Another speed camera rant, anyone had a Reminder Notice recently?

[scumdog]

All the evidence from the UK, would suggest that strictrer enforcement equals higher road toll. The best police area in the UK when it comes to road toll is County Durham. They have just one speed camera.

I work with an ex-Durham cop, been here since the start of the year.

He reckons the reason Durham has such a low road toll is a combination of driver education (easpecially motorbike riders) and the Police been given a blank check to hammer speeding and bad driving 24/7 anywhere anytime without Governemnt interference for those that didn't 'absorbe' the education.

And they had no speed cameras by the time he left.

[Sanx]

I work with an ex-Durham cop, been here since the start of the year.

He reckons the reason Durham has such a low road toll is a combination of driver education (easpecially motorbike riders) and the Police been given a blank check to hammer speeding and bad driving 24/7 anywhere anytime without Governemnt interference for those that didn't 'absorbe' the education.

And they had no speed cameras by the time he left.

They've had one speed camera for a while. It's a mobile one. And the main reason they don't have any is the Chief Constable thinks they're counter-productive and soley used for raising revenue.

But you hit on one of the things missing from NZ's road safety drive; education. I don't mean patronising commercials based on highly dubious science preaching about the dangers of speeding. That's not education. The threee planks of road safety are education, enforcement and engineering. NZ only has one.

[Ixion]

I work with an ex-Durham cop, been here since the start of the year.

...

Fark me, the NZ polis force keeps reaching new lows, doesn't it. First it was cops with weird mustachios that runa round naked. then gingas. Now we've got Geordies. Can they sink any lower in recruiting standards. Y' never saw that sort of carry on on Dixon of Dock Green , did y'. Or even Inspector Morse.

[Swoop]

The threee planks of road safety are education, enforcement and engineering. NZ only has one.

The kiwi road user is forced to walk the plank.

A raft of pirate jokes come to mind. Police with swords and eye patches???

[scumdog]

That's education.

An item the majority on NZ drivers (and riders but not as bad) seem hell bent on ignoring - they're all too good a driver to worry about THAT!!

[Banesto John]

But you hit on one of the things missing from NZ's road safety drive; education. I don't mean patronising commercials based on highly dubious science preaching about the dangers of speeding. That's not education. The threee planks of road safety are education, enforcement and engineering. NZ only has one.

What? We don't have engineering? Yeah right.

The engineering that has changed in the last 20 years includes roads, cars and roadside furniture. By furniture I mean the stuff you hit when leaving the road. Cars now have airbags, ABS, ESC, side impact beams, crumple zones, seatbelts, the list goes on. Roads now have barriers (e.g.Auck Harbour Bridge, that one saves lives), better surfaces, better engineering of intersections, better preventative design. Roadside we now have far more collapsible poles, undergrounding of cables meaning less poles to hit. All those things are engineering.

So, lets see, thats Engineering, Enforcement (we must have that, coz people keep grizzling about it), where the hell is the Education?

Education is a funny old beast. The people who gain the most are most often the ones who need it least. I mean, the ones who seek out education, who actually want it, are not really the problem in the first place. The problem ones are those who already know it all, well, in their own mind anyway. Of all the driver education in this country, I bet bugger all is taken up by those who pose the greatest threat to society.

Land Transport New Zealand is the agency responsible for road safety education, not the Police. Apart from the work education cops do in schools, the Police are the enforcement branch. You want better education? Get pressure on LTNZ. Remember to also put pressure on the people who need the education, so the ones who need it actually get it. Most likely you'll be preaching to the deaf.

The ads are a propaganda weapon, planting a seed of doubt. They are pretty average at doing that, but the long term goal is to effect a culture change, and that takes decades and persistence.

Sorry to rant, but I just can't go sanctimonious uninformed tripe.

Whoops, slipped getting down off the soapbox.

[swbarnett]

Education is a funny old beast. The people who gain the most are most often the ones who need it least. [and vice versa]

Bang on!

What is required is not pointed education i.e. this is how you drive so you don't cause carnage on the road etc. What is required is education about education. What we are lacking as a country (and I don't think we're alone) is a respect for education. It's seen as an unnecessary chore instead of a useful tool in a person's repertoire of life skills.

[Sanx]

What? We don't have engineering? Yeah right.

The engineering that has changed in the last 20 years includes roads, cars and roadside furniture. By furniture I mean the stuff you hit when leaving the road. Cars now have airbags, ABS, ESC, side impact beams, crumple zones, seatbelts, the list goes on. Roads now have barriers (e.g.Auck Harbour Bridge, that one saves lives), better surfaces, better engineering of intersections, better preventative design. Roadside we now have far more collapsible poles, undergrounding of cables meaning less poles to hit. All those things are engineering.

You claim that we have better engineering and quote two examples in addition to the obvious improvements in the safety of the vehicles, which has precisely fuck all to do with the current administration. We do not have better surfaces. New Zealand's roads, at least around Auckland, are goat tracks compared to the surfaces in most civilised countries. They use chip-seal wherever they can get away with it, don't fix pot-holes, don't put down anti-skid coatings, don't camber roads properly and generally do the cheapest nastiest job possible whenever it comes to road repair with scant regard for the quality of the surface. That's not engineering.

As for road furniture? Yes, some barriers have gone up. The vast majority of which are cheese-cutters. Why? 'Cos it's cheap. Ignoring the fact they're used contrary to the manufacturer's own guidelines, they kill or maim bikers when hit even at low speeds and they don't stop trucks, buses or SUVs very well - if at all. And if you have a low-slung car, you run the risk of the bonnet going under the cables as you run into them (especially when the barrier's on grass) thus causing the cables to run over the bonnet, through the A-pillar and neatly guillotining the car occupants' necks. These are the same cheese-cutters that have been banned in several European countries and US states for being unsafe. That's not engineering.

Better designed intersections? Where? The traffic light sequences seem to be set to cause as much interuption to traffic flow possible, thus causing people to risk running red lights out of sheer frustration. There are ornamental plantings on the approach to junctions and roundabouts meaning your view of oncoming traffic is obscured. There are stop signs everywhere, meaning in places where they actually are required, they have less of a mental impact. That's not engineering.

So, lets see, thats Engineering, Enforcement (we must have that, coz people keep grizzling about it), where the hell is the Education?

Education is a funny old beast. The people who gain the most are most often the ones who need it least. I mean, the ones who seek out education, who actually want it, are not really the problem in the first place. The problem ones are those who already know it all, well, in their own mind anyway. Of all the driver education in this country, I bet bugger all is taken up by those who pose the greatest threat to society.

Which is precisely why you target the education at them. When was the last time you saw education aimed at getting people to drive without talking on their cell-phones? Or not braking in corners? Or not riding brakes down long hills? Or not following too closely? Or not driving down the middle lanes of motorways? Have there been any? No. Not one. The education one sees is all about two things. Drink driving and speeding. And going faster than the speed limit has absolutely zero effect of the road toll, as the figures quoted in various posts I've made above indicate. That's not education.

And related to education is the driving test itself. Half the drivers one sees in Auckland on a daily basis must have passed their test on an ox-cart, given the abysmal standard of driving. Far too many people pass the tests, often with absolutely no confidence or ability behind the wheel. The driving test is way too easy, and the restrictions on foreign drivers way too soft. That's not education.

Land Transport New Zealand is the agency responsible for road safety education, not the Police.

I'm aware of that, which is why I was aiming my criticism at this joke of a government, who set the policies that the Police and LTNZ follow. The fact that both organisations adhere to the "speed is the root of all evil" creed, however, is proof that the mullahs at the top have no concept of road safety or are purely there for their pensions.

The ads are a propaganda weapon, planting a seed of doubt. They are pretty average at doing that, but the long term goal is to effect a culture change, and that takes decades and persistence.

You're wrong. The anti-speed ads are actually quite effective. The propaganda, combined with massive over-enforcement, has been quite succesfull in bringing down open road speeds over the last few years; those same last few years in which the road toll has plateaued and injuries have risen sharply. The propaganda works. It's just that it's aimed at something that has no effect on the road toll in the slightest.

Sorry to rant, but I just can't go sanctimonious uninformed tripe.

Uninformed tripe? Really. I don't know which planet you're on, but it certainly doesn't inhabit the reality plane as Earth. But don't argue with me. Argue with the statistics that show the current system is failing and failing badly. Argue with the increases in serious injuries. Argue with the the figures that show the decline in road toll, year in year out, since 1990 stopped (actually, it's trending up slightly) in 2001 when the government brought in their current policies. Argue your way through those.

[Maki]

Which makes me wonder how much you would stop doing if some reality-detached bureacrat decided to introduce a bill against it, and got his politically weak-minded fellow party members to go along with it.

Whilst I have a massive problem with the way road safety is (or isn't) promoted in New Zealand, getting speeding tickets is simply part of the risk you take every time you go out and enjoy yourself. Getting a ticket is not unfair. But it's certainly absolutely pointless, of not completely counter-productive, in terms of road safety. But it does increase the government's revenue and allow the Police to claim they're doing something, even if that something is actually making things worse.

The link between speeding and the road toll is simply not there, as any examination of the road toll, injuries, average speed and enforcement figures over the past few years. Not even such KB luminaries as SD have managed to come up with a convicing reason why with more tickets issued (an increase of almost 400%) and resulting lower road speeds, injuries and fatalities have gone up.

So, there really is no point in complaining about getting a ticket, especially with the preaching holier-than-thou hypocrites that infest this particular forum. Pay it, get over it, and then do something about the system that allows the situation to continue.

You don't need to be a genius so see why injuries and fatalities have gone up. It's because people talk on cell phones and drive at the same time a lot more than they used to. Funny that the gubmint doesn't feel like doing anything about it. I guess they are scared it might affect votes or something....

[swbarnett]

You don't need to be a genius so see why injuries and fatalities have gone up. It's because people talk on cell phones and drive at the same time a lot more than they used to.

While this may be true (personally, I don't believe it's as big a problem as we are led to believe) but it's just a symptom of a larger and much more serious problem. As a society we seem to have lost respect for each other. There seems to be an assumption that the next person is a worthless until proven otherwise. This leads to the attitude that one has a god given right to live and behave however one likes and screw the consequences to anyone else. It leads to the "my time is more valuable than yours" attitude that causes red light running among other things.

[Patrick]

While this may be true (personally, I don't believe it's as big a problem as we are led to believe)

Sadly, wrong there.....

Know personally of at least half a dozen fatals (one of two teenaged girls into a truck...)where testing was occurring at the time, in the last year or so... There will be others I don't know of...

[brendonjw]

As far as the education bit goes, i did my restricted under the old test and my full under the new one when it came out, I've got to say i was asked to do a lot more in my restricted under the old test, having spoken to friends that have done their restricted under the new test it sounds 10 times easier than what i had to do, a friend was even expecting to fail her test cause she had mucked a few things up, brought out the tears at the end of it and the tester gave it to her.
Id love to see a show like Target do a special on getting a restricted and full licence, see just how slack some of the testers are and how they can be influenced by a few tears. I think that the licencing is WAYYYYY too easy

[Sanx]

Id love to see a show like Target do a special on getting a restricted and full licence, see just how slack some of the testers are and how they can be influenced by a few yuan.

Corrected your post for you. Didn't think you'd mind.

[swbarnett]

Sadly, wrong there.....

Know personally of at least half a dozen fatals (one of two teenaged girls into a truck...)where testing was occurring at the time, in the last year or so... There will be others I don't know of...

If you read more carefully you'll see I was referring to "talking" not texting. Texters should be shot.

[Patrick]

If you read more carefully you'll see I was referring to "talking" not texting. Texters should be shot.

"If you read more carefully, you will see I was referring to" testing, not texting...

Texting or talking, both are as bad as each other IMHO.... and as for those tests...