11-01-2008, 02:02pm
You hit the nail right on the head - it is about revenue not road safety.
Speed might be a contributing factor in road acidents and deaths, but it is seldom the main cause.
Last year in Qld, they had full page ads saying the 68ppl died from speed related accidents and they are sick of the carnage and they are increasing speed monitoring and penalties to cut the carnage.
It sounded impressive until you think about it carefully... Using their best efforts, they were able to attribute 68 road deaths to excessive speed. But hang on, the Qld road toll was 330. Therefore, they were only able to attribute 20% of road deaths to excessive speed.
What are they doing about the other 80% (like unsafe vehicles, talking on mobile phones, badly designed and maintained roads) ???? NOTHING, because there is no money in it.
It seems that their solution to every problem is to reduce the speed limit. Local roads like Mt Glorious and Mt Mee are lots of fun, but can bite you if you are silly. Much of these roads are now 60kmh because a few ppl went WAY to fast for their ability and got hurt or killed. The ppl who were hurt were probbaly doing way over the original speed limits. Dropping the speed limits would not slow them down, it just takes away the fun for more sensible ppl.
The plain and simple truth is that we will never stop road deaths. If you want to be stupid, you could seriously reduce the road toll by putting 10kmh (yes 10kmh) governors on all vehicles, but the country would grind to a screaminng halt!!!
It seems like the only thing they want you to die from is boredom!!
Speed might be a contributing factor in road acidents and deaths, but it is seldom the main cause.
Last year in Qld, they had full page ads saying the 68ppl died from speed related accidents and they are sick of the carnage and they are increasing speed monitoring and penalties to cut the carnage.
It sounded impressive until you think about it carefully... Using their best efforts, they were able to attribute 68 road deaths to excessive speed. But hang on, the Qld road toll was 330. Therefore, they were only able to attribute 20% of road deaths to excessive speed.
What are they doing about the other 80% (like unsafe vehicles, talking on mobile phones, badly designed and maintained roads) ???? NOTHING, because there is no money in it.
It seems that their solution to every problem is to reduce the speed limit. Local roads like Mt Glorious and Mt Mee are lots of fun, but can bite you if you are silly. Much of these roads are now 60kmh because a few ppl went WAY to fast for their ability and got hurt or killed. The ppl who were hurt were probbaly doing way over the original speed limits. Dropping the speed limits would not slow them down, it just takes away the fun for more sensible ppl.
The plain and simple truth is that we will never stop road deaths. If you want to be stupid, you could seriously reduce the road toll by putting 10kmh (yes 10kmh) governors on all vehicles, but the country would grind to a screaminng halt!!!
It seems like the only thing they want you to die from is boredom!!