9 January 2007

Conga line of knee jerks

| johnboy
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A conversation as imagined, based on an ABC story:

Jackqui Burke: Hello?

ABC Hack: Jacqui, it’s the ABC here.

JB: Oh, Oh, Oh, I’m so glad you’ve called, does this mean I get to be on the radio?

AH: Well that depends Jacqui, we need some comment so we can help along another story kicking P-Plate drivers.

JB: Well you know me, I’ll say anything to get on the radio!

AH: Well here’s the thing Jacqui the NRMA in NSW want to change the law so that young drivers can lose their licence if they pick up a single demerit point. You know, catch them 10k over the speed limit and totally banjo their lives.

JB: A knee jerk draconian measure that discriminates against young people! I think that’s grand! That’s exactly what the Liberal Party is all about! Where do I get on the bandwagon! Oh, wait, I haven’t actually looked at this or formed any sort of sensible policy on the subject… How about I just say how brilliant the NRMA are and make generally supportive noises?

AH: Sure, that works for us!

I’m just guessing of course.

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Agree with Josh, NSW’s L/Red P/Green P limits of 80/90/100 creates chaos on the highways;
or they just drive with the traffic and get used to ignoring a road rule.
Plus, how do you learn to merge if your not allowed to match the traffic? That’s about the only point I agree with that Michael F. Lane idiot.

Woody Mann-Caruso10:01 pm 09 Jan 07

You know that column in the Canberra Times where they show you the news from ten years ago, and fifty years ago? A short while ago it was an article from 1996 talking about how we need tougher sanctions for P-platers before we all die. Same shit, different millennium.

What a burke….she’s embarrassing!!! The Libs certainly no how to pick them LOL

Heh. Last year they wanted cyclists off the roads. Now the P platers. Pretty soon they’ll just come out and say it – “we want EVERYONE off the roads except NRMA Directors”!

If the NRMA get their way, there will be less deaths among P-platers. Only because there will be a lot less P-platers to crash.

No P-platers = no P-plater accidents = most impractical idea ever.

If we get rid of the NRMA then we don’t have to see all these statistics, and there is no problem!

Growling Ferret11:28 am 09 Jan 07

Does anyone have the breakdown of the ACT Fatal Accidents last year? If I remember, there were a couple of motorcyclists and a couple of pedestrians included in the ten deaths. The two blokes from the Weston Club were drunk and driving at huge speed, but they were not P-Platers and sadly for their families, should have known better.

Other than taking junkie pieces of shit off the roads such as Amber Jane, where there any other fatals caused by or involving drivers under 21?

i noticed that the p-plater accidents that happened late last year which sent the media into a frenzy all (that i’m aware of) involved a teenage boy driving.

so, perhaps we should just ban teenage boys…?

like your thinking poptop, why single out the p-plate drivers hey? plenty of people from other age groups die, let’s stop them from driving at night too.

The stats are pretty conclusive that men (of all ages) are more likely (2.5 times overall more likely) to be involved in fatal road accidents.

Should we take some measures to protect them from themselves too?

VYBerlinaV8_now with_added_grunt10:20 am 09 Jan 07

P-Platers will always have more accidents than other demographics because they are less experienced and less mature. We all know what ourselves and people we knew as teenagers got up to behind the wheel.

There will always need to be a balance between driver education, driving rules/law, enforcement and compliance, etc.

Looking at any of these in isolation is unlikely to achieve the desired result. Also, having rules that many in the community consider unreasonable doesn’t help.

hm, i seem to recall that 10-15 years ago a single demerit point was all some p-platers had? (perhaps it was in western australia.. i was too young to really pay enough attention, but it really rings a bell)

i think nsw is really doing it wrong though. l-platers doing 80km/h on highways when others are doing 110-120km/h is chaos. it’s a bottleneck and often causes far too many near-misses (with people trying to jump in the right lane to overtake, there’s a series of erratic braking and such). i think we just suck at merging more than anything. hm.

All this really shows is the demographics of the NRMA’s membership base, ie a bunch of greying old farts who think young people are far too uppity for their own good.

After all, if “..the stricter measure could curb dangerous driving from newly licensed young people on the roads.” then it equally could curb dangerous driving from long-ago licensed old codgers on the roads too.

I think the bigger picture here is that finally NSW and ACT laws are becoming more or less the same on a number of things finally.

“They (the NRMA) would clearly know the carnage and the destruction they would clearly know the age and demographics of the drivers in question”

Carnage?? thats a bit of a strong word for the number of youth road deaths. I’d hardly characterise it as carnage.

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