Vic: Driver instruction the key, not speed

AAP General News (Australia)
04-01-2010
Vic: Driver instruction the key, not speed

By Robert Grant

MELBOURNE, April 1 AAP - In Germany a newly-licensed 18-year-old can legally drive
at 300km/h on public roads. Nobody has a problem with this. So why is Germany's per capita
road toll lower than Victoria's?

Victoria's road safety mantra is "speed kills". If this were true in isolation, clearly
there would be no drivers left on German roads.

Germany and other EU countries have been able to steadily reduce their road tolls,
not by draconian and absurd speed limit tolerances, but by concentrating on the real reasons
for road deaths.

Why is "hoon" driving not an issue in Europe, why is road rage rare? Because European
drivers are taught to be courteous and competent. Victorian drivers, however, are often
aggressive and unskilled.

The state government's latest official campaign labelling people misbehaving on the
roads as "dickheads" will draw derision from the young. (Is it then fair to call a police
officer a "dickhead" if he is unnecessarily rude to you?)

Jeremy Clarkson of the British motoring television show Top Gear recently caused an
outrage while in Australia when he declared speed does not necessarily kill.

The trebling of speed cameras in the UK has demonstrably failed to reduce the road
toll compared with most other European countries.

British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was rightly condemned for his childish burnout
while leaving the Albert Park track before the Australian Grand Prix last week.

But Australia's F1 racer Mark Webber was lambasted for calling Australia a "nanny state"

with too many speeding and parking rules - and a popular newspaper opinion poll revealed
85 per cent of Victorians agreed with him.

Even an NBA basketballer, car-mad Australian Andrew Bogut, on Tuesday offered to help
introduce facilities where young drivers can be trained in proper car control.

Victorian Premier John Brumby was ambivalent about the suggestion.

Teaching young drivers how to control cars before they are given licences is costly.

Sending them out without proper knowledge of driving techniques or extensive testing,
then fining them for exceeding the speed limit by more than 3km, is far more cost-effective.

Speeding fines bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the state's coffers but a
lack of intensive driver training leaves young drivers clueless and vulnerable when they
venture onto the roads, armed with little more than knowing how to park and read speed
signs.

There are clear statistics to back up the proposition that Victoria and other Australian
states are squandering chances to save lives by their obsession with reaping revenue.

According to the federal government's International Road Safety Comparisons 2007 report,
Australia ranked 14th in road deaths with 7.6 per 100,000 population among a list of OECD
nations.

Germany, with Porsches and Lamborghinis flying down autobahns at three times the Australian
speed limit, ranked ninth with six deaths per 100,000.

Moreover, in the years 2004-07 Germany's figures fell steadily from 7.1 to 6.0.

In the same period Australia, despite its road blitzes and crackdowns, remained virtually
static, moving from 6.9 in 2004 to 6.4 in 2007.

While NSW experienced an increase of 85 deaths for a total of 459 last year, Victoria
recorded its lowest ever road toll, with 295 fatalities, compared to 1061 in 1971.

Victoria's deputy police commissioner Ken Lay puts the drastic reduction down to seat
belts, random breath tests and blitzes on speed, including mobile speed cameras.

"We know that they work and we know that they save lives," Mr Lay has said.

But Mr Lay also told us this week as he announced an Easter speed blitz after deaths
in the state reached 80, 11 more than for the same time last year, the state was in for
its "worst road toll in five years".

In February 2008 the German national newsagency DPA reported that the number of road
deaths in Germany fell to 4970 in 2007 - the lowest since figures were first kept in 1953.

But Germany's major motoring organisation, the ADAC, attributed the fall not to motorists
speeding less but to improved car safety figures, better roads and improved driving instruction.

"Improved driving instruction" does not exist in Victoria.

A learner driver here is required to log 120 hours in a car alongside a fully licensed
driver, 20 at night.

But a VicRoads spokesperson admitted that to all intents and purposes a learner could
do endless laps of a freeway until the required hours were logged.

Further, you do not even have to prove that you have logged any miles at all, it seems,
as long as you get through the licence test.

There is also no advanced driver eduction - drivers gradually move up to drive in busier
traffic and are taught basics such as safely changing lanes, using indicators etc.

It's a little different in Europe.

In Finland, for example, part of the licence test requires a driver to complete three
full days on a wet skid pan, leaning how to actually keep a car under control.

Britain has proved that speed cameras do not work.

Two years ago the Daily Mail newspaper reported that roadside cameras had trebled in
six years while mobile speed traps across the country increased 14-fold.

Britain had the highest number of speed cameras in Europe, yet between 2001 and 2005
road deaths declined just seven per cent compared to a 35 per cent drop in France and
a 25 per cent drop in Sweden and the Netherlands.

In Australia, nothing will change as long as the states are seduced by revenue from
trivial offences and ignores the real issues.

The buck for this in Victoria should stop with the state government. Unfortunately
far too many bucks stop with the government, all for the wrong reasons, when it comes
to road safety.

AAP rg/pmu/dep/apm

KEYWORD: SPEED (AAP NEWS ANALYSIS)

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