State driving normal motorists off roads
From The West Australian
By Bill Hassell
May 19, 2008
It’s time someone spoke out on behalf of car drivers – the 95 per cent-plus of everyday, normal, ordinary drivers who use their vehicles for a variety of legitimate purposes. Such people drive with varying degrees of skill and are unlikely ever to be involved in a serious accident of any kind.
The question has to be posed – why do governments at all levels continue their campaign of persecution of the 95 per cent because of the wrongdoing of the 5 per cent?
It is clear that no motoring organization in A is raising the issue and that the state Government and its agencies, and some local governments, continue to treat the vast majority of decent, law-abiding, responsible drivers as if everyone is both a cash cow for government and a potential criminal.
The front page of The West Australian on May 5 was significant. It told us in one article that a number of people died as a result of waiting lists in public hospitals. In another it told us that almost the same number of people died in WA roads this year.
For the deceased from the hospital system, there will be no penalty and no consequence except the pain felt by their families.
But for road deaths there are expressions of shock and horror and a whole new regime of penalties which will hit, in the main, the 95 per cent of law-abiding and responsible drivers.
We can all be confident the new penalties will not stop:
- Juvenile car thieves who steal cars and drive at breakneck speeds on the wrong side of carriageways.
- Prison escapees who use vehicles to injure policemen.
- Young tearaways who use the roads as racetracks in the middle of the night.
- The lunatic-fringe drivers who regard every country road as an opportunity for excessive speed.
Even if such drivers are caught, they will not be likely to pay the increased penalties.
What the new penalties will do is … raise more revenue without contributing one jot to road safety.
In many ways the motorist is being made the enemy of government and to feel guilty.
Every proposal, no matter how bizarre or extreme or whatever its origin, to curb or restrict motorists from driving along the roads without harassment appears to receive the immediate, enthusiastic support of the Road Safety Council and its zealous chief, Grant Dorrington.
Having just achieved the badly implemented imposition of 50kmh speed limits on suburban roads, we are now being told it is inevitable that it will eventually be reduced to 40kmh.
We are constantly lectured that “all speed is dangerous” or “there is no safe speeding” when manifestly that is not true. At times and in appropriate conditions some speed limits are absurdly low, while in other situations the speed limits are too high for the conditions. No wonder Mr Dorrington lacks credibility with people who should be natural supporters of his sterling efforts to reduce the road toll.
It is time for the vast majority to demand of government that it stop trying to kid us that its financial persecution of ordinary motorists is anything to do with road safety.
It is obvious to all that stationing a police prominently beside any road, as is done extensively in Britain, is as effective in slowing speeds as posting a small yellow notice in position past the point at which motorists pass a speed camera. Of course it pays much better, and that is why so often it is done. (I am not suggesting there is not a place for speed cameras in some situations).
It is time to demand that strategies be developed to deal with the reckless lawlessness that ordinary drivers observe on the road every day which goes unpunished as they cough up ever increasing penalties for minor, inconsequential infringements.
It is time that the standards for driver education for those getting licenses were raised to a point that a real increase in the standard of driving is achieved. Driving in Perth is truly awful when compared with cities such as Melbourne and Sydney where population pressured are much greater.
Mr Dorrington and the Road Safety Council need to reassess their approach, because all their extremist scaremongering and demands for ever increasing penalties and restrictions are doing at present is turning off the very people to whom they should be successfully appealing.
The Government needs to demonstrate that it is not anti-motorist, anti-car and anti the vast majority of ordinary drivers who deserve a fairer go than they are getting now.
The obsessions of some ministers – who never use the public transport themselves – and some local authorities to restrict the legitimate ownership and use of motor vehicles and force the use of public transport is creating driver rage, if not road rage.
It might well be remembered by governments at all levels that all those who have motor vehicles pay vast taxes to buy and own cars and certainly for their use through the taxes applied at the bowsers.
Every facility provided to motorists is covered well and truly by the taxes paid by motorists.
It is high time the Government sought a fair partnership with the majority and aligned its policies to the real need to identify serious road wrong-doers and deal appropriately with them.
