Canberras disgraceful drink drivers contribute less to the road toll

Aeek said :

Collateral damage rather than natural selection.
They’re going to die soon enough, its who they happen to take out first.

That’s my concern. I’ve lost count of the number of senior citizens who’ve pulled out in front of me from arterial roads with not even the slightest thought to the concept of ‘oncoming traffic’. My dear old dad drove right up to two months before his death (age 78) and I really do feel for anyone who was on the road within a km radius of him for the preceding 20 years or so.

Frangipani drivers could also benefit from being instantly defected at random vehicle inspections.

Maybe premenstrually challenged people could just hang a red flag out the window?

Felix the Cat said :

Where do you stop with O plates, P plates, L plates etc? What’s next I plates for Indian (or Italian) drivers or PMT plates for females?

Well, there is those frangipanis, and they’re voluntary!

sepi said :

Maybe we should make them wear O plates, for Oldies, so we can watch out for them failing to give way.

There was talk of that a few months ago (in NSW I think) but the idea seems to have died (no pun intended) after outrage from the older drivers. Where do you stop with O plates, P plates, L plates etc? What’s next I plates for Indian (or Italian) drivers or PMT plates for females?

ant said :

Those convex mirrors stuck on the side mirrors can help with seeing more stuff beside you, and I wonder if a curved rear vision inside mirror might help as well?

indeed, the retro-fitted convex mirrors are excellent! I have fitted them on my van and have eliminated the blind spots, they take a bit of getting used too, but make lane changes etc much safer. I drive a Mitsubishi Express van, not the most well equiped vehicle on the road, indeed I think door mirrors were an optional extra along with wipers and headlamps!

Well anyway 14 deaths isnt much so lets just get over this obsession with the road toll. How many people died of natural causes in 2008?

I think the highly visible nature of the blitzes is what really works. When you drive around and SEE the cops doing their thing, I think you’re more likely to say “hey they’re everywhere, need to be really careful”.

And FWIW, I think removing impaired drivers is a top idea.

TAD: don’t use logic against the poor fool. And who knows, over 75y/o ovaries still work, right?

As for the original post, there are some good points but mainly it misses the point. There will be a record number of drink driving offences detected this year, and that may in fact have assisted the drop in drug and alcohol fatalities. The Remove All Impaired Drivers (RAID) campaign does work, and does it’s job well.

ACT Policing removed an awful lot of impaired drivers through drink driving detection this year, and like TAD I have some personal knowledge of this. However, all those drivers who would otherwise have driven home pissed ended up going to a station, being summonsed/charged, and getting home some other way. And all the other people who saw Police conducting various blitzes on drink drivers hopefully thought twice before the next time they thought about getting in a car pissed.

~Ozi.

Collateral damage rather than natural selection.
They’re going to die soon enough, its who they happen to take out first.

“Natural selection” Astrojax?

Yes without those pesky crashes, they would all be having more babies.

sounds like natural selection in action – bless ol’ darwin, eh?

AMP would have solved this problem of the older driver. They had wonderful policies for getting grey off the road.

Those convex mirrors stuck on the side mirrors can help with seeing more stuff beside you, and I wonder if a curved rear vision inside mirror might help as well?

Maybe we should make them wear O plates, for Oldies, so we can watch out for them failing to give way.

I’m not sure km driven is the best stat to use when, as a group, they’re driving very low kms.

That the oldies are in less crashes than other groups while leading the table for deaths in crashes says to me their frail health is tipping the scales against them.

Having said that bad backs makes head checks infrequent (if done at all), in turn that does make them very dangerous to others.

Does that mean they’re having more crashes, or taht they are more frail so any crashes they have injure them more severely (killing them)? Oldies, I mean.

I couldn’t find the link still but p9 of this report has a graph which shows that per Km driver the over 75s are only second to the under 24s for crashes.

http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/publications/researchreports/CASR015.pdf

2.3.5 Summary
The preceding sections have shown that older drivers (aged over 64) were involved in
relatively few crashes compared with younger drivers (aged under 65), and also had lower
crash rates than younger drivers after adjusting for differences between the specified age
groups in terms of population, and the number of licence holders. After adjusting for
differences in the amount of driving done by each of the age groups, it was found that crash
rates were reasonably constant for those aged between 25 and 74. Higher crash rates were
found only for those drivers under the age of 25 and over the age of 74. When crash rates
per licensed driver were analysed in terms of crash injury severity, it was found that older
drivers were over-represented in crashes resulting in fatal injuries.

In some way you are correct but mostly JB you are talking out of your arse.

I think you will find that the elderly are more likely to have an accident per km of driving but the stats are skewed by the far less distances that the elderly do drive. I remember some research a few years ago that had the elderly something like 4 or 7 times more likely to have an accident per km of driving than the general population. (Forgive me for not being able to recall the exact specifics or provide a link.)

Due to my role (which JB can email me to clarify but I won’t post here) I am very familiar with the road fatalities this year. I think age did play a factor in the deaths but not in the way you are saying. (eg it wouldn’t have taken much for them to die do to age related poor health). The injuries were definately life threatening to anybody of any age, but I believe the age was more a factor in each accident occuring in the first place. (not giving way and being t-boned, a few were pedestrians walking into traffic etc)

Having said that the stats don’t reflect the few who should of died but didn’t for reasons of good health care, luck and good previous health which all combined to give them the best shot of surviving.

Previous high years have been mainly thanks to the motorcyle community. I guess the Joel Mason’s of the world have been lucky or fewer this year.

There’s a story in the SMH today (Heckler) about an oldie being deprived of his licence after the compulsory test. The writer is pretty angry about it. I must say, I see them puddling about on the road and feel they’re much easier to cope with than the road-raging idiots (male and female) that are increasingly in evidence. I’d much rather they leave the confused oldies on the road and get a LOT tougher with aggrssive drivers. It doesn’t take einstein to work out who is the real problem on the roads.

Just clarify, if you will, that last line JB

Reason I ask is that I am a fully licensed and fairly sedate driver.

At the same time, I take 6 prescribed pills nightly to maintain my life.

I can not see the link.