An Australian town has jumped the shark onto the speed kills bandwagon.
A small town in the Australian Outback has decided to change its name for a month in an attempt to increase road safety.
The town of Speed – a blink-and-you’d-miss-it town in the countryside of Victoria – will be known as SpeedKills.
Speed-dwellers are hoping it will persuade drivers to slow down on country roads.
As someone who has driven professionally, held advanced driving qualifications and trained people to drive cars and ride motorcycles professionally, I think I am qualified to comment on this cack. Speed does not kill. Bloody idiots who fail to drive at an appropriate speed for the conditions kill, people who drive too close to other vehicles kill, people who fail to exercise due care and attention kill, people who drive like fuckwits kill…
You will notice a theme here; it is people who kill. People who drive badly and this includes a range of poor driving habits. Speed does not. Simply making people slow down does not make them better drivers, nor does it necessarily make them safer – if anything it can increase people’s perception of safety – “I’m driving slowly, therefore I must be driving safely”. If the road is clear, there is no reason to drive slowly, rather, the driver should make progress at a pace whereupon he can stop in the distance that can be seen to be clear. A good driver will adjust his speed according to the prevailing hazards, his own driving ability, weather conditions and the limits of the vehicle – but this is a bit too complex for the idiots responsible for this risible campaign. Given good conditions, a clear road, fit driver and fast car, why not drive quickly?
The idea was the brainchild of the Victoria Transport Accident Commission, which soon won over Speed’s 45 residents.
45 village idiots, more like if they are won over by a facile hard of thinking campaign such as this. And I’m not sure it should be bestowed with the term brainchild.
It has already proved a hit on the social networking site, Facebook.
My point made, I think.
While the campaign is running, one local resident has even agreed to change his own name.
Phil Down, a local wheat and sheep farmer, will become Phil Slow Down.
Jesus!
Oh well. At least it might stop them from inbreeding for a month.
Maybe they’ll just do it more slowly.
As ‘just’ a car driver and occasional van driver I agree totally with me learned friend. No matter what the speed a bad driver is a bad driver. Sit in a supermarket car park for ten minutes or so and you will see just how dangerous a lot of drivers are whose vehicles are going no more than 10 mph.
And of course if speed is of itself dangerous, then Concorde must have been the most dangerous mode of transport ever to have been built. Wasn’t it?
It’s why that experiment with rail travel failed – everyone died when the train reached 70mph. Oh, wait…
They want people to drive slower because they know the fuckwits can’t manage fast.
I would have thought it preferable to part the fuckwits from their driving licenses.
If the fuckwits can’t manage fast I don’t want to be sharing the road with them…Selfish?? – maybe, but these days I’m quite happy to stick to sensible speed limits, and I pay attention to the road around me and plan accordingly. Over 200,000 miles on two wheels teaches you to use your eyes and thought processes!
This also pays benefits with fuel consumption and general wear & tear. But what I DON’T like is being stuck behind the sort of dozy twat who can’t maintain a steady speed, or panics every time they approach a tree. These types have a habit of suddenly finding the throttle pedal when frustrated followers finally get a clear stretch of road to overtake.
As Jasper Carrot said in a sketch about his mother-in-law – “She’s been driving for 40 years, and never had an accident….SEEN hundreds, though!”
(Caused them, more like.)
No, rational. The answer is not dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, it is raising standards.
I’m afraid this is fairly typical of attitudes in the most speed paranoid state in the country, if not the world. Want to know where the first mandatory seatbelt laws came in? Have a guess. Yep, Victoria, Australia. Having solved the problem of bad drivers all that time ago by making them strap in they then solved it all over again by changing the focus to speed. Are you still enjoying that 10% of the limit + 2 mph leeway you’re given in the UK. Christ, that’s something I actually do miss – it’s 2 km/h here, even on a freeway with a 100 km/h limit. 2 kays! A bloody gust of wind can get you a fine, and it won’t be anything like sixty quid either. $300 or more would be my guess. Frankly I’m amazed it’s taken them this long to latch on to the PR possibilities in a town called Speed, though perhaps that says something about how tiny the place is. Not that it’s very good PR when the Melbourne papers are making almost nothing of it.
Oh and if the speed wowzers of Speed are actually telling people they’re an outback town take it with a pinch of salt. I’ve been through that part of the state and I can tell you there are places that feel more remote in fucking Somerset.
What about those of us who really are slowing down as we get older?
“…if anything it can increase people’s perception of safety – “I’m driving slowly, therefore I must be driving safely”.”
As does the fact that modern cars are packed with so many safety devices that the slow-witted get an inevitable sense of invincibility.
But until they come up with a car that generates its own internal anti-gravity field, you are still at the mercy of the laws of physics.
And remember how you were cursing your PC the other day when you got the Blue Screen of Death, and the X-Box when it failed to sync with your home router? Yeah, not like that will ever happen in your car, eh?
” Given good conditions, a clear road, fit driver and fast car, why not drive quickly?”
Afraid I’ll have to out myself here as the person who, given those circumstances (and no pressing, dire emergency), would stick to 70.
Because 70 is fast enough. I understand the liking for speed, just as I understand that some women will do anything for chocolate. I just don’t seem to share it.
IN answering this, I’m responding to James’ point, too. One of the variables I mentioned was the driver. You as a driver must drive within your limitations. I’m a bit like you – happy to cruise at around 70mph as that is fast enough. That said, on European motorways where there is less traffic, that will creep up to around 80mph. This is a speed at which I am both making progress and comfortable that I can deal with any hazards.
However, moving more specifically to James’ point, if you can no longer make progress, you have to start asking some soul searching questions. Maybe you shouldn’t be using a motorway as travelling too slowly is dangerous. Maybe there comes a point when you have to relinquish your driving licence. I hope that should it come to that, I have the courage to do so.
AE – Yes, I had heard about Victoria’s excessive attitude towards speed and their limited leeway. I have a digital speedo, so can stick to a specified speed if I need to – assuming speedo accuracy. However, with an analogue speedo, I couldn’t be sure that I was within 2kmh.
Indeed, but no-one is going to vote for a politician who wants to take away their driving licences. Far easier to clamp down on these (measurably, not actually) ‘bad’ drivers and try to indoctrinate the simple minded into complicity.
Which is what we are seeing. It doesn’t make it the right thing to do, though.
Actually, I”ll expand on that thought. The roads are a shared resource, therefore it is only right that we demonstrate competence before being allowed to use a vehicle on them. When I was a driving instructor, I frequently encountered the attitude that a driving license is a right. It is not and nor should it be. It is a qualification that is earned. Probably too easily. Not only should we demonstrate competence to use the roads, but I see no reason why we should not continually demonstrate it throughout our driving careers. No, I don’t mean going back the the DSA for another test – it can be conducted much more sensibly than that without the DSA being involved beyond acting as the standards setting body and arbiter in the event of disputes.
It all depends on how adult we want to be about it, doesn’t it? 😉
That 70 being fast enough thing.
I was driving down the top end of the M6 a couple of years back. Almost deserted, which is quite normal for that part of the M6. Weather was also good.
I was doing between 90 and 100 while keeping an eye on the bridges where the Cumbria theft camera vans sometimes hang out.
My car was a 3 year old, regularly maintained passat and I passed my driving test 30 years ago, my bike test over 20 years ago and drive very regularly in all conditions. A pretty average car/driver combination the.
A thought occurred to me.
“Just how poor does my driving have to be for me to be safe at 70mph, but dangerous at 71mph on this piece of road?”
I could have easily driven 10mph faster and been perfectly safe, the only thing stopping me being overstraining the engine of that particular car.
The glib answer is; could you stop in what you could see to be clear? If the answer is “yes” then it is safe.
A lousy driver would be unsafe at half that speed.
LR – speedo accuracy is a concern and I’ve long since stopped using it altogether. I use the satnav’s speedo display and put it in the window where I can see the number out of the corner of my eye without having to look directly at it, though for short trips on local roads I just leave it in third to make it easy to keep my speed below the limits without having to obsess about it, and if I make more warble gloaming happen as a result then tough – sooky speed limits weren’t my idea. Actually I think using the satnav is an improvement on looking at the instruments as constant speedo checks add up to spending a worrying amount of time not looking at the road.
On the point of speed itself being a killer (it’s the biggest killer on Melbourne’s roads – must be true because the TAC keep saying so on the telly 😉 ) we’ve had two dead kids run over in their own driveways in the past week or so, one by one of the parents. How fast can you go in a driveway? Exactly.
According to my SatNav, my speedo reads about 10% fast.
It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs for those of us who value independance of thought.
A whole town who have been agreed to to act as willing monkeys for some righteous anti speeding parasite from the state.
I mean if all the townspeople agree with the policy then there’s no need to play up to this is there? And if you disagree then tell them to piss off.
Either way they’re pulling the strings and the town of Speed are acting as the puppets.
Shame on all of you either way. You’re stupid, supine and a disgrace to the great Australian nation.
“LR – speedo accuracy is a concern and I’ve long since stopped using it altogether. I use the satnav’s speedo display and put it in the window…”
The satnav is more accurate than the speedo? Really?
Apparently it is Julia, although I don’t understand the technicalities of why.
A few notes on speedo accuracy. The old UK Construction and Use reg’s stated that speedos should be within plus or minus 10% between 20 and 90mph (or the top speed of the vehicle they were fitted to).
The newer Euro regulations state within 10% over but they should not under read. Thus I suspect, closing a possible loophole of “not my fault, my speedo is inaccurate and the law says it can be”.
One more comment on the stupid state of affairs down under is the fact that the law also sees fit to insult any driver who breaks a speed limit. I refer to the “Don’t be a dickhead” campaign that Lewis Hamilton recently fell foul of. Sort of puts the final nail in the coffin of respect for any particular law.
As I recall the UK’s Construction & Use Regs have said that speedos may over read by no more than 10% but must not under read at all for some years. I’m fairly sure it was already so when I did my test 20ish years ago, and probably a few years earlier. However, since the MOT doesn’t test speedo accuracy there’s no reason to suppose that the speedo on anything other than a very new car is still not under reading and ?10% over.
I don’t understand the technicalities of why speedos wander after a while but why satnavs are accurate is pretty straightforward. They’re constantly updating your position, in real time and at least once a second (or so it’s been on the ones I’ve had, though I’m only on my third) and it’s not very complicated to get speed from that information. If the satnav finds that you’re 10 metres away from where you were half a second ago you’re doing near as dammit 45 mph. Even if the satnav is a few metres off your exact position if the error is pretty constant then the speed is still going to be very accurate. Good enough that a couple of people here have successfully used them to fight speeding fines. Where your indicated position starts bouncing around all over the place it’s speed reading is completely unreliable. My old one used to get very confused by tall buildings and so I ignored whatever it said when using it in Melbourne’s CBD – not that it’s often possible to break the speed limit there anyway, and arguably still insane when you can. My current one (a Garmin if anyone’s thinking of getting a new satnav) is much better though it can still wander about between skyscrapers. When you use one a lot you soon learn when you can rely on its opinion for your speed and when not to. Well, you ought to be able to but then I’d have said the same about its directions, and yet people still end up driving onto railway lines and down one way streets.
And slightly off topic, Lewis Hamilton is a dickhead. Nothing to with speed as that wasn’t what he was done for (assuming we’re talking about the incident during last year’s Melbourne Grand Prix weekend) and not quite for the reason the campaign mob were calling him one. He was doing burnouts and fishtailing on a public street, and while he probably wasn’t aware of it that is included as an offence in the so-called anti-hoon legislation which let’s the police confiscate your car. None of that makes him a dickhead though. He’s one of the best drivers in the world and I’m sure he can show off to a crowd without putting them in danger. But when the police confiscated the car it turned out to be a loaner owned by a local dealer. What makes him a dickhead is wheel spinning someone else’s car, and I don’t care how good a driver someone is they wouldn’t get to borrow my car if I thought they were going to do that in it. Tyres are too fucking expensive here.