to drivers. Just the mention of this will have Lou's letter writing pen out.

How about being required to produce a current drivers licence before being able to purchase a motorvehcile??

[Motu]

Wasn't the guy who killed the woman in Mt Roskill caught 3 times driving without a license? He thought he had a right to drive and could see no wrong in what he did.The only cure for this guy is complete head removal,sending him home is the next best thing.

Then when he kills someone back there they can say he learnt to drive in New Zealand.

[Milky]

That makes two News reports this week of an Asian driver killing someone while forbidden to drive. See today's DomPost about an overstayer Asian student who killed a woman in Mt Roskill in Easter, after having received 3 fines for driving without a licence.

That woman who was killed was the mother of one of my best mates... the thing that annoys me about the situation is that the prevailing climate seems to suggest that if you make some sort of gesture towards the family it will reduce your sentence - you can buy freedom in a sense. I can accept that it is a viable outlet for those actually feeling remorse, but it has been seen in recent cases to be used in a totally different light.
Robêrt - son of person killed - said to me that he didnt feel much anger towards the offender, but more sorrow that he put himself in that position and continued to do so...
A bit but anyone had to ID a close family member in the morgue? Robêrt had to do that for his own mum in the hours after the accident and tells me that it was the hardest thing he had to do in his life. For me anyway it is something that I cant imagine, and an experience that I'd rather keep untouched for many years to come

[Skyryder]

Yep, this seems to be the fundamental issue, driving without a licence. It's just that in Auckland at least there seems to be a particular problem with people on short-term student visas driving without licences? Maybe this is a distortion produced by media reporting, but I thought the LTSA had admitted it was a real problem?

I can remember just a few months ago one of the top honcho's of the LTSA here in Christchurch being reported in the Press saying that Asian drivers are no worse than any other kind of driver. This clown was using statistics to back up his claim. What the stats do not show are the near misses, the not so near misses and the utter incompetence of asian drivers in general. Yes and there are the courteious drivers like the ones that let you have the right of way when in fact you do not. If I had my way they would all be walking.

Skyryder

[spudchucka]

A bit but anyone had to ID a close family member in the morgue? Robêrt had to do that for his own mum in the hours after the accident and tells me that it was the hardest thing he had to do in his life. For me anyway it is something that I cant imagine, and an experience that I'd rather keep untouched for many years to come

I've not had to do it myself but I have taken dozens of berieved family members to do that very thing. It is incredibly distressing for them, especially if their loved one has been smashed up horribly in a car wreck.

[Firefight]

I've not had to do it myself but I have taken dozens of berieved family members to do that very thing. It is incredibly distressing for them, especially if their loved one has been smashed up horribly in a car wreck.

Definitely not one of the fun jobs of a general duty cop,Slightly I myself have assited the Poilce "DVI team" on a number of occasions, and have always been impressed with the level of dedication, professionalism and dignity showen by these guys, often under trying and sometimes dangerous conditions, you could not pay me enough money to do that job.


Firefight

[MikeL]

FWIW my gut feeling, from working in the CBD and teaching mainly Chinese students, is that the majority of bad incidents involving "Asian" drivers relate to young Chinese males on a student visa, with a Chinese licence which they have held for a very short time and which was obtained under quite different circumstances from the N.Z. licensing system, driving very powerful cars; these serious accidents are likely to be caused by speeding and inexperience leading to loss of control. On the other hand the near-misses and less serious misdemeanours such as failure to look right at a roundabout are just as likely to involve middle-aged Asian drivers, most likely female, who presumably hold N.Z. residency and have a N.Z. licence; they drive Camrys and BMWs and SUVs and rarely exceed the speed limit.

Milky: I share your outrage at the thought that the offender in this case may be able to buy a more lenient sentence through an insincere donation to the family or charity. If I found myself in that situation I think I would tear up the cheque and throw it in his face.

[Marmoot]

Then again, there are also countless kiwis, or pacific Islander, or else for that matter, that drives without license and think they have the divine right to drive because this is their country. Or thinking they have divine right to enter other properties, or rights for anything for that matter. Why has this not been spoken out? Maybe just because they look like yous?

I say, the phrase "I'm not racist, but..." clearly puts you into the box, right?

And, whatever happened with the rich remueran tractor driver who ran over that teenage girl and gotaway with only a few hundred bucks of fine? He's not the spotlight here maybe because he's one of yous and he has money to buy a lawyer? Or what about the lady that killed an army-boy in Hamilton just because she needed to find her Coke(tm) bottle?

Mate, accidents happened all the time. It's just easier to spot the yellow out of the white when someone's finger has to be pointed eh?

I've always thought riders are wiser than normal cagers. Clearly I was wrong.

[MikeL]

Once again rational debate becomes impossible as an attempt to analyse dispassionately a perceived problem is rubbished because it uses ethnic labels and must therefore be racist.
O.K. I give up. Let's just forget about it. There's no problem about Asian drivers. There's no evidence, statistical or anecdotal, or anything else, to identify any particular group as being in any way different from the rest. Tangata whenua, immigrants, White Anglo-Saxons, Pacific Islanders, teenagers, boy-racers, mid-life crisis Ulyssians, blue-rinse grandmothers, cow-cockies from Rangiora: we're all the same. Anything to the contrary is pure prejudice.
The triumph of political correctness is complete.

[Milky]

Then again, there are also countless kiwis, or pacific Islander, or else for that matter, that drives without license and think they have the divine right to drive because this is their country. Or thinking they have divine right to enter other properties, or rights for anything for that matter. Why has this not been spoken out? Maybe just because they look like yous?

I say, the phrase "I'm not racist, but..." clearly puts you into the box, right?

And, whatever happened with the rich remueran tractor driver who ran over that teenage girl and gotaway with only a few hundred bucks of fine? He's not the spotlight here maybe because he's one of yous and he has money to buy a lawyer? Or what about the lady that killed an army-boy in Hamilton just because she needed to find her Coke(tm) bottle?

Mate, accidents happened all the time. It's just easier to spot the yellow out of the white when someone's finger has to be pointed eh?

I've always thought riders are wiser than normal cagers. Clearly I was wrong.

I agree with you that it is easy to draw distinctions on race based lines, and human nature seems to say 'it isn't my fault, so who was to blame???' This is a sad fact of life, and it will continue until we all become 'model' citizens or the differences in culture and customs of peoples are homologated into a friendly, offend no-one, one size fits all package... Just as your distinction between riders and cagers is made, people distinguish based on the divisions that they identify as new or important. I would imagine that the average New Zealander would lump pacific islanders in with maori in one convenient group for some situations. The point that has to be made is that the increase in the past years of asian peoples, especially in Auckland, has meant that they stick out as a group for fingerpointing.
The media also has a lot to answer for in these cases, by playing up the issues that they think we are likely to be most incensed by - hell it sells their papers/TV advertising - and i would like to think that most people share your view that problems are not black and white/colour for colour and so on

I want to make clear that i have nothing against asians/PI or any other race division here... just trying to explain why the general public may see things the way they do

[scumdog]

Then again, there are also countless kiwis, or pacific Islander, or else for that matter, that drives without license and think they have the divine right to drive because this is their country. Or thinking they have divine right to enter other properties, or rights for anything for that matter. Why has this not been spoken out? Maybe just because they look like yous?

I say, the phrase "I'm not racist, but..." clearly puts you into the box, right?

And, whatever happened with the rich remueran tractor driver who ran over that teenage girl and gotaway with only a few hundred bucks of fine? He's not the spotlight here maybe because he's one of yous and he has money to buy a lawyer? Or what about the lady that killed an army-boy in Hamilton just because she needed to find her Coke(tm) bottle?

Mate, accidents happened all the time. It's just easier to spot the yellow out of the white when someone's finger has to be pointed eh?

I've always thought riders are wiser than normal cagers. Clearly I was wrong.

Marmoot, glad to see someone brought up the topic of non Asians getting of lightly after a fatal.
I see too many young ones on their Restricted/Learners licence breaching them all the time, out late at night/carrying passengers etc etc, they seem to think that once they get it the rest doesn't matter and often Learners and Restricteds use the excuse "oh, I'm the sober driver" as if that makes it o.k. - how do the rest of you feel about a 15 year old chicky-babe driving a Valiant load of totally drunk slack-jawed mouth-breathers around town at 4 a.m.?
Probably don't get that in Jaffa-land but down hear an old Falcon etc with 8 to 11 young ones in it is the norm on a Saturday night.

[Lou Girardin]

It doesn't matter if they're yellow, pink, black or piebald. The fact is, if we allow people to drive in a situation that is totally alien to them, then compound the issue with little or no skill testing and zero enforcement, you will have the problems we see now. Most of the unlicenced PI's, Maoris and Whites at least grew up here and have some idea of what our traffic is like.
Lou