Speed kills?

Drive - Safety expert for Mercedes says strict speeding laws are not the answer to lowering road tolls. ...The vice president of safety development for Mercedes-Benz, Ulrich Mellinghoff, says crash avoidance systems, better roads and more roundabouts would do more to cut the road toll than tougher speeding laws. The approach is in direct contrast to state governments in NSW and Victoria, who have been preaching the "speed kills" mantra as the number one panacea for the road toll.
Indeed it is, we hear it at every turn, speed kills, speed kills, speed kills, like an irritating, incessant baboon asking for some hot lead. Lots of people are killed on our roads every month and still the constant droning from our moronic authorities is, speed kills. The reason why that message is failing to reduce the number of road deaths is because it's part bullshit. You see, according to them if you go over the speed limit, you'll go up in flames and die.

Well, I've driven over Australia's national limit of 110km/h in plenty of other countries and I ain't dead, lots of clowns speed on our roads in really dumb ways and they manage to live and that's what undermines the message that speed kills, it simply does not kill all the time. There was a fellow who got arrested in a Bentley not long ago doing 240km/h or something and he didn't die, so there goes their dumb message blown to pieces.

The latest message from our authorities is an ad with a truck driver telling his fellow truckies that they are now measuring average speeds, so you can't just slow down for the cameras and speed up after that. In the ad the driver says that he's a good driver because he always watches his speed. Gee that makes us feel real safe, don't worry about the road, never mind the other cars, never mind the rain, the bends and what not, just watch your speed and you'll be right.

" In Germany you can drive as fast as you want. I don't think that speed alone is the problem. It's the wrong speed in a special situation. With speed limits you will not stop those situations. If you have fog and drive at 100km/h, which is allowed, you are really in high danger of having an accident. On the other hand, if you drive 250km/h on the German autobahn in clear weather conditions with no traffic, it's not really a risk and no accidents happen in those situations," he says.
I saw a program on the autobahns over there, it's amazing how much maintenance and care goes into those roads and it's all so that you can travel safely at eye-watering speeds, if you so choose. Compared to them, the roads we have here are damn goat tracks, I can count on one hand the number of roads without potholes I've driven on in Australia.

The other problem with our road laws is the one-size-fits-all approach, so essentially you can be driving a high performance sports car with ceramic brakes, high performance tires that cost more than an old car but the state considers your car the same as some old piece of shit Daewoo or a 1970s jalopy. And don't get me started on how pathetic our driving license test is, you'll fail the test if you can't reverse park the car, but no problem if you can't actually stop the car in an emergency stop, go figure!

Having said all this, I know it's really just a waste of time trying to get the speed limits raised or the roads improved. We're run by incompetent retards who put irritating cyclists amongst the cars and tell us to hold hands and share the road, so they wouldn't know a good idea if is kicked them all in the ass at the same time. Besides we're pretty much broke and can't pay for shit, let alone improve the roads.

So just jack up the volume and avoid the pot holes, until the bastards try to outlaw that too.

11 comments:

  1. Indeed, it's not the speed in and of itself that is the danger. It's the recklessness, the inattention, the driving inappropriate to the situation, and so on, and these things can be done at any speed.

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  2. I've driven 240 km/h on the German autobahn. It's great if conditions are good. People drive correctly and the roads are made for it.

    But changing speed laws simply so the government can control your life and make you safe is bad too. In the American west you have to drive long distances. In the conservative states like Idaho and Utah the speed limit is 75 mph, but get into the liberal states like Washington and it drops to 70 or 60 mph. Get into Oregon and goes to 60 or 50 mph. Try driving hundreds of miles across an empty state on roads designed much higher speed and the main danger is falling asleep and dying in a head on with another car.

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  3. It's not speed, it's hitting stationary objects, other road users etc that is the problem. If speed kills, then zero speed is the only solution. No one goes anywhere... don't tell the leftists - they'd love that idea.

    Soon the leftists will have GPS chips in every vehicle so they can monitor your speed everywhere you go, for your safety of course. They're not interested in where you might be going, oh no no no. Safety is priority one.

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  4. Thanks for the comments folks.

    Indeed Ilíon, and many have died doing just the legal limit.

    I have tried that here Eugene, it's really dangerous, even when you drive in the day, you just start dozing off. Off course the nannies tell us to take 2 hour breaks and what not, but that means it take an extra hour or two to get home, screw that. I find munching on chips while driving keeps me awake.

    "Soon the leftists will have GPS chips in every vehicle so they can monitor your speed everywhere you go...."

    It's coming we know it, we know the scumbags want to monitor every minute of our lives. They get off on such things.

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  5. In 22 years as a member of New South Wales Police, I attended in excess of 300 motor vehicle collision, ranging from minor street accidents or “fender benders,” (the vast majority), to fatal and serious injury collisions.

    The real killer on the road is incompetence, or the inability to control a vehicle if things go wrong, but you can’t legislate against stupidity, and governments have to be “seen” to be doing something, so they focus everyone’s attention on Speed and Booze. People die because the standard of driving required to obtain a driving licence is pitifully low, but at the end of the year, when the death toll figures roll in, the politicians and snivelling curs of senior police (at Superintendent level and above), can get on TV and crap on about “We’ve breath-tested X-thousand drivers, issued such-and-such-many traffic infringements, booked blah, blah, blah-thousand drivers for speeding, WHAT MORE CAN WE DO??” and throw their hands in the air, so the average bozo who doesn’t look any further than what he is told by, well, people who tell him stuff, will think, “They’re doing everything they can,” and go back to watching Oprah, or scratching his arse, and the deaths roll on.

    Every NSW Police officer has to undergo driver training before being certified to drive a police vehicle, even on non-urgent duty, and part of the training is a two-hour session on a skid-pan. There is no pass or fail on the skid-pan component, (although there is a rigid standard required to pass the entire course), but I was once told that two hours on the skid pan is considered to be worth two years driving experience on the roads. Collisions involving police cars are always big news, so there may be a perception that they are more frequent than they are, and although I am not privy to the statistics, you will find that the NSW Police fleet has less prangs per kilometre travelled overall, than average, and police cars are on the road twenty-four hours a day, in all road conditions.

    Yet, the politicians will not support, and in fact, some oppose, advanced training for ordinary drivers, or even some straining in skid control, because they say it will make them “over-confident” and cause them to have more accidents. Only last week, some expert from the Roads and Traffic Authority was expounding just that view in the Sydney newspaper.

    So, if better driving skills make drivers more dangerous, then why on earth does the same state government require advanced training for police officers, before they are even allowed to drive a police car to Macca’s for morning tea, presumably for safety reasons? This attitude is costing lives, and the dying and the maiming will continue indefinitely, because politicians are not interested in fixing anything, but just want to be seen to be doing something. “Speed Kills” is a slogan that sounds good to the average person, it is snappy and can be thrown up on a warning sign, but it is meaningless. I like to say to advocates of the Speed Kills delusion, “Have you ever exceeded the speed limit?” The answer is always yes, and my response is to ask how come they’re still alive. There is more to it than speed, but they just don't get it.

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  6. None of this is to say that excessive speed in the wrong circumstances is dangerous and can lead to road fatalities, because I have been to many prangs where excessive speed for the conditions was a factor, but I have rarely if ever seen a prang where “Speeding” was the cause. The focus on speed limits, with speed cameras everywhere, is all about revenue raising, and any politician or cop who says otherwise is a lying sack of shit with blood on his or her hands, because they are part of the problem.

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  7. Sorry, that should have read:

    "None of this is to say that excessive speed in the wrong circumstances is NOT dangerous .. "

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  8. I could have written a lot more above, but I am sure people have better things to do than read my rantings. However, this is a sore point with me, and I’ve seen the dead bodies, and I’ve seen the pretty lady being put in the body bag, and I’ve knocked on doors in the middle of the night to tell people that they’ll never see their loved ones again, and I know there’s more to fixing the problem than stupid slogans, and cameras everywhere, and stupid, ignorant politicians mouthing platitudes, and promising to “get tough on speeding.”

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  9. "Collisions involving police cars are always big news ..."

    I've been in a collision with a police car (twice, in fact). I'll go to my grave believing that the officer in the second instance *chose* me to rear-end him. Though, admittedly, if I hadn't distracted my attention toward a building I had passed (I was admiring its stained/cut glass window), rather than keeping my focus on driving, his plot (if there was one) would not have worked.

    "The focus on speed limits, with speed cameras everywhere, is all about revenue raising ..."

    Indeed. Sometimes it backfires, eventually.

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  10. I personally have done 240 kph across the Westgate Bridge on a motorcycle here in Melbourne, Australia.

    and guess what...?

    I'm still alive.

    Speed doesn't kill; money grabbing road laws and leglisation by people with their heads in the sand kills!

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  11. Well said Phil, thanks for taking the time to say all that. I went for the advanced driver training a while ago, i went for the murcotts one, stage one and two. Since then i've learned to avoid dangerous situations and now i can often see a situation starting to happen so i can stay the heck out of it.

    "Yet, the politicians will not support, and in fact, some oppose, advanced training for ordinary drivers, or even some straining in skid control, because they say it will make them “over-confident” and cause them to have more accidents."

    Yeah, that really pisses me off too, since i went for the advanced training, there have been numerous roads that i've seen where driving on the posted limit is just asking for trouble. Close to my work, i figured out a section of road where there's a blind exit and cyclists go riding by as a danger zone, i've personally witnessed 3 incidents of cyclists and pedestrians getting knocked over by drivers not speeding, but unaware that they're approaching a blind corner. Things like that cannot be picked up in a class room or via a dumb message, you learn it when you see what happens when you don't see the possibility of danger and how long it takes to stop.

    What these assholes won't get is that with better training, you can see yourself where you need to slow down and take extra care, but they think that it'll just make us more crazy and drive even faster. The difference is that it teaches you where you should slow down more than the posted limit and also where you can drive a bit faster to avoid fatigue and boredom.

    The other thing the training showed me was the characteristics of the car and tires that play such a vital role in preventing an accident, bout a week after the test, i went and bought some high-performance tires for my piece of shit runabout, it was amazing what a difference it made to handling and braking. It was literally the difference between sliding out of control and stopping the car.

    Since then i traded it in and got a better car, one that's not just big on airbags and things, but also big on avoiding the mess in the first place.

    "I personally have done 240 kph across the Westgate Bridge on a motorcycle here in Melbourne, Australia. and guess what...? I'm still alive."

    Well yes it proves the point doesn't it, but i wouldn't advocate that sort of thing. Hope you still don't do that sort of thing.

    Back when i was growing up, i did some dumb things like stealing dad's car cos i just didn't know any better. But now that i went on the training and i know what it feels like to lose control at speed, i just can't do that anymore, we all know places where one can let loose without getting caught but my body just won't let me, it knows that it can all turn to shit in seconds and as Phil mentioned above, it'll be some poor copper who has to knock on that door to break the news.

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