ACT Policing caught more than 593 drivers speeding on Canberra roads during the month of February as part of its multi-agency road safety strategy.
Police issued a total of 593 Traffic Infringement Notices (TINs) for speeding and 198 cautions.
Some 311 drivers were caught travelling more than 15km/h but less than 30km/h over the speed limit. A further seven drivers were caught travelling over 45km/h.
Traffic Operations Superintendent Kylie Flower said this was an extremely disappointing result and drivers should have the message by now that speeding is dangerous.
“If you’re speeding, what may have been a minor collision if you were sticking to the speed limit could end up being much more serious. Drivers need to remember speed affects their ability to stop their car to prevent collisions,” Superintendent Flower said.
“Drivers who willfully speed were gambling with their own lives, the lives of other drivers and passengers, and the lives of children, pedestrians and cyclists.
“Speeding is a choice people make and they can just as easily make the choice to slow down and save lives.
“I’m also concerned by the 154 motorists that received TINs for speeding in school zones during the month of February.
“Speeding in school zones exposes some of the most vulnerable people in our community to the greatest risk; there is no excuse.”
[Courtesy ACT Policing]
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“A further seven drivers were caught travelling over 45km/h.”
Whoa, that’s way too fast.
Ummmm. Thinks: “So many speedsters, ie for every one caught dozens get away with it. So why isn’t the road toll through the roof?” I think I have a pretty good idea why it isn’t.
“Speeding in school zones exposes some of the most vulnerable people in our community to the greatest risk; there is no excuse.”
So what’s the excuse when NSW hasschool zone speed limit enforced only during the morning (8-10am) and afternoon (2-4pm), but ACT still enforces it for the whole day?
If the additional 4 hours isn’t a revenue raising exercise, then what is it?
Jivrashia said :
Small correction it’s 8:00-9:30 2:30-4:00
Jivrashia said :
Yeah because it’s just so hard to do 40 instead of 50. Slow down around schools please.
Traffic Supt Flower says speeding is dangerous.I say that that is way too simplistic and misleading for it’s stupidity and excessive speed in circumstances where it’s inappropriate eg. weaving in and out of traffic at speed which one would consider dangerous.
How do you get a speeding ‘caution’?
dpm said :
Easy. I had no offences for nine years in either NSW or ACT. I was on a motorcycle and doing 70-80 in a 60 zone down Anzac Parade. Got pulled over by a radar wielding bike copper.
He decided I wasn’t such a huge threat to society after we had a chat about his home town out the back of Delegate where I had been just days earlier.
He printed a “ticket” which was an official caution and thus recorded on their system and subsequently on my fridge door.
dpm said :
Well it’s a breeze for young attractive females with low cut tops!
“A further seven drivers were caught travelling over 45km/h.”
Please tell me that they immediately lost their licenses and had their vehicles confiscated. Unless some in the car is dying or giving birth, there is no excuse to be going that much over the limit. Even if you DID have a dying woman in labour in the car, it’s moronic to go that fast.
Pork Hunt said :
Ah, so they’re telling us of the number of times that they didn’t follow their own ‘letter of the law’ with
people who were speeding? Got it! I wonder how they make their qualitative judgments on who is worthy and who isn’t? Is that in the rule book? It seems about a quarter of people were worthy!
Haha! I was wondering if it was something like that!
Anyway, it just seems a bit strange to have cautions when some people seem to get done for 5kph over…? White commodore drivers?
dpm said :
It’s a d***head test.
Admit that you were speeding, be polite, and you sometimes get let off.
Carry on like a pork chop and they book you.
“Speeding in school zones exposes some of the most vulnerable people in our community to the greatest risk; there is no excuse.”
Do away with school zones, then there can be no risk to these most vulnerable people, as people cannot speed through non-existent zones?
m_ratt said :
I don’t quite get what you mean- I could make some assumptions but would prefer you to elaborate, if you would be so kind?
Jivrashia said :
An awareness raising exercise? That will add maybe 30 seconds to your total commute?
Let’s face it, all road rules are an arbitrary attempt to balance road efficiency and road safety. There is no sound logic for determining anything, be it speed limits, the legal BAC, times of school zone enforcement. They’re all just numbers that work until they don’t.
It’s not rocket science…people constantly make poor decisions. Put them in a steel box on wheels and let them loose, well they just crash into stuff (and other people!) If you make them go slower, then they crash into less stuff. It’s that simple.
AlpineViper said :
Indeed, and people frequently do 80 down Barry Drive!
The only time I happened upon a Rapid police vehicle in Feb was last Wednesday night after driving through Cotter and Brindabella road’s around 10pm. Twas tailing a few grubby looking vehicles heading towards Uriarra xing.
Prior to that I happened upon three drifting vehicles up the Mt Macdonald stretch, two of which had no number plate on them, and they were drifting in front of a crowd of some 200 younguns in the wet, seemed pretty reckless.
My point is that the resources seem to be misplaced in this instance. Those kids have been heading to the cotter for years now.
I know one of the “over 45km/h” was for doing 90km/h up Hindmarsh Drive during roadworks.
Traffic Operations Superintendent Kylie Flower said this was an extremely disappointing result and drivers should have the message by now that speeding is dangerous.
Really?! That’s not the message I’ve been getting from the ACT Police – anytime I see them (not in pursuit of someone), they seem to be travelling at least 20km/h over the posted speed limit. Either my speedometer needs recalibrating, or the ACT Police quite obviously don’t believe speeding is as dangerous as they tell us it is.
Speeding in itself isn’t always that much of a problem (it’s very common), but it’s easy to identify and issue infringement for, and is thus favoured by policy makers as a reasonable means of enforcing ‘the rules’.
thebrownstreak69 said :
Truth.
tim_c said :
Agreed. The the other day I was tailgated hardcore by an undercover cop. It looked like an unmarked car, so I didn’t fall into the trap of speeding up a little in order to get past the cars on the left and getting into the left lane asap as I normally would in order to not be an annoyance to others. Instead I made certain I was bang on the speed limit and stared intently at my speedo whilst being tailgated as I didn’t want a fine. Eventually when I could pull left, I did asap. Then the cop (now clearly visible in uniform and with the 3 antennas on the back of the unmarked car) gunned it to probably 35kph over the speed limit and took off. They had no sirens on and after following them for a while they didn’t appear to be going to any kind of emergency at all.
It felt a little hypocritical that if I had of been considerate and quickly got out of his way before slowing back down, I may have been fined for it. Yet he does whatever he wants without consequence. Their usual excuse of “oh but the police have driver training” doesn’t really satisfy me, since I’d imagine it’s a basically the same day course you can do for a few hundred as any driver and many probably have far more driving experience than some of those police.
I love reading these posts that argue that speeding doesn’t really contribute to road accidents & it’s all just ‘revenue raising’.
You guys can argue all the statistics & make up all the theories you like, speeding will NEVER be tolerated by the authorities.
Enjoy the fines & suspended licenses, guys.
Girt_Hindrance said :
If the problem is speeding in school zones, then removing schools zones would solve that problem – no more speeding in school zones.
If the problem is exceeding a speed limit (either 40km/h or any other) where child pedestrians may be present, then maybe ACT Policing should be more thoughtful (and explicit) about what they mean. If the latter, then I’d suggest that arbitrary 40km/h zones throughout the whole day does not achieve the aim.
I blame cyclists.
Solidarity said :
When the roadworks were 40 or 60?
Doing 90 when blokes are on the road is just plain stupid and the person deserves everything they get (which in NSW is immediate loss of license).
Otherwise it must have been at least 96 because the limit was 60.
m_ratt said :
Yeah, that’s what I assumed you meant.
What’s the concern with sticking to 40kms during school hours? I still maintain that driving oneself around town is one of the quickest ways to get to your in-town destination, Motorbike being the other.
What could you really need to get done with the extra 8 seconds?
You’ve put far more time into checking into, reading and posting on RA.
You can’t really just say that because (if you look at it as one off occasion for one person) someone spends only an extra 30 seconds or whatever driving a road, therefore it doesn’t matter. There are a few reasons I don’t support that logic. One is because 30 seconds for one person sounds like no big deal but multiplied by many many times for that person and multiplied by many thousands of people ends up being a fair bit of wasted time, especially if you equate time to money and put a dollar figure on it then it becomes expensive. The other reason is because you should not have a law that you punish people for breaking if the law is not necessary and provides no net benefit to the community. Having laws that most people consider pointless only reduces the integrity of law in general. Once people realise that they break 5 laws each and every day of their lives, the idea of law-breaking becomes no big deal. Ideally, you would want laws that everyone agrees on and then if you break them, you know you have done something wrong and you aren’t just being bullied or arbirtarily punished for no good reason or simply taxed.
So I think you can argue whether or not there is a good reason for a law and you can argue the severity of the punishment, or lee-ways that should be given etc, but I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that because the effect on one person following it isn’t that severe, that it is a good law.
I’m not making a point either way about school zones, I just wanted to express my opinion on that. I’d hate to fall into that stereotypical online argument thing resorting to referring to nazism lol, but following laws in nazi germany wasn’t too much of an inconvenience as a blonde haired blue eyed german, but looking at the larger picture, they weren’t good laws.
Girt_Hindrance said :
The objection is two-fold:
1] ACT Policing Media need to get their s*** together in actually articulating what they mean.
2] The fact that a momentary lapse at noon, with no school children around, with absolutely no risk tosaid children, which in any other jurisdiction would not be an offence, is deemed unforgivable in the ACT. If the ACT’s law was consistent with ANY other state or territory, it would be less unreasonable.