11 March 2012

Kings Highway claims two more

| johnboy
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NineMSN are reporting that two more people have died on the Kings Highway near Braidwood in a horrific weekend where that small stretch of road has now killed 5.

Police say a car veered off the Kings Highway, about 20km east of Braidwood, and hit a tree about 10.30am (AEDT).

Two people were killed and a third person was airlifted to hospital.

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EvanJames said :

Good post. You’ve summarised the attitude perfectly. I see it most days, in the line of traffic between Qbn and Canberra. It’s a big, long line, it’s there every weekday, and yet some people are tailgating, darting right and left, they want to overtake and sometimes they actually do. And back into the long line of traffic.

They are more important and special. That long line of traffic is STUPID PEOPLE and they are going to beat them all! No matter what. Selfish, ignorant and utterly crap drivers.

Used to see it a lot on Friday nights heading to the snow, too. You could see a ribbon of red tail lights, stretching for kilometers, but here comes a Special Person, he’s going to overtake them all.

In Belgium they have been using a technique which loosely translates as “block driving” on busy weekends on the Highway to the coast for over a decade. They have a police car or motorbike drive in front of the traffic at a constant speed – 100kph, the speed limit there is 120kph – and all cars have to stay behind him and changing lanes is strictly not allowed. It’s a weird practice, but it reduces the traffic jam and prevents accidents. Not that I am suggesting that here, but it is a well known fact that cars weaving in and out of traffic to try and go that little bit faster actually slow everyone down. Not to mention the effect that a crash has on traffic flow of course.

EvanJames said :

Used to see it a lot on Friday nights heading to the snow, too. You could see a ribbon of red tail lights, stretching for kilometers, but here comes a Special Person, he’s going to overtake them all.

Saw one of those once coming back from Perisher. Idiot decided he would overtake everyone in the miles-long queue in his yuppie car. A few kilometres further on we saw him on the wrong side of the road in a ditch swearing and cursing. Funnily enough, no-one was offering to help pull him out…

Alderney said :

When there is a chain of cars all doing at, or close to, the speed limit, and some nut with a boat or a caravan thinks they are more imprtant than others in the line with a need to go faster than everyone else, thereby putting others lives in danger, incidents such as these will inevitably occur. Not saying this is the cause here, but its the attitude that is most concerning.

Good post. You’ve summarised the attitude perfectly. I see it most days, in the line of traffic between Qbn and Canberra. It’s a big, long line, it’s there every weekday, and yet some people are tailgating, darting right and left, they want to overtake and sometimes they actually do. And back into the long line of traffic.

They are more important and special. That long line of traffic is STUPID PEOPLE and they are going to beat them all! No matter what. Selfish, ignorant and utterly crap drivers.

Used to see it a lot on Friday nights heading to the snow, too. You could see a ribbon of red tail lights, stretching for kilometers, but here comes a Special Person, he’s going to overtake them all.

I too think there is little wrong with this road. Sure, road infrastructure can always be improved and removing the likihood of cars running head-on in to each other may do wonders in reducing fatalities. However, with the utmost sympathy for the families and friends of those who have lost loved ones in any road accident, I think poor driving does indeed contribute to a significant percentage of the road toll on all roads. You can’t legislate against stupidity and people cannot be saved from themsleves no matter the best attempts at government intervention.

My wife and I have not taken a holiday down near Batemans Bay for years because we don’t like the vibe. The behaviour of those on their way to the coast contributes to this. As others have stated in the numerous threads on this topic, the behaviour of some drivers on this road is atrocious.

When there is a chain of cars all doing at, or close to, the speed limit, and some nut with a boat or a caravan thinks they are more imprtant than others in the line with a need to go faster than everyone else, thereby putting others lives in danger, incidents such as these will inevitably occur. Not saying this is the cause here, but its the attitude that is most concerning.

I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been passed on this road by someone going well over the posted speed limit with vehicle appendage swaying violently as they attempt to wrest control of their vehicle and force a way back in to the traffic. Then we all get held up behind them going down the escarpment, but do you think they pull over? Hell no, and f&*% you is their attitude. They are much more important than the rest of us.

At the end of the day you’ll be saving something like 15 minutes on a trip down the coast by driving like a complete lunatic. Worse case senario is that you kill or cripple another family due to your selfishness. Best case senario is you just kill yourseleves (harsh I know; flame away). No matter, you’ll hold up the rest of the people going down the coast with your selfish attitude as the police close the road to hose the remnents of your life from it.

Drive safe always people as your death affects many more than just you. How will you feel if your family needs to give it all away to spoon feed you and wipe your arse for the rest of your life?

dvaey said :

It also amazes me how little this road seems to be policed. I have never seen an active speed trap setup between queanbeyan and the bay, and even over this weekend when there was meant to be a heavy police presence on the roads, the only police cars I saw on the Kings Highway were at the accident site, and they had travelled up from Batemans Bay and arrived maybe 20min after SES crews had turned up to control traffic.

Hi, I drove this road yesterday to and from Batemans Bay. We saw police and a speed trap in the afternoon fairly near to Bungendore……bit worthless as the traffic was quite heavy and lined up with people returning.

My views on the road itself……it’s pretty much fine up until the mountains, but the mist and moisture make it very slippery. Not so much a problem in a nippy manual where you can use gears and brakes to keep traction, but our automatic was a bit hairy on those reverse camber bends with water running across them…if you lose it, you’re gone. We saw a red car in the ditch coming out of Batemans, obviously slipped straight off.
Do they not use that anti-skid rough red tarmac over here for dangerous bends….stops you sliding about….and a few speed bumps? A lot cheaper than having to widen the road, even if you do have to recoat it every 2 years.
We saw trucks having to take the bends wide, and people towing massive boats over the top…really struggling to judge the angles and keep their speed constant.

dvaey said :

I witnessed this accident yesterday on the Kings Highway, and can only agree with all the comments about the stupid drivers on this road. I have travelled the road several times a week for the past few months, and on long weeekends or during the school holidays, the crazy and dangerous acts I see some drivers do astounds me. On weekdays, this road is much more pleasant, I suspect in a big part due to the lack of Canberra travellers having their weekends away and the more regular (or local) drivers using the road.

Seeing some of the things drivers do, like passing on double lines, overtaking vehicles who are following the speed limit, tailgating behind towing vehicles and travelling well below the speed limit, only to reach the speed limit near overtaking lanes.

It also amazes me how little this road seems to be policed. I have never seen an active speed trap setup between queanbeyan and the bay, and even over this weekend when there was meant to be a heavy police presence on the roads, the only police cars I saw on the Kings Highway were at the accident site, and they had travelled up from Batemans Bay and arrived maybe 20min after SES crews had turned up to control traffic.

How many spare police do you think Braidwood and Bungendore have to enforce the road rules along that stretch? Sure employ more police, but what are they going to do duing the week when all the Canberra public servants are back at work leaving the Kings Highway suddenly a safe and curteous country road?

And have people been brainwashed so much that they seriously think speed cameras will actually do anything? They are nothing more than a voluntary taxing device.
So youd rather people sitting smack on 100kmh spending the whole trip looking at their speedo rather than paying attention to the road? If anything it make it worse….

While the councils are playing the “it’s not our shire at fault, it’s the commonwealth”, the nswgovco has taken a leaf out of the actgovco book and is proclaiming “let’s conduct a study into why it’s a bad road”, yes another study will save lives.

Money had already been earmarked for highway improvements, studies have been conducted already (2009 I think it was), now nothing will get done – just like living in the ACT, except they haven’t put a speed camera there to fix everything, hey wait a minute….

colourful sydney racing identity8:39 am 13 Mar 12

Point to point cameras.

I witnessed this accident yesterday on the Kings Highway, and can only agree with all the comments about the stupid drivers on this road. I have travelled the road several times a week for the past few months, and on long weeekends or during the school holidays, the crazy and dangerous acts I see some drivers do astounds me. On weekdays, this road is much more pleasant, I suspect in a big part due to the lack of Canberra travellers having their weekends away and the more regular (or local) drivers using the road.

Seeing some of the things drivers do, like passing on double lines, overtaking vehicles who are following the speed limit, tailgating behind towing vehicles and travelling well below the speed limit, only to reach the speed limit near overtaking lanes.

It also amazes me how little this road seems to be policed. I have never seen an active speed trap setup between queanbeyan and the bay, and even over this weekend when there was meant to be a heavy police presence on the roads, the only police cars I saw on the Kings Highway were at the accident site, and they had travelled up from Batemans Bay and arrived maybe 20min after SES crews had turned up to control traffic.

nazasaurus said :

I’m surprised by the number of people who think this road is ok and its the user thats the problem.. umm so the road doesn’t need to be a dual carriageway instead human behaviour needs to be modified to remove stupidy, impatience and risk taking?? For the volume of people who use this road there is no doubt it’s the road that needs fixing.

I think one of the biggest dangers is people who think a dual carriage way is some sort of magic elixir for curing the woes of busy roads.

Some tool last year crossed the median strip of Parks Way and got impacted in the side as he tried to enter traffic from the hard kerb. That is dual carriage way with a massive green belt between the lanes and hard kerbs. Tuggeranong Parkway has so many accidents in fact every year it’s hard to believe it’s a dual carriage way.

And what is all this BS about more traffic than the road can handle? 90% of the time you can drive for an hour and see only a handful of other cars. Some weekends a year you get high flows, but so far this long weekend, none of the accidents were the result of congestion, just people who couldn’t drive.

Yes, it would be grand if we could invest a couple of billion (and that is what it would cost) to built a wonderful highway from Canberra to the coast, and it would be wonderful if the multiple stakeholders could come together to jointly fund it. And it would be wonderful if instead of proposing the Commonwealth put in a billion for light-rail form Infrastructure Australia, they instead propose to put that money into the Kings Hwy.
But the truth is the various governments can barely agree on funding the short length of road to bypass Quangers much less over 140km of highway and major works in the Great Divide. So in the meantime people need to focus on themselves and stop scapegoating a road.

Australia does not need to be one of the best 1st world nations.

We just need to live within our means.

I’m surprised by the number of people who think this road is ok and its the user thats the problem.. umm so the road doesn’t need to be a dual carriageway instead human behaviour needs to be modified to remove stupidy, impatience and risk taking?? For the volume of people who use this road there is no doubt it’s the road that needs fixing.

God said :

If you want the road improved, then a tollway is the only option or (less desirably) a levy on car registration.

Why should the rest of society suffer if spending is diverted from other purposes to this particular road?

There is plenty of expenditure on infrastructure – only the greedy cry for more, more, more ….

I’m for fixing the infrastructure first where suppose to be one of the worlds best 1st world countries so we can at least get the basic things right.

cross said :

Diggety said :

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

What exactly do you propose they do to fix a road so that impatient young blokes don’t cross double unbroken lines?

bd84 said :

If you’re an idiot and try an illegal overtake over double unbroken white lines, I have zero sympathy when you come unstuck and meet with an inanimate object. They’re just lucky they didn’t run into some innocent party coming the other way.

By these lame arguments no road in the country would be upgraded,yes there are idiots out there even here in Canberra I hear,I,m sure the family of the two young girls and their father the other day would be happy to hear they were “filtered”.The fact is this road is carrying far more traffic than it was ever designed for and you don’t have to be speeding to come unstuck on it.
One rumor I hear is the NSW government is not happy to pay for a road used mostly by Canberrans even though the ACT government has offered to go dollar for dolllar.
So we can can look forward to more deaths of innocent as well not so innocent lives.

Sure, road improvements can help, but only to an extent.

Falliing asleep while doing 100km/h, for example is another issue. Along with speeding, drunk driving, dangerous overtaking and other such acts of stupidity.

I don’t blame the New South Welshman for not wanting to fork out more taxpayer money to compensate Canberran stupidity.

shauno said :

And we need high speed rail. .

No Lindsay Fox, Ipec and Toll need high speed rail they just want the taxpayer to foot the massive bill.

Gungahlin Al1:00 pm 12 Mar 12

Yeah I’m with the “road’s pretty good – it’s a lot of Canberra drivers that are the real problem” mind.

When we lived down near Holbrook, the drive to Sydney was always cruisey until we got to the Federal Highway near Goulburn. Then suddenly the whole thing became crazy with all sorts of stupid shenanigans, mostly from cars sporting ACT plates.

There seems to be a subset of Canberra people who are too caught up in their own importance and for who apparently every second is critical, irrespective of everyone else’s precious seconds.

It’s one thing to behave that way in the workplace or on the footpath, but when you take that behaviour onto the roads, then other people’s safety is at stake too. People need to settle down.

Couple that with a road system where so many of us seldom get over 80kph on the daily drive, and the open road becomes a real hazard…regardless of how good the road.

Even the best drivers make momentary mistakes, on this road with the amount of traffic on it on a long weekend you can pay for it with your life more so than most other roads.
I live in fear when my adult children say they’re going to the coast I,m sure I am not the only parent that feels this way about the coast road.

Diggety said :

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

What exactly do you propose they do to fix a road so that impatient young blokes don’t cross double unbroken lines?

bd84 said :

If you’re an idiot and try an illegal overtake over double unbroken white lines, I have zero sympathy when you come unstuck and meet with an inanimate object. They’re just lucky they didn’t run into some innocent party coming the other way.

By these lame arguments no road in the country would be upgraded,yes there are idiots out there even here in Canberra I hear,I,m sure the family of the two young girls and their father the other day would be happy to hear they were “filtered”.The fact is this road is carrying far more traffic than it was ever designed for and you don’t have to be speeding to come unstuck on it.
One rumor I hear is the NSW government is not happy to pay for a road used mostly by Canberrans even though the ACT government has offered to go dollar for dolllar.
So we can can look forward to more deaths of innocent as well not so innocent lives.

As of 12pm 12/03, it sounds like theres been another smash on the Kings Highway…

Another accident today between Bungendore and Braidwood according to the NSW RTA

http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au/desktop.html

Alan Evans of the NRMA has suggested some improvements.

But he destroyed his argument when he included wire ropes in his list.

The Kings Highway is extremely popular with bikers, and these wire ropes act like “cheese cutters”. His suggestion would just make the road more dangerous to a large number of users.

xyro said :

Diggety said :

xyro said :

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

I would rather drive Araluen or Nerriga Rds – any time of the year –

Shhh!

Hoping trying to keep that a secret!

Both roads would assist in the filtering of f@*%wits though! There are some lovely big trees along both!

I love that road! But in my little 2WD have to go very slowly on the dirt road. I’ve had some locals there trying to redirect me to the Highway because they were sure that I was lost. But I just take my time and pull over for everyone else – mostly locals. It is one of the most beautiful roads I’ve been on.

Diggety said :

xyro said :

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

I would rather drive Araluen or Nerriga Rds – any time of the year –

Shhh!

Hoping trying to keep that a secret!

Both roads would assist in the filtering of f@*%wits though! There are some lovely big trees along both!

If you want the road improved, then a tollway is the only option or (less desirably) a levy on car registration.

Why should the rest of society suffer if spending is diverted from other purposes to this particular road?

There is plenty of expenditure on infrastructure – only the greedy cry for more, more, more ….

This is the thing for to long we have spent bugger all on infrastructure. We didnt need to spend upwards of 50 to 70 billion on broadband which Rudd worked out on the back of an envelope in a few hours its better in the private sector as technology changes so quick.
Sure pay 2 Billion for remote area sats to get full coverage the rest can be left to private. This massive spend is going to be a huge burden because its going to require huge public money to maintain and its likely hardly any one will take it up. Already in Tasmania where it was first rolled out it has to be upgraded as its out of date.

We need the huge port upgrades to stop the massive backlog. And we need high speed rail. And we need highway upgrades big time. And we need to develop a space tech industry and launch facilities because this will be the future we squandered it years ago. We have to stop being a country that only digs stuff out of the ground. Bugger the stupid carbon tax off. Have a low tax area in Darwin to develop the new Singapore of Northern Australia.

xyro said :

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

I would rather drive Araluen or Nerriga Rds – any time of the year –

Shhh!

Hoping trying to keep that a secret!

The road is a good filter of hoons and incompetant drivers.

If you want the public to waste more money on roads, which hospital department do you want closed?

Majority of the road is pretty good in my opinion. I grew up in Braidwood and have been driving that stretch fairly regularly since I first got my Learners in ’96. The problem is the f*&kwits on it.
Like the P-plater in the Subaru last week who really needed to get past me, even though I had the cruise control set right on the speed limit and was driving a car sufficiently powerful that it wasn’t slowing for hills or anything.
Or the Audi who didn’t like me slowing down to the posted roadwork speed on a newly surfaced piece of road so he overtook me doing pretty close to 100 on loose stones with the potential for flying rocks in windscreens.
Or the Commodore, whose driver must have been related to the Audi driver as he did the exact same thing.

Diggety said :

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

My oath.

I reckon they could “fix it” by taking it back to dirt. That’d keep the lunatics off it.

If you’re an idiot and try an illegal overtake over double unbroken white lines, I have zero sympathy when you come unstuck and meet with an inanimate object. They’re just lucky they didn’t run into some innocent party coming the other way.

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

+1 I would rather drive Araluen or Nerriga Rds – any time of the year – sorry for the families of the deceased though!

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

What exactly do you propose they do to fix a road so that impatient young blokes don’t cross double unbroken lines?

cross said :

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

The road is quite good in comparison to what the rest of the nation puts up with. Those using it on the other hand are generally retarded.

How many more lives will it take to fix this goat track of a road

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