1. What do you believe of Mr Carpenter's proposition to limit the type of cars that P-platers can drive? Why?
I disagree with this statement. Purely on the basis of every car can do high speeds. The only difference between a high powered car and a buzz box is the time it takes to get there.
With the exception of a couple of crashes in the past few years, majority of accidents have been from people taking corners too fast, or racing. As Kym mentioned, irregardless of what car you drive if your that kind of person you will try to race anyway.
I think more attention should be given to the features of the car, rather than power. Does the car have front, passenger, rear, and curtain airbags? Does it have correct auto locking seatbelts? Does it have important safety features like ABS, ESP and traction control?
There should be a stricter control over modified cars, IE if you massively increase performance, you should be required to increase braking performance and tyres.
2. Do you think it could help curb the deaths of p-platers on WA roads?
I think it will have a very minimal impact.
3. How do you respond to calls from the public that p-platers in high-powered cars are irresponsible?
All drivers are irresponsible..! The amount of idiots on the road is incredible, the fact that i drive to and from work and have a couple of near misses a day, and don't think much of it goes to show that people are accepting of it.
Whilst i don't think we should limit P platers in high performance cars, i do think they should be trained and educated in how to drive them correctly. I had my WRX whilst on my P's but knew how to drive it, and i knew the concequences of my actions.
4. What alternatives do you believe would be a better practical measure to curb deaths on WA roads?
There's a number of things which would easily make driving on the roads alot safer. You need to focus on the life cycle of a person.
Starting with early education. During high school kids have a drivers education class during which they are educated in road safety, and shown the concequences at a young age on what can happen if they are irresponsible on the road. Hopefully it scares them shitless, and thus when they go for their license they will be extremely mindful of what can happen.
Also as part of this class would be basic driving skills in computer simulators. This will show them, without being injured exactly what will happen when they loose control.
The license process should be alot more involved and way harder than it is now to get. I strongly believe that driving lessons with parents should be banned initially, as thats where most kids pick up their bad habbits.
There should be a number of tests over the two year period, which include such things as daytime driving, night time driving, driving in peak hours, on the freeway, wet weather etc. Basically all the different types of conditions that a young driver might encounter.
People may complain that it will be expensive, but so what? driving is a priveledge not a right! They should have to earn it.
There's alot more that could be said on driver training but i think i've ranted enough.
Once someone has a licence this doesn't mean they know everything, there should be an ongoing testing system. Rules and limits change all the time, car technologies change all the time. Just because you've driven around in your front wheel drive corolla doesn't mean your an expert when you upgrade to a V8 commodore...!
Testing should also increase as people get older. Its more frequently and old person who's sitting in the right lane doing 20k's under the speed limit. They need to look more at what is causing people to overtake unsafely, or speed. If you get caught doing 20k's under the speed, then naturally you will speed to make up time..! or risk overtaking unsafely.
There should be ALOT more marked police cars on the road, it's an extremely simple theory... If you have a cop sitting behind/next/in front of you of coarse your going to do the speed limit and drive sensibly. An unmarked cop car three cars back will catch you after the event, but hell that could have been the one time you fucked up and killed yourself, and or someone else.
Part of the marked presence should involve targeting bad driving habbits. Things such as
- Driving in the right hand lane
- Driving under the speed limit
- Failure to indicate when changing lanes, going through roundabouts around corners and so on
- talking on mobile phones (i still see this regularly)
- tailgating
- driving appropriately to the road conditions, IE tailgating in wet weather should be a worse punishment than in the dry.
- People wildly swerving across lanes to turn a corner, or take a freeway exit.
But again, if there was more marked cop cars i think less of the above would happen.
There is this massive focus on speeding, its over rated. Sure doing 25-30 over the speed limit is stupid, but really whats so bad about driving 10-15k's over?
I'm going to take the extreme approach and say that speeding fines should be changed. I would suggest up to 15k's over there's no fine. People spend so much time watching there speedo they don't concentrate on the road. Yet 15+ is immediate loss of license for 3 months, and a $1000 dollar fine. 30k's plus would be loss of license for 12 months, and possible jail time.
Stricted vehicle controls is important, a similar system to New Zealand where cars have to be checked regularly. The amount of cars/trucks on the road that are unsafe is rediculous, yet you rarely see these with yellow stickers??!
Road conditions should be upgraded, less traffic lights, short merging lanes and so on. If you look at the onramp from the roe onto the freeway, the on ramps are really long, this allows people to get up to 100km's before they try to merge.
There should be alot more money spent on smoothing out roads and filling in pot holes. things like angling corners so they can be taken at a higher speed! Things like this all go back to the opion that speed is bad..!
Increasing public transport and making it alot safer is also important. Although i agree to a certain extent with taking P platers off the road at night, it will have quite a flow on effect. Whilst they are allowed to drive to and from work, and for work. What about the younger brothers and sisters picking up drunken sibilings at 2am?
The siblings will get frustrated with rediculously long taxi lines, no public transport etc and will start drink driving...
/rant
