I was driving around Canberra earlier this day, showing a friend from Victoria around the city. After about an hour of driving, he turned to me and said “Where are all the speed cameras?”
I had to think for a while because I only knew the location of five, two on The Monaro Highway, One on Lanyon Drive, one in manuka and one in Civic. Then he asked me where the mobile ones were. His interest being that as a Victorian traffic cop, he had not spotted a single speed camera in the time we were driving around. I replied that in the ten years I’ve lived in the region, I would have seen less than ten speed cameras in the ACT, and less than five in Queanbeyan. He was astounded, and asked if we had any unmarked mobile speed cameras.
I replied that I didn’t think so, but as I didn’t speed, I wouldn’t know. (okay, I may go a few kilometres over the speed limit for very short periods due to keeping an eye on traffic between routine checks of the speedo, but I never intentionally speed). I did point out that the only mobile speed cameras I’d seen in the ACT were big white Tarago like vans with signs saying “your speed
has been checked” on top of them and “speed camera ahead” displayed in front of them in most cases.
My friend was quite appalled. He said he had heard that speed enforcement was a bit slack up here, but had not realised just how slack it was. I did point out though that the road statistics seemed to indicate that there were relatively few fatalities in the ACT. He argued back that for the population size the number of deaths per ten thousand people was probably higher in the ACT that most places except for the Northern Territory which, according to him, consistently has the highest number of deaths per capita of any state. Then he pointed out that technically NT is now a state, which I knew anyway, but figured I’d mention it anyway.
As we drove he pointed out a multitude of traffic infringements of drivers over a one hour period. These included:
- 64 cases of drivers not indicating left when leaving a round about. (yes, we went around lots of round abouts)
- 13 drivers who did not indicate when changing lanes
- 4 drivers who did not indicate when turning.
- 7 drivers not indicating when merging.
- 4 drivers using their mobile phone when driving.
- 1 driver turning against a do not enter sign.
- 2 drivers who failed to give way to pedestrians at traffic lights while turning.
- 3 drivers who did not wait for pedestrians to clear a zebra crossing before moving on.
- 6 probable cases of drivers exceeding the speed limit in a school zone.
- 2 probable cases of drivers probably exceeding the speed limit by 20 km/h, both on Hindmarsh Road hill.
- 1 cyclist not stopping for red lights. (but for two lights)
- 3 cyclists including 2 chidren not dismounting at lights.
- Countless pedestrians walking through “do not walk” signs / symbols.
- 2 seperate traffic accidents in almost the same sppot just under an hour apart.
Of course, in legal speak those are all “alleged”.
- Now I’m not saying any drivers from any particular geographic are of Australia
are any better or worse than any others. But I am interested in people’s opinions
on this. - Do you think ACT region drivers are better or worse than drivers from other
parts of Australia? - Do you think there is anything that ACT region drivers do better or worse
than drivers from other parts of Australia? - Do you think we already have enough speed cameras? Or that we need more?
- And what do you think about unmarked mobile speed cameras? Good for us,
or a pain? - Finally, do you think penalties for driving while using a non hands free
mobile phone are harsh enough, or too harsh?
And please, unless you have definitive proof from reputable sources that you do provide a link to, please keep your answers racism and sexism free. I don’t have an opinion on much of those questions myself, but I am interested in what other people’s opinions are.
I’ve never seen a “speed comera ahead” sign in front of a speed van.
Is it racist if I say that those with diplomatic plates are the worst drivers on Canberra’s roads? And that the children on the p-plates are to be avoided at all costs?
I think there’s too much of a mix of drivers in Canberra to call everyone “Canberra drivers”. Too many people who learned to drvie elsewhere.
Interstate pigs should keep their snouts out of our business. At least our police dont
routenly shoot our citizens. oink oink oink all the way home.
I think the ACT should turn into a police state like in Victoria including:
Unmarked speed camera cars as in SA, Victoria.
Take down all fixed speed camera signs as in Victoria.
Conceal fixed speed cameras behind road signs, as in Victoria
Jail people using mobile phones and GPS units whilst driving.
Shoot 1st, drivers who do not indicate when they turn-off round-a-bouts as they are a danger to society.
I think I could come to similar observations in most cities of Australia. Victorian speed enforcement margins that are used – are I believe tighter than anywhere else in the country.
That being said, ACT Policing is under-resourced compared with other states in Australia. This may give people a sense they can stretch the boundaries somewhat.
Cheers
I call troll. everyone knows that traffic cops don’t have any friends?
There are always a couple of speed vans around but usually on the same roads – so if you don’t travel them you wouldn’t see them.
Outside of speeding and drink driving the penalties are irrelevant. In the 12 years in Canberra I’ve never heard of anyone being booked for any of the other infringements listed above.
Wow, this guy sounds a like a ball of excitement and yes there are already a crapload of cameras in Civic and also to the north.
Pfft. If you don’t want to get in trouble, all you have to do is obey the rules. It isn’t actually difficult.
I feel significantly safer commuting by motorcycle in Sydney (or Melbourne, on the rare occasions that I’m there) than Canberra. After living in Canberra for 25 of my 30 years, (including learning to drive there) this has been quite the revelation.
When I worked at the airport and lived in Theodore, I regularly saw speed camera vans parked on the Monaro Highway, trying to nab those who only slowed down for the cameras.
The most common apot they parked at was southbound on the left side about 50-100m after the traffic lights for the Hume Hilton. That’s about 150-200m after the speed limit changed from 100 to 80, so presumably it was easy revenue.
As a born and bred Canberran living in Melbourne for the last 2.5 years I disagree with your friend. I rarely see mobile speed vans here (and while they are unmarked they are still easily identified). Due to the geography of canberra, it is much easier to target arterial roads and efficiently catch people.
There are tons of fixed cameras on the freeways but they don’t seem to have much of an effect in my opinion, save for the cameras in the domain/burnley tunnels.
I have driven 50km east/west every day on the M1 and monash for 2 years now without a ticket so I have no reason to complain about the cameras.
You drove around with a note pad and recorded every single incident you saw on the roads?
Enough said.
On the whole, Canberra drivers are no better or worse than anywhere else.
Speeding isn’t really a huge issue, usually everyone just goes with the flow which is fine.. there’s enough cameras to catch the standout idiots not paying enough attention.
(unmarked cameras are just for raising revenue and punishing people after the fact – not slowing people down there and then)
People on mobiles.. did you notice the car next to you? No.. didn’t think so.
A week or so back on Horse Park Drv near Harrison, they had two bikes and one camera van spread over several clicks. So anyone thinking they’ve been past and can speed up again…
Fiona said :
Yep. Pretty much. Although not racist, I would say, more “blinkered”. If they didnt have big blue plates that pretty much advertise “look I am from overseas” you wouldnt know any different. I have been driven by a large number of Diplomatic drivers, and I can say that most are excellent drivers, and law abiding.
If ya take the blinkers off, you will see that many people break the law of all genre and age. Although I would have to argue with the friend of the blogger, in that most of his points raised, are not dangerous in the act of doing so (ie not indicating when there are no other cars around for several hundred meters), they are an issue because they can lead to potential dangerous situations. Having said that, they are unlawful acts.
I quote from the ACT road rules:
“IF PRACTICABLE, a driver driving in a roundabout must give a left change of direction signal when leaving the roundabout.”
I hope your friend was only counting the giant roundabouts – on the tiny single lane affairs in the suburbs this just looks silly and creates confusion.
And I hardly think a Victorian can talk – driving around Melbourne’s southern suburbs I was shocked by the way drivers were constantly driving two abreast – where there was ONLY ONE LANE MARKED! To me this is a far more serious infringement than failure to indicate when leaving a roundabout.
Well, I guess for all those infringements you didn’t see any accidents, so we can’t be all that bad at driving
In relation to unmarked speed cameras, they do nothing except fill the coffers: clearly marked speed cameras in accident zones slow traffic down effectively – which is surely the aim.
Wow,
what are you and your friends doing for new years?
I think we should get together and PARTY!!!!!!!!
Anyone who thinks there are no unmarked cars in Canberra, and who BREAKS THE LAW BY SPEEDING, is in for a rude shock. In the last week I’ve twice seen unmarked cars pulled over on the side of Gungahlin Drive (between Mitchell and Palmerston), lights flashing, having frank discussions with frustrated looking folk.
Gungahlin Al – yeah, saw the same on Barry Drive/Belconnen Way about a month back – first you’d see the Big White Van as you come up over Black Mountain, then one motorcycle cop with a radar at the bend/intersection with Fairfax St, then another just before the GDE bridge. Had to chuckle as I’d driven that way into the city first so knew they were all there, and could watch the speed up/slow down behavior of the others around who’d been lulled into the false sense of security by the passing of the B.W.V.
Have to agree with Fiona, though yeah, it’s a little racist, but I’ll sing along happily with Avenue Q on that count, if I see those blue DC number plates, I give them a wiiiide berth.
Does your Victoria cop friend do kids birthday parties? he sounds like the life of the party….
Speeding fines are voluntary… if the Government chooses to put marked, unmarked, mobile, stationary etc… to raise revenue, then so be it…
Here’s some of the video we shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6olC6wZQEL4
Vonbare said :
As stated in the first posting we saw two accidents almost in the same spot. The second one occoured almost an hour after the first. It was a three car and one motorcycle pile up.
I’m sorry, but where do you guys live in Canberra? Tuggeranong is seemingly over-run by speeding bogans in their noisy bogan-mobiles. Isabella drive is particularly bad – rare is the day when I don’t witness very high-speed activity on that piece of road; people fly past me, and I sit on the speed limit of 80. The aforementioned bogans never seem to indicate, swerve in and out of lanes, tail-gate and generally create havoc on the roads. I would LOVE there to be some unmarked police cars along this strip of road.
Not that i’m advocating speeding and what not, but:
http://www.roadsense.com.au/facts.html
Now i’m sure plenty of people can link rebuttals and counter arguments, but do speed cameras do anything other than raise revenue anyhow?
Also how many jaywalkers did you video?
Can’t disagree with you on the cyclist, if RA discussions are anything to go by, then cycling in Canberra is basically a free ticket to commit daily crimes against humanity.
A victorian complaining about lack of indicating? That’s a joke. And actually in the ACT I don’t think it is a requirement to indicate left when leaving a roundabout.
And pedestrians walking on red? No you never see that in Melbourne. Or speeding, or people going wrong way in 1 way streets, or talking on their phones. Your mate is doing a bang up job down there.
Vonbare said :
Unmarked cars are fine by me. Think of it as an idiot tax
Woo! This list will be great to throw into the motorist vs cyclist vs pedestrian mosh pit!
and the reason why victoria has the most horrific road toll every xmas is because??????
i find all cops (bar one, who is female) to be a boring bunch of uptight prats. they are never ‘off’ or not wanting to bust someone for something.
OMG a video! This really is getting pathetic.
My only experience of Victorian police was when one of them terrorised my eighty year old granny. I thought, “Gee, I’m glad ours aren’t like that!”
There are plenty of rude, selfish, inconsiderate drivers in Canberra, and plenty of drivers who are kind and thoughtful people even behind a wheel.
Did your friend count those who were indicating correctly? Sometimes you get what you go looking for.
I had a cop drive next to me at 90km/h on Canberra Ave between Fyshwick and Queanbeyan, open his window, and then through the window tells me to drive at the speed limit, nit 5km/h above. This happened about a month ago, on a Sunday.
If we were serious about cleaning up road safety we’d have higher quality training and testing, and we would be more pragmatic about rules violations.
UrbanAdventure.org said :
At least one video is in Queanbeyan . . .
VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :
I don’t know, VY. While a relatively minor infraction, you were still technically speeding (assuming you doing 90 in an 80 zone section), and sounds like you copped a simple ‘don’t speed’ finger wagging without even being pulled over. Doesn’t sound like a huge over-reaction to me.
Or are you disappointed in the quality because you weren’t pulled over?
112 alleged offences in an hour? That’s roughly one every 30 seconds.
Somehow I find this a little exaggerated.
had a cop drive next to me at 90km/h on Canberra Ave between Fyshwick and Queanbeyan, open his window, and then through the window tells me to drive at the speed limit, not 5km/h above.
I reckon I know this copper, a good bloke
Wow… Why don’t all of you get off your high horses and give this guy a break…
He pointed out his mate is a police officer – so its kinda his job to take note of people breaking the law.
I most likely break the law every day when I get into my car – but I would still appreciate our police making a better effort to book people, perhaps pass this onto the AFP see if they care or not.
Belconnen is horrible at the moment with lots of new traffic lights, and people running the red lights – because either A – they haven’t seen there is now a traffic light there, or B – well they are idiots for not stopping for a red light. (and yes I mean RED light, not amber lights… but clearly a red light) Sadly the worse set of lights Ive noticed is only 100-200m down the road from the Police Station.
Cletus 2 said :
It’s easy enough to check these things you know.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ACT+road+rules
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=australian+road+rules
No wonder there were so many accidents! What were they thinking putting an officer who looked like that in the middle of the road??!
I see this thing all the time, I sometimes give a “Are you that stupid” (sometimes said with other words).
But you missed a big one at 04:38 (into the Youtube video) the Police officer signalled for a white Ford Falcon to stop, but he kept on going. I would of thought this would be among one of the serious offences.
But I was disappointed I wasn’t in the video
I’d be lucky to see one of of the vans once a month, I have seen a slight increase in the number of police cars making traffic stops in the last month or so. It’s easy enough to drive over the speed limit and have enough time to take your foot off the accelerator to slow the car before coming into range.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s report ‘Injury deaths, Australia 2004–05′ (released Sep 2009) [1], in 2005 there were
ACT: 19 cases of transport-related death [2], giving an age-standardised rate of 5.9 deaths per 100,000 population
Vic: 402 cases, giving an age standardised rate of 7.9 deaths per 100,000 population
In short, in 2005, perhaps the Mexican blue heat caused more accidents than it prevented?
In case you wondered, the worst drivers were from NT, WA and Tas.
[1] http://www.nisu.flinders.edu.au/pubs/reports/2009/injcat127.php
[2] This does include causes other than vehicles on the road – they’re only 87% of the total. So conceivably Vic’s relatively higher transport fatality rate is due to train, plane and hot air balloon accidents.
TP 3000 said :
They were probably all hoping he’d arrest them.
Postalgeek said :
Misunderstanding, I think… I was doing 95 in a 90 zone, so yes, technically speeding. What I found surprising is that the officer didn’t pull me over for a chat, but rather started a shouted conversation through open windows at 90km/h.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I just thought pulling over would have been a smarter and safer thing to do. That said, getting warned for 5km/h over isn’t unreasonable.
The statement about skills and training was separate.
VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :
I concur. Probably born and bred in Tuggeranong.
I’ve seen Plods quickly “pulse” their lights and sirens to achieve a similar (probably superior) effect. I don’t know what their light/siren controls are like but if it’s just a simple pair of on/off switches it is probably less distracting to the Plod driver than opening the window and shouting at someone
NT is technically a state? How and when did this change?
Victoria is that state where you routinely get camera detected offenses for doing 63 in a 60 zone. Mean, c’mon….
Its quite funny, because growing up, it seemed to be a common thing to say “Must be a victorian driver” everytime my parents saw a bad driver.
The one thing I will say that Canberrans are bad at is merging. I see too many people slowing down in merging lanes and not speeding up to the new speed limit. Although i think some merging lanes are poorly marked, the new speed limit should be posted at the beginning of the merging lane not the end just before you merge onto the main road.
Also when two lanes merge why do people insist on sitting as wide out in the lane as possible, rather than merging to the middle. Orten staying out wide puts you in the blind spot.
Actually i see too many drivers not aware they are sitting in the blind spot and then wonder why, when the car cuts in front of them. Yeah it is there responsibility to check, but you have to take some blame, because sitting in the blind spot is a stupid thing to do as well. A bit of courtesy goes a long way.
UrbanAdventure.org said :
And only 2 of those involve speeding. None of the others would be affected by speed cameras at all.
If you go to http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/road_fatality_statistics/fatal_road_crash_database.aspx you can get the speeding stats for all states, by vehicle type, speed limit (where recorded), day of the week, hour of the day etc.
Alternatively go to http://www.bitre.gov.au/Info.aspx?ResourceId=735&NodeId=167 and you can download this months “Road Deaths Australia” bulletin which will give you an overall snapshot.
Personally I would rather we get rid of the cameras (except where they are also red light cameras) have a few more police on the road who are more concerned with dangerous driving than with going a few k’s over the limit, and raise the limit on certain roads where it is set stupidly low.
“Then he pointed out that technically NT is now a state, which I knew anyway, but figured I’d mention it anyway.”
Nooooo. No it isn’t. In no way at all is that accurate. Can we safely presume that the rest of this article is equally wrong?
Slower drivers have less accidents. And the accidents are less severe. These are facts.
People who drive too fast put my life and yours at risk, and deserve the penalties they get. The penalties in the ACT are pretty low, actually, so I’m surprised anyone complains.
And if you don’t want to get done by a hidden camera, don’t BREAK THE LAW. It’s as simple as that. They do slow people down, because when you get a fine, you’ll think twice about speeding the next time.
If you go looking for breaches in road rules you will find them every day. You could give out tickets al day long without stopping to catch a breath quite easily.
For once I am going to have to agree with Farq though – traffic cops don’t have friends they just have quotas.