At long last, justice may come to hoons who kill

Reggie says:

08:52am | 15/05/11

Never mind about the bleeding heart judges, get the bleeding heart drivers BEFORE they kill.

A few overnight and week-end detentions for hoonery as minor as inattention (phone use) while in charge of a vehicle. We’d finish up with cells overcrowded with plumbers and cement-truck drivers in their snake-proof boots and cute little girlies in the winter tu-tus and running mascara. Confiscate the phone or stick it under their front wheel and get them to drive over it with their cement truck or what-ever. A colourful crime should attract a colourful punishment.  Something they can tell their mates about. ” You wouldn’t believe it mayte, this copper got out a BIG hammer and this ginormous chisel and chopped me bloody fone in half.”

Erick says:

09:19am | 15/05/11

Good point, S.L. I bought a small car recently and I was surprised to find its performance was superior to that of the hulking V8s of my youth. Yet, overall, the number of road deaths has decreased since the 70s.

adolon says:

10:34am | 15/05/11

We can also stop making excuses for young men to act like idiots, under that ‘boys will be boys’ pretext. Having been one myself until recent years (I’m 25), I understand this resignation, the shrugging of the shoulders, only helps to encourage an environment where guys think being an idiot is acceptable behaviour. Laudable even, in the eyes of their mates and other male figures, both younger and older. After all, its ‘expected’.

S.L says:

12:05pm | 15/05/11

Erick I think the fall in road fatalities has as much to do with RBT as the vehicles we drive today. As you may remember we would get drunk and it was lucky the car knew it’s way home! I find the people who get caught high range today would drink/drive even if it was a manditory custodial sentence. You don’t hear of the thousands who go .06 which 30 years ago was under the legal limit. A rough call maybe but it’s changing drink driving habits.

Erick says:

02:34pm | 15/05/11

I agree, S.L. Random breath testing is one of the main contributors to road safety these days. Also, there have been many advances in car design, which have helped.

My new car, although faster than any of my old cars, uses only half as much fuel. It actually weighs more than the earlier models - I think the extra body strength and safety features are responsible for that.

I guess I’m rambling a bit - but compared with what I was driving 30 years ago, today’s cars are a major advance.

marley says:

04:17pm | 15/05/11

I too think random breath testing has something to do with it, but let’s not forget seatbelts, either, or the better design of cars.

I saw a program, Top Gear probably, testing one of the big old Volvos against a little modern subcompact in a head-on crash - and if you’d been in the little car, you’d have walked away with a few bruises, but if you’d been in the old Volvo, you’d have lost a leg.  The engineering is just so much better these days compared with the best engineering of 20 or 30 years ago.

acotrel says:

10:12pm | 15/05/11

I really object to this ‘hoon’ label that the cops have invented.  It simply demonises the young blokes.  Are we supposed to forget about the older drongos who get into road rage? I recently struck one of those jerks on the Hume Hwy.  Apparently I was in the right hand lane a shade too long, and so he wanted to give me driving lesson.  He got in front of me and started obstructing in every way he could!  I ‘ve never seen any of the kids get into that stuff, they usually just get on with driving.

acotrel says:

10:23pm | 15/05/11

Erick, If you remember in the 70s it was quite legal to drive straight thru an intersection without even slowing.  The tow trucks used to station themselve to pick up business.  Then the idiots in government put a stop sign on every intersection, and policed them. - good for revenue! The Bracks govt,. in Victoria quietly put ‘give way’ signs up where needed.  So now the intention of the law makers is a bit sensible. In addition we now have enforced seat belt laws.  It’s noticable that the motorbike helmet laws can in during the 50s.  It took another ten years for the govt. to get game enough to fix up the motorists.  The road toll propaganda is a load of crap anyway.  Our toll in Vic is about 400 per annum, in the 70s it was 1038 in one year. The law of diminishing returns applies, but fining motorists is good for revenue even if it achieves bugger all!

Austin 3:16 says:

10:31am | 15/05/11

Hey Michael, the article doesn’t say what he was charged with.

For all we know it might just have been driving without due care and attention or similar.

michael j says:

02:27pm | 15/05/11

It does say He WAS Under the effects of alcohol and cannabis,ALSO
says ‘John Swindle was killed by a 17-year-old speeding along Saint Bernards Road’’ ALSO says he says he sped away from accident,,,
EVEN if he got away with a plea bargain ,,neg driving causing Death
one would think he would have got slotted,,plenty of 17 yr olds inside
for lesser things than this,,,But as you say ,,there is something missing
for him to have got a $1,000 fine ,,,this is why Courts have to decide the sentence ,,to allow for circumstance,,,,,

Tator says:

06:12pm | 15/05/11

Michael J,
it was in the Youth Court which generally tends to be more lenient than a District Court, but then again, you look at the case of a father and late teens son who got suspended sentences after putting an 55yo man in hospital with plates in his skull after a road rage incident where they followed him into the toilet of a fast food restaurant but the DPP appealed that one and the dad ended up with 18 months inside

Jotun says:

09:55am | 15/05/11

Well said mate. There needs to be more recreational areas for car lovers to go racing off the streets. The people who make the laws and devise the policies to deter anti-social driving don’t realize that it’s a love of speed, or a love of cars as well that creates street racing. Build free, accessible motorsport facilities, and watch the tiny minority of street racing-related deaths extinguish.

Bazza says:

11:17am | 15/05/11

I have done a little reading on this in the past, but could not find any evidence to support the idea that providing a facility where people can drive their cars quickly does anything for driver safety. I am also dubious on whether they could simply turn off their “fast driving brain” when they leave the motoring compound either - even Lewis Hamilton himself was caught doing a burnout in his Mercedes whilst leaving the Melbourne race track last year, and he drives the fastest cars in the world around a controlled environment.

There is still a small element of society who will drive recklessly, so penalties and education will simply not penetrate their brains. They may not even go to a racetrack even if they were provided the facility, maybe because the police will be there, waiting to defect their illegally modified vehicle. So it’s may not get their behaviour off the roads.

But it’s the members of these small elements who are driving the legislation, bans and education campaigns. I have no counter proposal, but I am not convinced of the value of a racetrack for kids to “vent their frustration”

acotrel says:

10:03pm | 15/05/11

@Bazza There are older people in our community who still cannot driver a car safely.  But the sad fact is they’ve NEVER been able to drive with any real competence!  If you’ve never driven on a race circuit yourself, I challenge you to drive your car safely when it has swapped ends on a slippery road.  Most drivers have never had the experience! I raced motorcycles for several years in the 60s and 70s.  I’m no slouch at driving a car.  But I’ve been driving over the Black Spur, and some of the kids have blown me to the weeds.  It says something about our licencing systems, if the conditions back me off that much, and they still go at it?

Nick says:

12:42am | 16/05/11

@ Bazza, I went to the track last Saturday, i drove a hour to get there, spent 6 hours drifting my car then drove a hour to get home and didn’t do anything stupid on the road but i did see a lot of other people doing stupid things and none of them were hoons, just your average idiot who doesn’t know how to drive, also it was proven with the drag strips in Sydney and WA that opening one would lower hooning in the area’s around it, we dont even need to spend any government money to have a new motorplex in Adelaide but out goverment wont let it happen

Burko says:

04:33pm | 16/05/11

Competent race craft dosent equal competent road craft. In a previous life I was an Instructor for both motorcycles and cars, in a risk management and RTA assessment role and have also been a riding marshall for motorcycle track days. Race tracks are a totally different kettle of fish to the road and in my experience there is nothing I would take from the track and use on the road. The risk assocciated with road driving far out weigh the track risks.
  Jotun says “The people who make the laws and devise the policies to deter anti-social driving don’t realize that it’s a love of speed, or a love of cars as well that creates street racing” Sorry mate, not true. Poor decision making skills are what cause “street racing” and nothing more. Dont get me wrong, I love driving and riding really fast, but have never or will ever “street race” as there is a time and place for everything.
It is a problem, I fear, we will never be able to fix. Driving is such a personal thing that challenging someones ideas on how it should be done usually gets them offside and then you’ve pretty much lost the battle. I think we have to accept that some people will only be detered by heavy sentences rather than it being the accepted thing not to do.

LC says:

04:23pm | 15/05/11

Changing a CD requires you to take both hands off the wheel
Changing a radio station requires merely the press of a button.
And in my honest opinion, neither should be done while a car is in motion.
I stopped being able to count the number of times people doing stuff other than just driving have nearly knocked me off my motorbike on both fingers and toes after just over a month.

Brian B says:

01:50pm | 15/05/11

What makes you think the Army wants them?

Amongst other attributes, soldiers require discipline and adherence to rigid mental and physical training regimes. Hoons don’t fit the bill.

The Driver says:

02:04pm | 15/05/11

Idiotic statement.

Paulb says:

05:22pm | 15/05/11

We will continue to see police as “revenue raisers” as long as that appears to be their primary focus when enforcing traffic rules.  When they stop pinging housewives doing 65 in a four-lane 60 zone and start doing some actual policing of anti-social behaviour on the roads then many of us may revise our opinions.  Until they return to that kind of policing they are being little more than revenue raisers.

Septimus says:

05:43pm | 15/05/11

Yes Paulb,

We should be selective in enforcement of the law.  Why should housewives who break the law be responsible for their actions?  Let’s make it against the law for only some of use - if they don’t like you, the car you drive, the suburb your from, the clothes you wear. 

Yes, only proceed against the selective few.  A much fairer system.

malohi says:

05:58pm | 15/05/11

Paulb, you have no idea.
Have you ever done a death message?
Have you ever been first on scene to a teenager with head allover the windscreen? Have you ever assisted collect parts from the highway and 5 minutes later get abused by road users for holding up their drive home?

Who do you think does these things? What would you know of “actual policing”?
The term revenue raising is so stupid. It is proffered by morons who cannot accept that they are at fault for breaking the law. Infants who cannot take responsibility for their actions.
No police are rostered to be in speed camera vans nor do they have any say in fixed speed cameras. In fact, the entirety of rostered trafic Police shifts (Qld at least) are on the road policing anti social behaviour. Guess what Paul, that includes speeding.

This is the problem… People can’t accept that the law applies to them too, when they are caught flouting the law, it is not their fault, it is those damn revenue raising cops…

marley says:

08:01pm | 15/05/11

I don’t know the details of this case, nor how well informed either you or the author are. I do know, however, that it is a principle of our democratic system that the courts must be open to scrutiny and criticism.  Perhaps you have a problem with that, but, not being of the authoritarian persuasion, I do not.

If Ms Anderson feels the courts are being too lenient, are out of touch with current social values, are failing to deliver justice, she has every right to say so. 

The courts are not infallible: far from it.  That’s why we have appeal systems. 

And sometimes, the courts need to get the feedback they deserve from a disgruntled public whose interests they are supposed to serve.  If this is part of that feedback, fine.  Let the magistrates and judges place whatever weight they see fit upon it.

As for banality, I see you’ve managed to string more clichéd images together in your last paragraph than the author did in her entire piece.  Boring twat. Indeed.

Tombowler says:

09:01pm | 15/05/11

Perhaps I should type more carefully so as not to confuse morons such as @Marley.

I do not suggest the Courts are infallible or above criticism. I would however question that ‘Lainie Anderson’ is at all representative of ‘current social values’ or we are all in very serious trouble indeed.

I make the point that where she has no basis for criticism; where it is impossible that the critc has in fact read or is even entirely sure of the nature of what they criticize then it is irresponsible and ridiculous.

1.Lainie has not read the sentencing remarks that were handed down in the Youth Court; being as it’s a closed court

2.she therefore does not and can not know the facts as they were found and accepted

3. Therefore she cannot know the reasons and basis upon which such a lenient sentence was handed down

4. Therefore she is unqualified to make any comment without the disclaimer that her comments are made not only bereft of specialized knowledge but that she is actively ignorant in the subject and that her comments are totally divorced from the facts that one would have thought might fall under the expected diligent journalistic research one expects on a column discussing law reform.

Finally, a personal note;  You don’t see the disconnect between determining sentencing through the fair ‘court of public opinion’ and calling other authoritarian?

You don’t think allowing a middle-age, lightweight op writer for that god-awful tabloid ‘The Advertiser’ to pronounce her own sentence that the lad “...just killed someone and walked away” without the benefit of any of the facs is, if not authoritarian, then fuckin’ stupid?

I suspect I touched a nerve with my shot at the cheap insta-coffee. My apologies. If you live in Melb, Syd or Adl I can point you in the direction of a good cup. Alternatively look at a Saeco; if thats out of the price range then Breville or Sunbeam make some good machines. Enjoy