Some road saftey ideas and questions - random

Hi all.

My girlfriend just completed her first year of being on her Ps.
Pleasantly, she received an invoice from the Department of
Infrastructure for $0.00 for her driver's licence for the next year.
After scratching our heads and wondering whether it was an
administrative mistake, or that she had overpaid previously, she noticed
a small note. It congratulated her for her excellent driving record, and
explained that as a reward, her licence renewal was free. I had no idea
that this had been implemented, and it was a pleasant surprise.


So, my questions.

The idea of rewarding safe drivers has been suggested before here, and I
think has been implemented in various forms in Australia, not so long
ago. Does anybody know details of other schemes like these? In
particular, any links to statistics on their effect on road safety?
Also, studies in other countries?

Next, has anyone seen statistics on the effect of the recent police
industrial action in W.A. on the fines collected, and on road safety
during that time?


And my idea (really another question).

After reading the revised (increased across the board) traffic
infringement penalties introduced in W.A. at the start of this year
(http://www.officeofroadsafety.wa.gov.au/penalties/speed.html), I had
some ideas. I'd like to do some background research, and since road
safety seems to be discussed quite often in this newsgroup, I thought
somebody here might be able to point me in the right direction.

If the purpose of fines is to deter unsafe driving, how effective would
the a pure form of reward/punishment system ("Road Safety Jackpot", see
next paragraph) be?

At the end of each year, the total of fines received by the state for
traffic offences for that year is calculated. The costs involved in
administration and enforcement of these fines is deducted from the
total, and the remainder is distributed evenly as a reward amongst all
drivers with a perfect record for that year. This could either be in the
form of a discount on vehicle registration / driver's licence renewal,
or even a cheque (although that's possibly more likely to encourage fraud).

Let the flames begin ;-)

 

never ever ever going to happen.

Such a proposal would be "costed" and confirms that the fines revenue is
indeed entrenched in consolidated revenue.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:17:15 +0900

Less effective as speed camera fines and for the same reason.

The detachment of action from reward. There's no connection between
doing and being rewarded for the doing, so the hindbrain doesn't get
trained.

Plus it doesn't change behaviour, it is about being caught. So at
best it would encourage not being caught.


Zebee

 

You mean its not about safety?

 

The whopping great big flaw in that idea, as nice as it is of the RTA
to do so, is that a clean record doesn't actually mean shit all except
that you didn't actually get caught for anything. Plenty of extremely
bad drivers get away with murder (and could be similarly rewarded with
free licence renewal simply for not getting caught), while many
otherwise good drivers end up getting even more heavily penalised for
those few seconds over the limit on the empty freeway when they were
doing 5kph over the posted limit. It sounds good in theory, but works
appallingly badly in practice, and if that's what they're doing then
it should be scrapped.

Damien
GPX250 -> CBR600 -> F650/R1200GS (when the $$$ are there!)

 

Traffic enforcement has been collecting fines for decades. There has
never been any historic co-relation between fines and safety. Why start
now?

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Yeah, I can see how this scheme could work well.. for the government.
Rewarding people for not getting caught wouldn't be enough. In this day
and age of corporatisation people need targets and incentives, so
targets would be set.. unachievable targets probably, but you can't just
reward people for normal behaviour... so a 10% reduction in the road
toll would be required per annum in order to 'earn' the bonus... and if
not achieved, the pool would be absorbed into consolidated revenue. Of
course it's pretty obvious from road toll stats, that the road toll has
pretty much achieved it's virtual 0 point.. the last decade or so the
road toll has never really dropped below the levels it hit in the early
90s... and then they would have carte blanche to increase enforcement,
camera deployment, fines etc.. not because they were greedy and
wanted more revenue, and any suggestion that it was revenue raising
would be met by "but the revenue is not for the government.. all the
safe drivers will be the beneficiaries". Etc. (That's all worst case
scenario of course... I'm not as cynical as many here.)

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Let's see. Give me all your money.Do you feel safer now ?
Fines are a punitive measure with an added bonus of income for the
finer.
Fines have been around for quite some time, and have been indirectly
included as revenue since then.
Either that or we've made the budget surplus on speeding and parking
tickets.

The money goes IN .. you never see it come OUT.

Not like the roads minister goes "OK we raised 50K on the pacific
highway this week, let's do 50K of improvements" - does he ?

 

Actually; I'm starting to think it might actually have merit.
It would mean that people outside major centres and who drive/ride
infrequently or on non-heavily-trafficked roads would pay less rego while
people who are on the heavily-congested roads and in the high-density areas
would have to obey the rules more closely or pay more.

 

and all those who dont reduced the road toll by 10% will be sentenced
to death :-/

mh
(except Victoria, sentenced to death and fined for being a burden to
the state)

 

I don't know what the road toll distribution is like in Qld, but in
Victoria this isn't the case, though it is for some reason reflected in
current registration charges.. higher in metro and lower in rural areas.

I don't think that people who drive less or driving on less trafficked
roads make someone less likely to become a statistic. About 25% of
Victorians live in rural areas, but they account for around 50% of the
road toll fatalities. Their fines should be doubled, I say.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

I think Clem was saying that, due to less policing, country drivers are less
likely to be caught and fined than their city cousins.
There's a big argument in WA at the moment re seatbelts. The Gov't, for
safety reasons of course, want to increase the fine to $500 because 41 out
of 200 fatalities last year were people not wearing seatbelts. 80% of those
were on country roads, but it will be the 20% in the city who will cop the
fines, despite the fact they will be driving at half the speed without their
seatbelts.

Theo

 

Hmm, the WA Roads people are currently upgrading 5 kms of Gt Northern Hwy on
my route to work. According to the signs it is costing $4.5M, and it will
still only be a 2 lane road. $50K might buy you 50 metres of roadway, or 25
metres of dual carriageway.

Theo

 

I guess it comes back to economies of scale. A city policeman will see
more people a day than a country one, therefore he`ll issue more fines
and generate more revenue.

Works even better for speed cameras.

 

Yep. Heaven forbid that they should actually target the problem.
WA, 26 speed cameras (soon to be doubled) with three now in the country (was
one) where 50% of the fatalities occur.

Theo

Theo

 

I reckon a good portion of those fatalities are from people not getting
to a hospital in time...WA being the size of the moon and all...

 

There is this myth that the incompetent city drivers driving in the country
have all the country accidents. Country accidents mostly involve young
country people coming home from a social occasion (the Pub) because they
have no way of getting home unless they drive.

Theo

 

Not annecdotal assesment. There was a study done in WA some years ago that
came to this conclusion and was published as a leading article in the West
Australian. Not meaning that I can find it for you.

Theo

 

They did publish the actual breakdown a couple of years ago in a
commercial campaign to dispel the myth that city folks can't drive in
the country. I forget the actual breakdown but it was something along
the lines of 90% of rural fatalities were rural residents.. the old
"you're more likely to crash close to home because that's where you do
most of your driving" probability stuff kicking in there.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Ahh.. nothing a quick google couldn't fix.

Victoria 2002.
The lowest metropolitan road toll on record that year.
53% - 211 of the 397 fatalities for the year occurred on country roads.
72% - 152 of the 211 country fatalities were country residents.
28% of drivers killed were over 0.05% BAC

In 2006 57% of road fatalities occurred on country roads.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX