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Thread ID: 110208	2010-06-07 19:40:00	Lowest Road Toll in 50 Years! Good Policing or Good Luck?	xyz823 (13649)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1107897	2010-06-16 22:03:00	What is wrong with revenue gathering? Helps pay for the Police who are out doing it . :cool: Does it? Most of it goes into the Justice system and away from Road Policing and Safety . I probably would not be thinking it was revenue gathering if I did not know how the money was collected was distributed . The policy and directiion of police attention is targetted at an easy target . If you exceed the speedlimit by of 1-10 kph attracts a $30 fine and 10 points if enforced antyways!!! Thats where the good judgement and policing comes in, allowing an officer to excercise judgement at the roadside . Guilty as charged is zero tolerance, and then the money from the infringements (not fines) gets caught up in the judicial system to become fines or court costs . Safer roads? Maybe but when an incident does occur first blame is speeding but beyond that and expectation of the emergency services to be able to deal with it! Slight problem then because the lower number of road accidents cuts the budget to the Fire Service equipment used to deal with road accidents! Equipment that a lot of volunteer brigades are self funded from donations . But no one is made aware of that because it was speeding that caused the death of a motorist . So how much of that Speeding ticket goes to the rescue equipment needed when things go wrong? Its revenue gathering because the court sytem is where the money ends up in the pockets of lawyers, during recession on of the safest jobs is to be a lawyer .	coldfront (15814)
1107898	2010-06-17 00:49:00	Thats where the good judgement and policing comes in, allowing an officer to excercise judgement at the roadside. Maybe I'm strange but I'd prefer that a single person with all their associated prejudices (we all have them) didn't have the power to make that sort of decision (and that's ignoring the general demeanour/intelligence of the police force). Write the law the way it's supposed to be enforced. Why is that so difficult? Ok, for careless driving that's much more difficult, and probably impossible to achieve. For speed limits, it's trivial. Reassess all speed limits, then enforce them. This half assed +10% policy is stupid and only breeds resentment.	shermo (12739)
1107899	2010-06-17 09:51:00	What is wrong with revenue gathering? Helps pay for the Police who are out doing it. :cool: For one thing the police end up being disrespected which only makes their job harder. I am amazed at how often they are set up to catch people where it will gain the most revenue and not where it will have the most affect on the road toll.	mikebartnz (21)
1107900	2010-06-17 10:04:00	For one thing the police end up being disrespected which only makes their job harder. I am amazed at how often they are set up to catch people where it will gain the most revenue and not where it will have the most affect on the road toll. I feel that when the MOT traffic department got merged into the Police it was a backward step for both departments. It didn't help the Public at large either.	Sweep (90)
1107901	2010-06-17 10:51:00	For one thing the police end up being disrespected which only makes their job harder. I am amazed at how often they are set up to catch people where it will gain the most revenue and not where it will have the most affect on the road toll. I think you hit the nail on the head there Mike:thumbs: Shermo, you still dont get it though or have you been so brainwashed with the speed kills campaign? You blast down the Highway at lets say 130kph and get pulled over for speeding or have your photo taken a couple of times your not being very clever and you know it. Your cruising along at what you think is 100kph and just for a couple of seconds between looking at the speedo you find you have not noticed a minor dip in the road or rested the foot a bit to much! Suddenly you note your doing 110kph you compensate but it is to late the strategically placed speed camera has got you. Oh but hang on your driving a Jappa and that 110kph is actually 100 kph on the radar, thats fine. But what if your not and your driving a correctly calibrated speedo then you are truly doing 110kph? So its ok to cruise at 110kph in the jappa but not 110kph in a correctly calibrated car? Until we get that balance right and everyone has a car conforming to a standard then how can you say a tolerance is not needed? As it stands the Police can ticket you with no tolerance but your speedo accuracy determines that tolerance. Sorry I think its a bit unfair that you can drive one car at 110kph and escape a ticket but another car with spot on speedometer at 110kph and get a ticket. Why so innacurate? The argument from car companies is that, if the car has low tyre pressures or modified wheels and tyres, there’s a risk the speedo will show a speed that’s lower than the actual speed. So setting the speedo higher makes sure this doesn’t happen. In more litigious countries, setting the speedo higher also prevents car manufacturers from being sued for the cost of its customers’ speeding tickets. The New Zealand Transport Authority says any speedometer inaccuracy is likely to result in motorists driving slower, not faster. It also says that “there would be little road safety value in mandating a time-consuming and costly check of speedometer accuracy”. But when it comes to very inaccurate speedos we disagree. Traffic is safest when everyone is moving at the same speed. Someone driving at an indicated 90km/h with a speedo reading that’s 18 percent too high will in fact be travelling at 74km/h. Another vehicle with an accurate speedo could be travelling at 100km/h – so that’s a total speed difference of 26km/h. If you’re travelling too slowly, you’ll get a queue of vehicles and this may tempt other drivers into recklessness. Also, if you replace a car that has a very inaccurate speedo with one that’s accurate, you’ll start driving faster without realising it. What happens when you arrive at a tricky corner not realising you’re going too fast? Last three paragraphs from here www.consumer.org.nz	coldfront (15814)
1107902	2010-06-17 23:08:00	Nicely put Coldfront Nothing worse than slow drivers holding up traffic, yet their speedos are probably reading 100kph	Gobe1 (6290)
1107903	2010-06-17 23:17:00	Whats the great hurry anyway? If you are tempted to do some stupid reckless maneuver because you are frustrated by a slow driver its just Charles Darwins law of natural selection coming into play. In time the reckless do something risky gene will be removed by natural selection. On a trip if behind a slow vehicle I have just used the time to look at the scenery but try to stop any kamazakies from overtaking from behind me.	prefect (6291)
1107904	2010-06-18 00:09:00	Risk is inherent in all of us otherwise we would crawl back into the womb. however i agree totally with Coldfront's post and yes I am as guilty as everyone else I have had speeding tickets, it's nobody else's fault but my own nobody made me speed. Nowadays that i'm older I do my best to avoid costly fines by not speeding. As Spike Milligan put it in one of his war diaries. Back in WW2 you could say to your passengers "have a look at that" now you say "did you see that"?	gary67 (56)
1107905	2010-06-18 01:59:00	Shermo, you still dont get it though or have you been so brainwashed with the speed kills campaign? Hmm? I wasn't advocating lower speed limits . I was advocating people obey laws, and not just the laws they think matter (This seems to be a common opinion) . As speed limits currently stand, they're woefully low in some areas and probably too high in others . It's the numerous situations where speed limits are too low that breed the attitude of 'come on mate, I was only going 10k over the speed limit' and pressure police into letting people off . I'm suggesting that we change speed limits in areas where they are too low, and then enforce the revised speed limits . As an added bonus this cuts out the need for police to exercise judgement after stopping someone (excuse me if I don't trust judgement from some police I've come across) . Example: We have the same 100k speed limit on motorways as we do in the north section of the desert road . This is ridiculous . Increase motorway limits to 110-120k, reduce the limit on that bit of the desert road to 80 . Realistically speeds on motorways aren't going to change, but people don't get used to driving 10-20 k over the speed limit . Your argument about speedos is irrelevant . Get a speedo that works, or if you don't trust it, drive 5k under the speed limit . Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, lets do away with speedos all together, then anyone can go any speed they want . Why so innacurate? The argument from car companies is that, if the car has low tyre pressures or modified wheels and tyres, there’s a risk the speedo will show a speed that’s lower than the actual speed . So setting the speedo higher makes sure this doesn’t happen . In more litigious countries, setting the speedo higher also prevents car manufacturers from being sued for the cost of its customers’ speeding tickets . Somewhat unrelated, but if you drive a modern car with trip statistics do this experiment . Find a flat, straight bit of road, set your cruise control to 100kph, reset your trip . Drive for 5 minutes, check your average speed . In the car I tested it in it was noticeably under 100kph . This suggests to me that the trip computer has a different (higher) reading than your cruise control setting . Maybe there's some other explanation though .	shermo (12739)
1107906	2010-06-18 09:03:00	Your argument about speedos is irrelevant. Get a speedo that works, or if you don't trust it, drive 5k under the speed limit. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, lets do away with speedos all together, then anyone can go any speed they want. No its not irrelevant its a fact and if you read that report and looked into it a bit closer you would find out how relevant it is. You trust that speedometer to be accurate but how do you know? You dont unless you have it checked either by another vehicle following assuming they have an accurate one! Dyno Road or GPS of the last two Dyno Road is the most accurate as many models of GPS tends to have some lag. Get a speedo that works, or if you don't trust it, drive 5k under the speed limit. Great sugestion since most speedometer calibration checks done by the AA found the error was you were travelling slower than indicated.	coldfront (15814)
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