Brave new motoring?

[StuwieP]

hopefully it will help to fix traffic backups on the freeway and keep inexperienced and hopeless drivers off it. I see it as being positive.

Doubtful. People dumb.
Very few people have anything like an ability to perceive speed, and everyone reckons they can drive faster.
I wouldn't feel safe knowing that the limit is 130. People are already dangerous / aggressive enough at 100.

How many speed wobbles have you seen where people lose conscentration and drift across their lane(s) only to throw the car back? Insufficient driver training to sustain that limit.

The other option of course would be simply to make insurance companies to pay for any and all damages caused by their drivers and have no fines at all.

Then nobody could afford insurance. Or rather, very few people could afford insurance, and consequently more people would drive around uninsured.


Stu

[NitroDann]

hopefully it will help to fix traffic backups on the freeway and keep inexperienced and hopeless drivers off it. I see it as being positive.

Doubtful. People dumb.
Very few people have anything like an ability to perceive speed, and everyone reckons they can drive faster.
I wouldn't feel safe knowing that the limit is 130. People are already dangerous / aggressive enough at 100.

Why do you think that is? Honest question.

How many speed wobbles have you seen where people lose conscentration and drift across their lane(s) only to throw the car back? Insufficient driver training to sustain that limit.

The other option of course would be simply to make insurance companies to pay for any and all damages caused by their drivers and have no fines at all.

Then nobody could afford insurance. Or rather, very few people could afford insurance, and consequently more people would drive around uninsured.

Why couldn't they? Do you think the govt pays for those things out of thin air? They pay for it with taxes and inflation. I cannot see why insurance companies could not do that. I doubt people would drive uninsured if hitting a Mercedes meant 50 percent of their income went missing for 15 years.

Stu

[Rasco]

this is all very interesting if a bit mis-informed -

the gps tracking side of things is being legislated in some not all states, but for larger and high mass special "pbs" vehicles, the "giant trucks", big cranes etc etc- basically the aim is to keep the roads in as good a condition as possible i.e to ensure overweight trucks don't go over weight limited bridges (or run into low bridges) and similar (i.e the road conditions have to be acceptable) there are only certain routes that can be used - vehicles that are managed this way have significantly better safety records. the freight task is going to increase exponentially so vehicles with better capacity and safety standards are needed so there isn't simply one huge traffic jam

in Europe there is a "e call" standard, where GPS units are supposed to be mandatory in new vehicles made after 2015 - the idea is to improve emergency service response - i.e if you crash and trigger a certain g force then an alarm will alert the emergency services to your location and they will contact you to see if you are OK or need assistance - there is a long way to go until intelligent roads are in place to be able to triangulate data in order to legislate around speeding etc

there is no way authorities can currently manage the mass of data to use gps tracking for general public speed enforcement or ticketing people for spinning wheels/hooning, and none of the OBD devices are TCA compliant, so the information gathered wouldn't stand up in court as without a government managed service the gps data could be questioned as to its validity - so the potential investment to legislate would be huge, the management of the data would involve endless server farms and the analysis would need a mass of supercomputers , and the benefit to do this would minimal

what we will see here is insurance company's providing discounted premiums to "young" drivers and parents who loan there cars to "young drivers" if they adhere to certain standards - again this data goes back to the insurance company not to any government authority

companies implement gps tracking to save money, reduce their vehicle fleet sizes and optimize operations - this is done via business intelligence software that spits out reports to accountants and business analysts

[rjastra2]

No its not, in the 7 years since dropping the limit from UNLIMITED to 130 there have been double the deaths as the previous 7 years.

Really? I have figures that state otherwise. Deaths on the roads that were limited to 130 have seen a drop in fatalities.
Roads posted <100 (near towns etc) have seen a rise in fatalities

[PhilM]

I dríven to Darwin 4 times in the last 4 years and have noticed that most drivers do not sit on 130kph - usually about 110. Sitting on 130 on those long distances takes a lot more concentration than most people are willing to do so they slow down.

[StuwieP]

Why do you think that is? Honest question.

short answer?

People dumb

[quote="NitroDann"]Why couldn't they? Do you think the govt pays for those things out of thin air? They pay for it with taxes and inflation. I cannot see why insurance companies could not do that. [b] [\quote]

Not sure I follow? Gvt levies taxes, insurance companies up ther premiums and that pushes the cost of living up as everyone suddenly has to pay extra for their insurance, they charge extra for whatever goods/services they provide. Young people like me, uni student, etc etc can't afford to insure. Honestly don't understand your point here, not being snarky.

[quote="NitroDann"][b]I doubt people would drive uninsured if hitting a Mercedes meant 50 percent of their income went missing for 15 years. [\quote]

Prisons are full of living proof that this statement is incorrect.

Stu

[NitroDann]

We pay for peoples mistakes one way or the other, we could simply do it with insurance companies and eliminate the BS that false blame causes.

The insurance companies will handle who is at fault and who costs what pretty fairly they have to for their bottom line.

The cost of living will not increase it will decrease if we arent paying police to hand out fines for non dangerous acts only for 50% of that money to be lost in paying even more public servants to decide what to do with it.

Dann

[StuwieP]

alright, I see where you're coming from.
not sure I can go either way, don't think I understand economics well enough (or at all)

[Tezzax5]

Story is based in British Columbia but pretty indicative of how to raise revenue for Grubbyments around the world.

[manga_blue]

companies implement gps tracking to save money, reduce their vehicle fleet sizes and optimize operations - this is done via business intelligence software that spits out reports to accountants and business analysts

Some functions of these systems do that but there are also systems which focus directly on driver behaviour "which requires drivers to become accountable and responsible for their actions" (which is an amazingly creative euphemism for "Big Brother is watching you").

http://securatrak1-px.rtrk.com.au/Solut ... erformance

Within 20 years there will be enough coverage and bandwidth and enough storage for "events of interest" and "drivers of interest" to get a significant amount of oversight of the entire driving population. While we depend so heavily on a detect and punish approach to road safety there must come conflict about balancing the impacts of death and injury against loss of personal freedoms.

[rjastra2]

While we depend so heavily on a detect and punish approach to road safety there must come conflict about balancing the impacts of death and injury against loss of personal freedoms.

Yet we are quite capable of allowing the personal freedoms of others (Airline pilots, truck drivers, bus drivers) be eroded so that we may feel safe.

Airline black boxes, random drug/alcohol tests, log books, GPS tracking etc etc. Why is it ok for those poor suckers and not for the rest of us?

[Rocky]

Thanks Tezzax5 - that video was the best use of 15 minutes of my time so far this week. Spot on (and entertaining).
This is the sort of stuff with which the AMEP needs to be beating the Parliament around the head.
Stupidity kills. Everything else is just a contributing variable.

[OurCognitiveSurplus]

I don't think people are dumb. I think a person is actually pretty smart.

People are dumb if you treat them like they're dumb. Flocks of people can be pretty dumb.

But I think a sophisticated policy which treats people as not-dumb (e.g. please drive to the conditions of the day) is not going to fail because 'people are dumb'.

We know that it works in Germany. Are Germans smarter than Australians? Maybe there's experiance and practice and culture - but I don't think they're smarter.

[hks_kansei]

Yet we are quite capable of allowing the personal freedoms of others (Airline pilots, truck drivers, bus drivers) be eroded so that we may feel safe.

Airline black boxes, random drug/alcohol tests, log books, GPS tracking etc etc. Why is it ok for those poor suckers and not for the rest of us?

Last I heard pilots don't take the 747 out for personal trips.

And most truck/bus companies wouldn't allow it either (with the exception of owner/operator... which doesn't matter anyway because I doubt the owner will tell himself off for using the truck wrong)

[manga_blue]

But I think a sophisticated policy which treats people as not-dumb (e.g. please drive to the conditions of the day) is not going to fail because 'people are dumb'.

Actually we already know it works. One of the biggest improvements we've had in highway safety in the last 10 or 20 years has been around fatigue. Because you cannot remotely detect fatigue then you cannot punish it. Governments resorted to positive advertising and education instead. It worked.