Speed limiting drivers is a human rights breach

Michael says:

10:24am | 01/06/09

I doubt this plan will work or even go ahead, then again Rees probably knows he won’t be elected and wants to pull a Johny and bring in something everyone hates and no one but potential profiteers want.

If people want the road toll to lower we need to teach people how to drive, young and old, especially the young, the road rules book is something you gotta pay for, I don’t think many of my friends bought one, I didn’t and I had to learn the hard (fine) way I didn’t know all the rules.

Also there’s not enough access to places where vehicles can be driven fast and played with, sure they ain’t toys but boys and girls will always want to do burn outs and dough nuts, why isn’t there a safe area near every town where this can go on? I know there’s race tracks, but its all very pro requiring a lot of money and i believe street cars need modifications before being allowed to run.

Peter Knight says:

02:33pm | 01/06/09

Being a Victorian, I have copped speeding fines even though I wasn’t speeding - even my GPS device confirmed that my speedo was accurate.

The rediculous low-tolerance system they have is simply a cover for the corrupt speed camera system.

There’s even a speed camera in laverton - over the Princes Hwy at Forsyth Rd, which regularly dishes out notices accusing motorists of speeding at 108 kmh.

I’d be curious to know that if they brought a similar systenm here, would they still be handing out speeding fiens tho those who have the speed governance? They still do for trucks which are go=verned at 100kmh!

Glen says:

10:19pm | 01/06/09

Two points:

The ‘road toll’ has become an empty signifier. It means whatever someone wants it to mean. In real terms, as a function of drivers on the road and km’s travelled, the road toll has been dropping for over two decades. Where are some real statistics?

The problem shouldn’t be one of the governance of limits—limits of speeding or limits of social acceptibility or limits of whatever—but the behaviour and actions that inevitably lead to such limits becoming an issue. Road rules should be about helping all road users negotiate how they share and collectively use the road as a resource. To focus on limits is to ignore that driving or any other form of road use is a social activity.

Instead of ‘limits’ we should have suggested speeds for traffic, so all road users can become part of the traffic system and negotiate with others in traffic about how they are going to use the road. Traffic not in the contemporary sense of traffic jams, ie as a series of queues, but traffic as a self organising system for the distribution of the road as a resource. Those that want to use the resource of the road all for themselves should be punished for they are not taking part in the social practice and convetions of traffic.