Something wrong here

Maybe we should find out which two days a week we should stay off the road.

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11184569^2862,00.htm
l


--
Cheers
Dave (Mojo67)
FZR600 >> ZX6R >> ??? Brisbane
http://users.bigpond.net.au/mojo67/mojo67.htm
I used to never be able to finish anything but now I

 

Applying conditions to a person's bail is common practice, though I am
surprised that the magistrate has let her drive for any reason considering the
offences she is charged with. Culpable driving causing death, driving under
the influence and failing to render assistance are all very antisocial
offences.

Nev..
'03 ZX12R

 

Maybe she was a good sort or something?

This reminded me of the time, in my dim, dark past where I was off to court.

I was last during the day, (and the didn't tell me that, unlike at my
appeal), so I got to watch the whole day of court proceedings.

There were 4 drink-driving cases before the court.

Here's a run down.....

Early 20's male. No prior convictions. Low range. Lose licence for 6 months,
big fine. Conviction recorded.
Late 30's female. No prior convictions. Low range. Lose licence for 6
months, big fine. Conviction recorded.
Late 20's male. 1 prior conviction. Medium range. Lose licence for 2 years.
Very big fine. Conviction recorded.

And now, here's the kicked.

Mid 40's male. No prior convictions. High range. Head of local TV station. 6
month Good behaviour bond. No fine. No conviction recorded.

Gee, do you think the fact that he runs the local TV station might have had
something to do with the lenience he got? It made me sick. Minimum
sentencing might sound like a bad idea when you start talking about
Aboriginals steeling a texta up in the NT, but personally I reckon minimum
sentencing for drink-driving _needs_ to happen.

Something like:

1st offence Low Range: Lose licence for 6 months, big fine.
1st offence Medium Range: Lose licence for 12 months, bigger fine.
2nd offence Low Range or 1st offence High Range: Lose licence for 3 years,
massive fine.
3rd Low Range, or 2nd in any other category: Jail. Full stop.

And I still reckon that's being too lenient.


--
James Mayfield
"Insert witty comment here."

 

That sounds all very good, but the fundamental problem is that more than
half of those who lose their licence continue to drive anyway.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:50:19 +1000

Yup. Cos personal transport is a) a necessity for many and b) an
addiction.

I've done the public-transport-only thing, and it's painful even for me
who lives in a very well served area. It's not too bad if I want to go
to a few defined places, but anything else is horrible. Even when it's
somewhere not too hard to get to, the convenience of starting and
stopping where I wish, when I wish, that's addictive.

The magistrates know this, which is why they don't jail people who drive
while disqualified. It does no good to the bod involved, and doesn't
deter others.

Impounding vehicles is a possibility, although that's liable to mean
finding somewhere to put them and guarding them - if you had a month
walking and in that time some bastard firebombed your bike you'd be
annoyed. Especially if it was an exotic or classic one that you can't
just walk in to a shop and replace. Or if the "market value" means you
can't get a suitable replacement.

Random licence checks are a possibility although requiring heaps of
manpower. And I don't think it can be outsourced, the possibility of
someone going apeshit and trying to get away or run the bod over or
having outstanding warrants and such are too high.

And if you do catch them, what then? Same old... How do you deter
people from doing something that's very important to them, and that has
almost no downside to others that they can see?

Anything that makes driving legally difficult won't stop people driving,
it will just mean they drive illegally. Even if the penalties are
draconian, without a high chance of being caught, people will do it. IN
that, the speed camera guys are right - if what you want to do is slow
traffic down, hidden speed cameras will do a decent job. I believe the
average speed in Vic has dropped.

Perhaps RFID tags on licences? tag detectors at traffic lights scan the
cars stopped at lights if they can't manage the ones on the move. If
your licence pings as disqualified, or you have none, then the
numberplate is recorded. Or RFID chips required in all vechicles....

Zebee

 

Or perhaps teach them to drive in the first place.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:28:19 +0800

Won't make any difference, because people will *always* prefer what's
convenient for them to what's "legal" or even convenient for others.

YOu will have a percentage of people who will do the wrong thing, that's
inevitable.

While the car is a necessity, you'll have people using one when they are
drunk or tired or stoned or angry.

"teaching them to drive" won't change that.

Zebee

 

Maybe, maybe not. Teaching someone to drive should, IMO, be more than the
mechanics of the vehicle operating process. It should involve an
appreciation of just what the vehicle is capable of and capable of doing if
ill directed. Were more drivers, or should I say road users, more aware and
respectful of the consequences of a stupid move I believe less would make
such mistakes in judgement in the first place. It's unusual, though not
unheard of, for a pilot of an aeroplane to hit the piss and fly home and
that can be attributed to two main things. The obvious consequences of an
error and more importantly the awareness of those consequences. Alot of
drivers underestimate the danger involved in driving and that's something
that can be learned with appropriate training.
--
Deevo

Geraldton
WA, The Nanny State (® Corks)
http://members.westnet.com.au/mckenzie

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 28 Oct 2004 06:00:11 +0800

You know I think it's a rather big assumption that people don't know
that.

I think they do.

What they also know is that they have to be where they want to be, that
they physically can make the car do those things, and that nothing can
go wrong.

No one who isn't suicidal (and those do turn up but aren't really
germane to the discussion) does something they know and accept is going
to hurt them. Or crash their car.

Many people do something that has the risk of that. Such as running
ambers or not stopping at stop signs. They presumably decide that the
chance of a crash, and of that crash being bad is outweighed by the
convenience of doing it.

The question is how do people assess risk?

What information and experience are they using to guide their actions?
Does everyone approach it in the same way, does everyone make the same
decisions given the same information?

The difficulty is that the danger is all theoretical.

Take motorcyclists for example. We know, from stories, from relatives
and doctors with an agenda, from our own experience and experiences of
friends, that riding a motorcycle is dangeorous. That a bad road
surface, or a dickhead in a car, or inattention, or overconfidence, or
several things that individually are OK but together are trouble, can
get us badly hurt when someone in a car wouldn't be.

Why do we keep riding?

What risk assesment process do we go through to determine our actions?

Why do people like me who have been hospitalised and permanently injured
from bike crashes keep riding?

Why do people who have had drink driving convictions and even crashed
when driving after drinking keep doing it?

It's not about scare campaigns to do with how nasty things can get.
Those clearly don't work on people who ride bikes, although they might
work to stop some people riding.

It's about how people go through the risk assessment process.

Why did the woman who was texting on her phone, weaving over the road,
and thus killing a cyclist decide to do that texting?

She must have known that a car hitting a cycle would injure the cyclist.
She may or may not have known she was weaving when she did it, she must
have known she was not looking at the road.

If you can work out why texting took priority in her head at that
moment, given all she knew, then you'll be closer to a solution.

Why do some riders use the Old Road as a racetrack when stories of how
many bad crashes there are up there are rife? It's not that people
don't know that crashes hurt, it's not that people don't know that
pushing the envelope means sometimes it tears.

If you know why people who crash were riding as they were, then you
might be close to a solution.

My belief is that people know all this but do it anyway because the
fun/convenience is more important at that moment than something that
might happen but might not.

And the more confidence they have that it won't happen to them, because
of all the other times they've done things that haven't gone wrong, the
more likely they are to do the thing.

The more they see the need to do what they are doing, the more likely
they will be to do it.

Pilots are very motivated. They pay a lot of money to be pilots. The
licence takes a lot of work to get, and hours in the air cost a lot.

Cars are nothing like that, I don't think you can draw an analogy
between the two types of people - pilots and people who drive cars
because they need to.

If a car licence was hard to get and easy to lose, then you'd just have
more people driving illegally.

The central problem with cars is that they are a right. Sure, not
legally, but factually they are. People need them to live, they feel
they have the right to use them, indeed they don't even really
*register* they are using them. A car is central to life and hardly
noticed as anything special. Most people who drive cars don't really
register that's what they are doing. They get in, and drive, but their
brains aren't on that, their brains are on where they are going and what
they will do when they get there.

Consider needing a licence to use a kettle. Sure you might go through
the hoops to get it, but using a kettle is something you do every day
without thinking about it, it's an inescapable inevitable part of life
that just happens. Scare stories about scalding and food poisoning from
uncleaned kettles would make no difference because kettles just are, and
you hardly notice you are using one...

NO system that ignore this will work. You can't stop people driving,
you can't scare them with stories about horrible crashes when they drive
every day and never have a problem.

I don't know what the answer is, although it's probably going to revolve
around accepting a level of crashes, and focusing on finding the 10%
worst offenders and trying to keep them off the road. The problem with
that is there's no way to do it that doesn't mean the rest of us get
tagged too.

Zebee

 

James Mayfield wrote:

I fail to see how the penalty for _potentially_ fucking up can be greater
than _actually_ fucking up. I'd like to see anyone found guilty of being
at fault in an accident to receive a penalty similar to the current drink
driving ones rather than a piddly $90 neg driving charge, or whatever it
is now. If it's also proved they are drunk, speeding, talking on the phone
or whatever then double it.

The current drink driving and speeding regulations could then be relaxed
and those of us that can, or are old enough, to control our testosterone
levels can resume leading a relatively normal life!

 

Zebee I agree with what you're saying but none of that matters if the person
is pissed. People make choices, and they have to face the consequences.

--
Cheers
Dave (Mojo67)
FZR600 >> ZX6R >> ??? Brisbane
http://users.bigpond.net.au/mojo67/mojo67.htm
I used to never be able to finish anything but now I

 

Pisshead Pete wrote:

It is a wonderful world that we live in these days, Pete.

I'll drink to that!

regards,
CrazyCam

 

On the contrary, people do, as can be seen by the article that prompted this
whole discussion.

Which again reinforces the need for education. Risk assessment is something
that can be learned.

In what way? The dangers on the road have been proven time and time again
to be anything but theoretical. If the number of people that died on the
road in this country each year died from some other cause there would be an
outcry. We have become so conditioned to accept and to a point disregard
the very real dangers that exist on the roads and if we can become
conditioned to accept this then it should be possable, through education and
training, to reverse this.
--
Deevo

Geraldton
WA, The Nanny State (® Corks)
http://members.westnet.com.au/mckenzie

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:23:07 +1000

The problem is catching them before someone else faces the consequences.

RBTs work to some extent, but pissed bods are still responsible for a
lot of deaths.

Many of them repeat offenders.

How to keep them off the road?

Zebee

 

that was brought up recently in the news saying the amount of people that
actually go to
jail for drink driving is very small like 5% IIRC

only options really are Huge fines and Jail time , its like anything with
Risk/Reward

of course there will always be people that will float the law but given the
option of a HUGE fine
and some time with Big Bubba , i think people will soon realise what will
happen

http://members.optushome.com.au/samster06/S/sign.jpg

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:03:38 +0800

No, they don't *know* it. They've been told it might happen, which is a
whole different thing.

I know that if I drop a pen, it will fall downwards. I know it in my
gut, I know if from regular experience.

I am told that there are homicidal drivers out there who will kill me.
But I ride every day and don't see them. So I don't "know" it, because
although the stats say there are many riders injured on the roads, so I
"know" that, I don't *know* it because it isn't my personal experience.

People "know" bad behaviour on the roads is dangerous. But they don't
*know* it, because they do it every day and nothing bad happens.

It's not like the pen.

People learn it every day. From the experience they have. But they may
not come up with the same result you do, even if they have the same
information.

Your risk assessment process has obviously led to "ride a bike".

You are in the minority, most people's leads to "don't ride a bike".

Was discussing this on usenet with someone in another newsgroup. He had
had a crash and his risk assessment led to "don't ride anymore". I have
had crashes, and mine led to "bugger. When does this cast come off, I
want to ride!"

What would you teach me that would change that?

If someones risk assessment is "I will not slow down in that school
zone, because I want to get where I'm going", and they do that every day
for a year and don't hit a kid, will you saying "you might hit a kid"
change their behaviour?

Not to most people. Because the vast majority of people drive every day
without even seeing a crash, let alone being involved in one. And they
change lanes without indicating, talk on the mobile, run reds, speed,
tailgate, drive after a few beers, and nothing bad happens.

THat's why it is theory. BEcause what happens on the road shows 99% of
people that it won't happen to them because it hasn't.

Lots of people die on the roads, but lots and lots are driving. And the
car is too important to stop using.

The only way to get people to stop doing dangerous things is to make
them decide the risk is too great to do the dangerous things. PEople
didn't stop drink driving till RBTs came along, and note that the
advertising is all about "you will get caught". That's raising the
chance of bad things happening, and that's what people listen to.

Just saying bad things might happen doens't work, the most famous
example is the picpockets working the crowd at public hangings of
pickpockets.

What works is high certainty that those consequences will happen.

While people can do silly things every day and not have anything bad
happen, you can tell them "bad things will happen" and they just won't
believe you.

Consider this....

Supposing the penalty for being caught at 3kmh over the limit was 2
years loss of licence, $3000 fine, and a year in the clink, would you
speed as a usual thing?

What if the only way you could be convicted of it was if a marked
car followed you for at least 1km with lights on and siren flashing?
Would you speed as a usual thing?

Zebee

 

A huge fine is only a disincentive to people who can afford to pay huge
fines.

Nev..
'03 ZX12R

 

Oooh! Agree most definately.

At fault in an accident should carry a VERY stiff penalty.

These days people just go "Oh, oops. Don't worry, my insurance will cover
that." And then they get on with driving badly.

 

Here's an idea, (again, just something that popped out of my sleep addled
brain at 6:30am).

Instead of disqualifying people for "relatively" minor things, lets give
them community service to do. This taxes everybody, rich or poor, the same
ammount.

I don't just mean a little bit of CS, I mean a LOT. Like every Weeked for a
year or something.

For major ones, we get rid of disqualification and have "Go to jail, go
directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200."

 

Have it your way then, I'm not going to engage in an argument over this any
more as your skills in this area way outstrip mine.

And I thought I was the cynical one around here.

At the end of the day that's what all education is about though, having
people believe. Anyway I've had enough of this thread, you win.