5 March 2013

Speeding crackdown catches 593 drivers

5 March 2013 | johnboy

ACT Policing caught more than 593 drivers speeding on Canberra roads during the month of February as part of its multi-agency road safety strategy.

Police issued a total of 593 Traffic Infringement Notices (TINs) for speeding and 198 cautions.

Some 311 drivers were caught travelling more than 15km/h but less than 30km/h over the speed limit. A further seven drivers were caught travelling over 45km/h.

Traffic Operations Superintendent Kylie Flower said this was an extremely disappointing result and drivers should have the message by now that speeding is dangerous.

“If you’re speeding, what may have been a minor collision if you were sticking to the speed limit could end up being much more serious. Drivers need to remember speed affects their ability to stop their car to prevent collisions,” Superintendent Flower said.

“Drivers who willfully speed were gambling with their own lives, the lives of other drivers and passengers, and the lives of children, pedestrians and cyclists.

“Speeding is a choice people make and they can just as easily make the choice to slow down and save lives.

“I’m also concerned by the 154 motorists that received TINs for speeding in school zones during the month of February.

“Speeding in school zones exposes some of the most vulnerable people in our community to the greatest risk; there is no excuse.”

[Courtesy ACT Policing]

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LSWCHP9:03 pm 06 Mar 13

dpm said :

How do you get a speeding ‘caution’?

It’s a d***head test.

Admit that you were speeding, be polite, and you sometimes get let off.

Carry on like a pork chop and they book you.

The son of an acquaintance is a young cop, and the acquaintance mentioned this very thing to me last week.

The son and an older cop pulled over a young hood in a hot ute for a low range speeding offence. Apparently, when the older cop walked up to the car the young hood smirked “What’s the problem…arseiffer”, and hat’s when it all started to go down hill for him. The young hood tuned what could’ve been 5 minutes and a caution into a lengthy and detailed inspection of every aspect of his vehicle, several defect notices, and a speeding ticket as the icing on the cake.

You don’t have to being put up with by being screwed over by The Man, but don’t mess with him for fun.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd5:23 pm 06 Mar 13

dpm said :

How do you get a speeding ‘caution’?

It’s a d***head test.

Admit that you were speeding, be polite, and you sometimes get let off.

Carry on like a pork chop and they book you.

Yeah never carry on like a pork chop, just carry on like a pork hunt 😀

And the women on low cut tops only get let off is contradictory to pork hunts post as well.

I have gotten a caution before for running a red light before. I really should not have been driving, was out all night doing call out work and heading home to sleep around 1000 and pretty much out if it. Copper on bike pulled me over in my work ute and was all like wtf you ran the light when you knew I was behind you. I just apologised and told him I’d been working all night and he said stop trying to rush to make your boss money and handed me what I thought was a ticket but turns out was just a caution. He told me that if I get done for the same thing in a period of time the caution will be re sent as a infringement.

mlr4:43 pm 06 Mar 13

I don’t get it! 2 posts ‘baiting’ the anti cycling brigade, and they haven’t bitten yet?
What’s going on? Am I logged into riot ACT or some alternate universe?

Let me try …

Maybe if everyone rode their bikes more, they wouldn’t need to speed everywhere?

While I cycle as often as I can, I sometimes do drive the car. (See – I pay taxes too!)
On weekends, I make a point of driving 10kms _below_ the posted speed, just to irritate all the speedsters. Works a treat.

and off we go 🙂

fromthecapital said :

Mr Evil said :

I blame cyclists.

+1

Most here are missing the point. Some are making the important point that motorists breaking unimportant laws is.. well.. unimportant. Few making the important point that we losing focus on the real problem of society. Cyclists!

Here_and_Now4:20 pm 06 Mar 13

Jivrashia said :

“Speeding in school zones exposes some of the most vulnerable people in our community to the greatest risk; there is no excuse.”

So what’s the excuse when NSW hasschool zone speed limit enforced only during the morning (8-10am) and afternoon (2-4pm), but ACT still enforces it for the whole day?

If the additional 4 hours isn’t a revenue raising exercise, then what is it?

I don’t think that NSW’s different hours set in stone what ours should be. As others have said, kids are around schools in the middle of the day too. Where’s the harm in slowing down for them?

As for ‘revenue raising’…well, if revenue is raised into the bargain, that’s fine too. Territory revenue has to come from somewhere. If they’re going to add extra to the coffers, I’m fine with it being from those who break laws. Or should they just collect more from all residents regardless?

fromthecapital3:19 pm 06 Mar 13

Mr Evil said :

I blame cyclists.

Most here are missing the point. Some are making the important point that motorists breaking unimportant laws is.. well.. unimportant. Few making the important point that we losing focus on the real problem of society. Cyclists!

rhino2:37 pm 06 Mar 13

Girt_Hindrance said :

rhino said :

You can’t really just say that because (if you look at it as one off occasion for one person) someone spends only an extra 30 seconds or whatever driving a road, therefore it doesn’t matter. There are a few reasons I don’t support that logic. One is because 30 seconds for one person sounds like no big deal but multiplied by many many times for that person and multiplied by many thousands of people ends up being a fair bit of wasted time, especially if you equate time to money and put a dollar figure on it then it becomes expensive. The other reason is because you should not have a law that you punish people for breaking if the law is not necessary and provides no net benefit to the community. Having laws that most people consider pointless only reduces the integrity of law in general. Once people realise that they break 5 laws each and every day of their lives, the idea of law-breaking becomes no big deal. Ideally, you would want laws that everyone agrees on and then if you break them, you know you have done something wrong and you aren’t just being bullied or arbirtarily punished for no good reason or simply taxed.

So I think you can argue whether or not there is a good reason for a law and you can argue the severity of the punishment, or lee-ways that should be given etc, but I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that because the effect on one person following it isn’t that severe, that it is a good law.

I’m not making a point either way about school zones, I just wanted to express my opinion on that. I’d hate to fall into that stereotypical online argument thing resorting to referring to nazism lol, but following laws in nazi germany wasn’t too much of an inconvenience as a blonde haired blue eyed german, but looking at the larger picture, they weren’t good laws.

Interesting perspective, especially about Germany prior to and in WWII years, although it’s clear that the Germans were having a detrimental impact and effect on other nations and peoples. Sticking to a speed limit in a school zone hurts no one, including the impatient driver who seems to have lost the perspective that driving is a privilege, and not a right. Imagine how much longer than 8 seconds it would take for a person to complete the same journey on a bike/bus/on foot.

Out of interest, what other laws are people inadvertently breaking?

Of course you are right that the detrimental effects are of very different magnitude, but I just was trying to make my point about how I think the argument should be on why the law needs to be in place and how it is policed and punished etc rather than a sort of “why not have the law, it only wastes x amount of time, which isn’t a big deal” approach. Because with that logic you could argue for some even more obviously silly laws. I think we should actually minimise the laws in general also. It shoudl be about maximising freedoms. So people should be able to do what they wish without fear UNLESS those actions can reduce the freedoms of, or harm other people in some way. That is obviously difficult to define for some circumstances where there is no direct harm but merely a risk of harm. In those cases, I think it has to be evidence based policy where you can prove a reasonable increase of risk without the law, outweighing the inconvenience of the law.

I can’t immediately recall the best examples of some laws that people break regularly, but I can list some that spring to mind. The largest would be traffic laws, especially “speeding” in a road work area when there is no roadwork, merely a sign. Many download tv shows or music or movies etc. I know you can argue that this is bad and I won’t go into that and too far off topic, but in many cases, many would agree that some downloading without paying for things like this can be fine, especially if it leads to them spending money on the artist/film etc in the end any way. There would many many regulations that people or businesses wouldn’t follow to the letter that don’t affect anyone. Playing an overseas version of a video game that is unclassified and therefore technically illegal here has no negative effects on anyone if you are an adult choosing what you wish to play. That is a big one for losing respect for law. There are many laws that change here and then you are left wondering why doing something you used to do is now illegal or vice versa. Or cases where something is legal overseas but not here and there don’t appear to be any issues in the other countries. Australia is very strict on pretty much everything, so if you came here from overseas, you may consider these laws unworthy of following. The same would go for travelling over to the US a few days before your 21st birthday and being in legal trouble for drinking alcohol after having drunk it many times legally without issue in Australia for nearly 3 years. Law is always going to be imperfect, but I think law makers should aim to minimise what most would see as pointless laws, so that the law as a whole holds more value.

Girt_Hindrance2:14 pm 06 Mar 13

m_ratt said :

Girt_Hindrance said :

Yeah, that’s what I assumed you meant.
What’s the concern with sticking to 40kms during school hours? I still maintain that driving oneself around town is one of the quickest ways to get to your in-town destination, Motorbike being the other.
What could you really need to get done with the extra 8 seconds?
You’ve put far more time into checking into, reading and posting on RA.

The objection is two-fold:
1] ACT Policing Media need to get their s*** together in actually articulating what they mean.
2] The fact that a momentary lapse at noon, with no school children around, with absolutely no risk tosaid children, which in any other jurisdiction would not be an offence, is deemed unforgivable in the ACT. If the ACT’s law was consistent with ANY other state or territory, it would be less unreasonable.

1- How would you rephrase the ACTPol Media to best get the message across?
2- How do you know that there are not kids heading home for lunch, going on a walking excursion, meeting parents nearby to attend various appointments?

It basically boils down to that you either accept ad adhere to the rules related to driving, or you hang your keys up and hand your license in for the sake of the rest of us that do the right thing.

Girt_Hindrance2:03 pm 06 Mar 13

rhino said :

You can’t really just say that because (if you look at it as one off occasion for one person) someone spends only an extra 30 seconds or whatever driving a road, therefore it doesn’t matter. There are a few reasons I don’t support that logic. One is because 30 seconds for one person sounds like no big deal but multiplied by many many times for that person and multiplied by many thousands of people ends up being a fair bit of wasted time, especially if you equate time to money and put a dollar figure on it then it becomes expensive. The other reason is because you should not have a law that you punish people for breaking if the law is not necessary and provides no net benefit to the community. Having laws that most people consider pointless only reduces the integrity of law in general. Once people realise that they break 5 laws each and every day of their lives, the idea of law-breaking becomes no big deal. Ideally, you would want laws that everyone agrees on and then if you break them, you know you have done something wrong and you aren’t just being bullied or arbirtarily punished for no good reason or simply taxed.

So I think you can argue whether or not there is a good reason for a law and you can argue the severity of the punishment, or lee-ways that should be given etc, but I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that because the effect on one person following it isn’t that severe, that it is a good law.

I’m not making a point either way about school zones, I just wanted to express my opinion on that. I’d hate to fall into that stereotypical online argument thing resorting to referring to nazism lol, but following laws in nazi germany wasn’t too much of an inconvenience as a blonde haired blue eyed german, but looking at the larger picture, they weren’t good laws.

Interesting perspective, especially about Germany prior to and in WWII years, although it’s clear that the Germans were having a detrimental impact and effect on other nations and peoples. Sticking to a speed limit in a school zone hurts no one, including the impatient driver who seems to have lost the perspective that driving is a privilege, and not a right. Imagine how much longer than 8 seconds it would take for a person to complete the same journey on a bike/bus/on foot.

Out of interest, what other laws are people inadvertently breaking?

m_ratt1:51 pm 06 Mar 13

Likewise, the ACT’s Monday-Friday when School Zone Signs are displayed, vs every other state/territory’s application to School Days only. It’s farcical to give infringements for exceeding 40km/h in a school zone on days that school isn’t even open (such as a public holiday mid-term).

rhino1:46 pm 06 Mar 13

Alderney said :

rhino said :

I’d hate to fall into that stereotypical online argument thing resorting to referring to nazism lol, but following laws in nazi germany wasn’t too much of an inconvenience as a blonde haired blue eyed german, but looking at the larger picture, they weren’t good laws.

According to Stephen Fry (and Godwin too) that’s the end of the thread then.

lol. I was going to just hint at it, but decided I’d just say it anyway haha.

But I don’t believe Godwin’s law dictates that that’s the end of the thread, just that any thread will eventually lead to this if it’s long enough lol. Anything political or legal etc will always come down to this pretty quickly haha.

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