Attitudes to the road toll

[Grumpy John]

The following comment was made by Rob Streeper in this thread

"Texas has no mandatory driver training program, you get to your 16th birthday, pass written (easy) and practical driving tests (hard to fail) and you get your license."

Got me interested, so I looked up the road toll for Texas:

Texas.JPG

And Victoria:

Lives Lost - Annual - TAC - Transport Accident Commission

Victoria.JPG


3,578 deaths as against 290, even allowing for Texas having almost 5 times the population of Victoria, that is a staggering difference. Makes me wonder what, if anything, the Texas authorities are doing to curtail the road toll.

Texas 27.8 Million (est.)
Victoria 6.29 Million (ABS Sept. 2017)

[Simplicity]

One road death is too many but that is just amazing.
Actually amazingly sad.

Cheers Matt


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ian]

Probably never.
Why fuss about the road toll when your maternal mortality rate is 35.8 per 100,000 live births (in Victoria it is 8.9 per 100,000 live births) and your infant mortality rate is 5.9 per 1000 live births (in Victoria is about 3.3 per 1000 live births).

When it comes to health issues -- Texas is just backward

[Sturdee]

These lower figures in Victoria is a result of long and vigorous campaigns by the media, government and police to bring the road loss down.

I was a young driver when the campaigns started in 1969 to reduce the road loss down from 1034. The result was mandatory seat belts, .05 drink driving laws, Amphometers now radar speed guns, advertising campaigns, P plate legislation, hoons legislation and the new mandatory drink driving penalties starting next year will help even more.

Maybe someone should tell Texas what we've archived.

Peter.

[Grumpy John]

The upside of living in a "nanny state". We bitch and complain when legislation is introduced to protect us from ourselves. The trouble is, some people just don't get it, it's not cool to drive when you're drunk, or off your face. I was no saint when I was younger, but the roads are different now, so much congestion there's absolutely no room for error.

[doug3030]

I fully support the initiative to get the road toll down to zero.

The only hope they have of achieving this is to target the driving behaviors which really cause accidents like tailgating and failure to give right of way.

Currently all they target is speeding and drink driving, which, while they are a problem are the only ones really enforced because they are easy to do with speed cameras and booze buses. If the number comes up on the digital screen you are guilty and there is really little to contest.

But does it solve the problem? If speed cameras stop speeding and booze buses stop people drinking and driving then how come so many people are still caught every day? So no, it does not work but it raises a bucket-load of money for the government so no doubt it will continue.

When I learned to drive, police used to patrol the road and target all driving offences. They rarely do so now because they rely on the cameras almost exclusively. It used to be a common sight to see someone pulled over by the cops but I rarely see it any more. As a consequence nobody cares much about the little things like giving way and tailgating any more - things we all used to avoid when the police used to patrol enough to make it not worth the risk. People are now out of the good driving habits they once had, and the younger generation of drivers never had them.

I can understand some of the reasons police do not patrol. I would not like to be the one to walk up to a vehicle I had just pulled over in these days of youth gangs, shootings and violence either. But getting a speeding fine in the mail does not even begin to have the same impact as getting pulled over and having to stand on the side of the road while the cop wrote out your ticket and gave you a personal lecture while you are hoping like hell that none of your mates drive by and see you.

If they are really serious about getting the road toll down to zero they need to get police out actively patrolling AND get all the duck-heads off the road - both by making it harder to get a license in the first place and identifying those whose behavior after obtaining their licenses is not conducive with good and safe driving.

Cheers

Doug

[BobL]

400+ deaths were due to "distracted driving" ie using mobile phones.

Some zones or areas have a complete ban on cell phone use but only this year has Texas passed a statewide law prohibiting the use of texting and email, but you can still dial a number and talk and listen all you like.

The "Cell phone ordinances" make for some amusing black comedy. see https://www.txdot.gov/driver/laws/cellphones.html

[Arron]

It seems we have our own Texas. Scroll down to the graph of Australian states and territories compared
https://bitre.gov.au/publications/on...mparisons.aspx

[BobL]

I can understand some of the reasons police do not patrol. I would not like to be the one to walk up to a vehicle I had just pulled over in these days of youth gangs, shootings and violence either. But getting a speeding fine in the mail does not even begin to have the same impact as getting pulled over and having to stand on the side of the road while the cop wrote out your ticket and gave you a personal lecture while you are hoping like hell that none of your mates drive by and see you.

If the rates for norway and sweden are anything to go by then the quickest way to drop the road toll might be to do what the Scandinavians do regarding drink driving.
Impound and crush the vehicles - I'd like to see that with mobile phones as well - reminder: in 2010 another driver doing only 50 kph ran headlong into my vehicle and totalled both his and my vehicle while talking on a mobile,.

28% of Aus accidents involved drunk drivers (30% in the US and 3% in sweden)
https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/...nd_&_intro.htm

[Grumpy John]

Give the police power to seize. Not just for hooning. If you get caught driving while disqualified, unlicensed, or driving an unregistered car it gets seized for 30 days. Doesn't matter whether it's your car, or a mates, it gets impounded and slap a $5,000 release fee on it for good luck. Giving 6 month disqualification to someone who's driving while disqualified makes no sense. This will start getting idiots off the road.

[rob streeper]

The number of deaths due to drunk driving has moderated somewhat because the legal penalties have become extraordinary. The laws here can be fierce, driving 25 mph over the limit is a felony offense with the possibility of time in prison. Enforcement is spotty at best, generally the police are reactive, not proactive.

Policing here is also very non professional. Day before yesterday there was an incident locally in which a 7 year old boy, in his residence, was shot and killed by police officers who were trying to apprehend a woman. According to reports (I say that with skepticism) the woman waved a pipe like object at the officers, they 'feared for their lives' and started blasting. This was a woman facing four male police officers, armed to the teeth with a variety of lethal and non lethal weapons, a police dog, and overwatched by a helicopter. They later killed the woman too, she wasn't carrying a gun.

Last time I looked Texas is rated #49 out of the 50 states in educational attainment, beating out only California. The United States was ranked 27th among the worlds countries in educational attainment, close to Slovenia. The local paper printed an article this week relating that San Antonio was ranked the 76th most literate city in the country. San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the country. There's a Charter School in Houston that apparently teaches students that dinosaurs and Jesus walked the earth together.

Houston, center of petrochemical money in the state and one of the major centers for that industry in the country, has had three 500 year floods since the turn of the century, the most recent was September of this year (Harvey). Climatalogists have written in their professional literature that Harvey delivered approximately three times more rain than it would have absent the effects of global warming. The Governor of the state denies that human activities are an important factor in global warming.

Texas generally and San Antonio specifically has an ongoing multiyear outbreak of various sexually transmitted diseases and diseases of poverty. Texas has the largest number of people lacking medical insurance and is home to the largest number of children living in poverty among the states.

[Grumpy John]

Rob, FYI.
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safe...ving-penalties

[rob streeper]

Rob, FYI.
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safe...ving-penalties

Seems remarkably light. I've been told that the average cost for a DUI in Texas is something like $25,000. Incarceration, bans, lockouts and so on are also used here.

[Grumpy John]

https://www.dwi-texas.com/texas-dwi-penalties/

[cava]

We have very skewed penalties in Victoria.

About a month or so ago, I was in the local Court as an observer, and was listening in on a case involving a woman who was charged with stealing from a poverty bin and also in another incident standing next to rubbish on the road verge of an insignificant back road.

The Judge, if you can call him that, was threatening to lock the woman up for 3 (three) months for littering a public highway - the alleged stealing did not get a mention. Go figure!