Simon Corbell is celebrating a rolling year since Canberra’s last road fatali. Simon credits RAPID for the change, which certainly has the capacity to remove the threat posed by the worst of the worst:
“There are many factors which have contributed towards this result, including, increased driver awareness, advances in technology and increased police patrols targeting traffic offences, I have no doubt that the introduction of RAPID has had an impact.”
The ACT Government funded RAPID (Recognition and Analysis of Plates IDentified) capability was introduced in July 2010 and since then has detected 1015 unlicensed drivers and 4295 unregistered or uninsured vehicles.
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What’s Your opinion?
A year without road fatalities
EvanJames said :
When your Rego expires, your third party personal insurance actually lasts for an extra week or so. This means if you have honestly forgotten, and your Rego is only a day out, you will onl be charged with “unregistered” but not “uninsured”, a substantially smaller fine.
Actually unregistered vehicles are covered by third party insurance, sort of.
A body called the Nominal Defendant steps in and acts as the third party insurer if the vehicle at fault does not have third party insurance [i.e. normally unregistered vehicles]. Its jointly funded by the government and a levy on ctp premiums. The Nominal Defendant coughs up the money for the not at fault people injured in an accident with an unregistered vehicle, as a third party insurer normally would, and the Nominal Defendant then tries to recoup the money it has paid out from the driver who didn’t have third party insurance.
A few cases before the Court now where the Nominal Defendant is seeking repayment of large amounts of money that it has paid out on behalf of drivers without third party insurance seriously injuring people in collisions. One is well over $1.5 million and another around $1 million.
Whilst some of these incidents involve deadbeats who never register their vehicles, others are simply normal good people who forgot to renew their rego [and yes I know that is not an excuse]. Hit with a large bill like those mentioned above, most people don’t really have any option but to declare bankruptcty.
EvanJames said :
EvanJames said :
I absolutely realise that, but that wasn’t the aspect of unregistered cars we were talking about. We were talking about “a year without road fatalities” and people pointed out that RAPID probably helped to get the “scum” off the road that may have contributed to those fatalities.
I was merely asking how much of that 4000 cars were “scum” and how much were your average mum or dad who let it lapse by a day or two by accident.
The aftermath of a person (good or bad) having no rego and therefore no insurance is a whole another issue.
Evil_Kitten said :
… who, if you have a crash with them, and end up in hospital, aren’t covered for third party (or anything, for that matter, their own insurance is void). It’s not necessarily a victimless crime.
While I think RAPID is a great thing and I do agree with all of the above posts, I’m wondering how many of those 4000 unregistered cars were people who had simply forgotten to pay their rego by a day or two.
These people are not the dregs of society, but mostly normal people like you and me (I’m making assumptions about you all being normal here 😀 ).
A totally different crowd to the “unregistered and I know it and I don’t give a sh!t” brigade.
johnboy said :
Yep. Start bloody policing all the road rules, rather than two of them. Because in the vacuum, people are just doing their own thing and it’s not pretty, or conducive to the roads functioning as they should. Queing across roundabouts is exactly the same, but they all do it.
I think the RAPID system is a great idea. Removing the idiots who drive unregistered, uninsured or even stolen vehicles is a solid step toward better road safety and compliance.
Seems like barely a day goes by lately when I don’t see a car parked on the side of the road, sans number plates, and I keep wondering when people will learn that driving unregistered is just not something you can get away with anymore? RAPID has to be one of the most visible policing efforts the ACT has – even if you don’t see the actual cars, their hits line the streets virtually screaming ‘RAPID waz ‘ere 2012!’ How anyone can drive past that while thinking they won’t be caught defies belief.
RAPID was a solid stab at playing moneyball.
Morons who can’t be arsed registering their cars were also causing a huge percentage of the accidents. Identifying and nabbing them dropped the risk factors on the roads dramatically.
Now for mine the next breakthrough is police standing on the corner of Northbourne and Alinga of a morning and handing out tickets to all the dopes who drive across the intersection before there’s room for them on the other side.
“There are many factors which have contributed towards this result’
Including a hell of a lot of luck.
P2P cameras on Hindmarsh Dr are clearly responsible.
A great result.
Although I wish the fatality figures were accompanied by hospitalisation and permanent injury figures. For every person who dies on the road, there is probably three or four who are maimed for life.
I was wondering for years why we didn’t have it – AFP priorities?
Over 4000 unregistered vehicles in 18 months!! That’s a huge number. I wonder how many vehicles there are in Canberra, and what percentage the 4000 represents out of the total number of vehicles on the road. It’s pretty scary to think that perhaps 1 in 20 cars travelling with me on the way to work in the morning is unregistered.
Anyway, more power to RAPID. I’d like to see it installed in every police vehicle in the ACT.
My gut feeling is that the RAPID system has probably contributed to this astonishing result. Removing a bunch of societies motoring losers from the road has again probably assisted this lack of toll.