Motorists Motoring Policies

johnboy said :

Governments will see HUGE savings from driverless vehicles once the meatbags stop smashing into each other and needing emergency care and long term disability support.

Cars built to be entirely driver-less wouldn’t need any of those inconvenient steering wheels, gear changers or peddles either, enabling a much safer cabin space and better air bag placements for when a meatbag operated vehicle hits you.

johnboy said :

anything helping getting to and from the pub cheaply, easily, and in comfort might well catch on with the australian public.

I think the real plus will be being able to sit in the car with a beer in your lap ON THE WAY to the pub… But I imagine the government will probably still want people operating driverless vehicles to be sober, at least initially.

Truthiness said :

Driverless cars are not fiction, Google has been running them on actual roads for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. We could roll a fleet out in under a decade.

The reason driverless cars are such a good public transport system is that they essentially function as super cheap taxis. Instead of every person needing their own car, which spends 90% of its time in parking, you just book a car when you need it.

It means you don’t have busses running empty routes wasting petrol and driver time, you don’t have to sit with strangers and you can go direct from A to B. It also uses existing infrastructure unlike light rail.

A fleet of driverless taxis would be a great fit for Canberra, all the comfort, speed and convenience of taxis, for a fraction of the price.

I’m pretty sure people will still want their own driverless car. Communism never really took off here.

Truthiness said :

A fleet of driverless taxis would be a great fit for Canberra, all the comfort, speed and convenience of taxis, for a fraction of the price.

Yup, taxis really are the ideal place for driver-less vehicles to enter the market place. If no one is using the vehicle, then you aren’t wasting money paying a driver doing nothing.

I wonder what the unions think of the idea?

Driverless cars are not fiction, Google has been running them on actual roads for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. We could roll a fleet out in under a decade.

The reason driverless cars are such a good public transport system is that they essentially function as super cheap taxis. Instead of every person needing their own car, which spends 90% of its time in parking, you just book a car when you need it.

It means you don’t have busses running empty routes wasting petrol and driver time, you don’t have to sit with strangers and you can go direct from A to B. It also uses existing infrastructure unlike light rail.

A fleet of driverless taxis would be a great fit for Canberra, all the comfort, speed and convenience of taxis, for a fraction of the price.

OpenYourMind said :

Apologies for talking about self driving cars again, but it’s amusing that self driving, coupled with vehicle to vehicle communications will negate the majority of those policies in one way or another.

Recently IEEE chimed in with a prediction of self driving cars making up 75% of all cars by 2040.
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost.aspx?post=fd1dd24a-7eea-4a00-8a97-dd7c3aab7a1c

Why does everyone keep banging on about self driving cars as some magic solution? Just because a car drives itself doesn’t mean it takes up any less space on the road. Besides a prediction is still a long way off from actual cars on the road, none of which are yet present, and it will still take a while for them to become commonly used and available. Even 2040 is still a long way especially for local governments to plan.

KB1971 said :

I am actually surprised to see that cyclists are mentioned, I was expecting to be treated as the antichrist.

I like some of the stuff but it is all really small picture stuff in the sense of a community. Not likely to capture many votes.

I wonder who their preferences go to?

“The Motorist Party will support cost effective and sustainable cycling initiatives, which can demonstrate proven benefits to the majority of the ACT community”

Red between the lines here:
The motorist party won’t support cycling because it costs a lot and and we hate having to keep spending money on cycle paths that need repairing a lot less often than roads. We will spend money on cycle lanes maybe because they are on the road and we will only spend money on the road. We have enough cycle paths anyway they are not even full of bikes yet, Canberra is too sparse and not flat enough, quality infrastructure is pointless, get in a car.

Apologies for talking about self driving cars again, but it’s amusing that self driving, coupled with vehicle to vehicle communications will negate the majority of those policies in one way or another.

Recently IEEE chimed in with a prediction of self driving cars making up 75% of all cars by 2040.
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost.aspx?post=fd1dd24a-7eea-4a00-8a97-dd7c3aab7a1c

I was hoping that there’d be a policy on deporting all cyclists to NSW, or some other sort of ‘final’ solution.

EvanJames said :

11. NO POOFS

They forgot that one.

What is their policy on trannies ( or diffs for that matter)…?

Truthiness said :

No mention of their policy on “yellow necks”, do they hate rubber necks and bottle necks too? Or are they just unwilling to stick their red necks out?

I suspect they support long necks.

11. NO POOFS

They forgot that one.

No mention of their policy on “yellow necks”, do they hate rubber necks and bottle necks too? Or are they just unwilling to stick their red necks out?

I’m disappointed at the lack of policy to build “The school for kids who can’t drive good and want to do other stuff good too.”

Jokes aside, if they want to be taken seriously they should at least get someone with more than a 5th grade education to write their policies/press releases.

pink little birdie said :

Motocycle L drivers don’t have an experienced driver with them on the road with them. Aren’t the motocycle courses a full day on top of the Road ready course? Do Motocyclists have the “P off” course as well?

I’m not saying it is necessary, just that it could work the same way. I drove in car parks, new suburbs and the like before my parents would let me out on the road too.

I haven’t seen stats, but I’m pretty sure new learners (in, say, their first five hours behind the wheel) are not over represented in accidents. I don’t know why they would propose this policy.

p1 said :

caf said :

This is putting the cart before the horse. You can’t legally operate a vehicle on a road or road-related area until you have your learners permit – so how would non-drivers ever get a chance to develop the skills to pass the “car control test” in the first place?

Presumably at the course. It works for motorcycle “L” platers.

Motocycle L drivers don’t have an experienced driver with them on the road with them. Aren’t the motocycle courses a full day on top of the Road ready course? Do Motocyclists have the “P off” course as well?

johnboy said :

Well in theory a strong lead candidate could be picking up second preference votes from non-motorist voting punters.

The way the second or third on the ticket from the major parties pick up enough preferences to get over the line? (serious question, I don’t understand the system that well – probably because I only think about it each election, and have forgotten by the next).

caf said :

This is putting the cart before the horse. You can’t legally operate a vehicle on a road or road-related area until you have your learners permit – so how would non-drivers ever get a chance to develop the skills to pass the “car control test” in the first place?

Presumably at the course. It works for motorcycle “L” platers.

“All drivers being issued L plates would be required to do a short training session and minor car control test before being issued with a learner permit.”

if a person hasn’t driven before at all how are they meant to pass a vehicle control course before getting their L’s? Maybe a component of the logbook/test.

I don’t know about everyone else but my first driving lessons/practice were in empty carparks learning how to steer and change gears.

johnboy said :

Preferences in the ACT are allocated by the voter, not the party.

At the last election the Motorists voters showed astonishing discipline in not giving preferences to any party. It was a straight down the line vote which with Robson Rotation took a pretty large voting block and wrote it off entirely.

Robson Rotation doesn’t play any part in writing off the vote – as the candidates are elimated those votes will eventually all coalesce with the last candidate in the group anyway, so if they’d had enough total votes to elect an MLA, they would have. Robson Rotation with down-the-line voting just means it would have effectively been a random Motorist candidate that got elected, if any of them did.

All drivers being issued L plates would be required to do a short training session and minor car control test before being issued with a learner permit.

This is putting the cart before the horse. You can’t legally operate a vehicle on a road or road-related area until you have your learners permit – so how would non-drivers ever get a chance to develop the skills to pass the “car control test” in the first place?

The Motorist Party propose using the latest Information Technology so that the Community, through their mobile phones, can download the bus route systems and frequency and also show when the next bus will arrive in their location.

You can tick this one off the list boys, ACTION timetables are already in Google Transit.

colourful sydney racing identity said :

Duffbowl said :

To be fair, the policies as published look no worse than some of the fluff published by other parties and flagged as policy.

disagree. the other parties policies are actual policies, not crap like
‘The Motorist Party recognises the automobile: car, truck, four wheel drive, bus or motorcycle, as the primary mode of transport as it is the most convenient method for ACT residents.’

http://act.greens.org.au/policies/act/transport

Have you read the ACT Greens transport policies?

They might be slightly better written but not by much.

I am actually surprised to see that cyclists are mentioned, I was expecting to be treated as the antichrist.

I like some of the stuff but it is all really small picture stuff in the sense of a community. Not likely to capture many votes.

I wonder who their preferences go to?

Duffbowl said :

To be fair, the policies as published look no worse than some of the fluff published by other parties and flagged as policy.

disagree. the other parties policies are actual policies, not crap like
‘The Motorist Party recognises the automobile: car, truck, four wheel drive, bus or motorcycle, as the primary mode of transport as it is the most convenient method for ACT residents.’

No policies on literacy, I see.

To be fair, the policies as published look no worse than some of the fluff published by other parties and flagged as policy.

This party has “Trojan horse” written all over it. I can see a lot of not-particularly-well-informed Canberrans on election day not wanting to vote for one of the major parties and thinking that voting for somebody who will stick up for the motorists (brutally downtrodden minority that they are) seems like a good idea. If you don’t want One Nation 2.0 getting a toehold in the Legislative Assembly, it might be worth telling your friends.

7. In other words, they want a drag strip. No need to adorn the truth.

Rollersk8r said :

I’m not against some of the things I think they stand for but they certainly aren’t making it easy to know. I thought a policy is a course of action, what they’d do if elected?? How is recognising a car as convenient a policy??

All tip, no iceburg.

‘The Motorist Party is well aware of things’

Glad they have cleared that up…

I’m not against some of the things I think they stand for but they certainly aren’t making it easy to know. I thought a policy is a course of action, what they’d do if elected?? How is recognising a car as convenient a policy??

I am in support of recreational rego for motorbikes (depending on details of course). Apart from that most of this seems pretty acceptable, I just can’t see them getting anything to actually happen on the big things unless they form government in their own right. And if that happens, I don’t think it is there motor related policies we will regret.