Brilliant Government ideas again

[Silent Knight]

my personal opinion on how to help fix problems:

bla bla bla... I'm a dick... bla bla bla

You my good friend, have lost the plot.
Do you have ANY idea what sort of ramifications will be faced by implementing all that sludge you just typed out?

SK's sure fire way of fixing the problem:

Anyone who drives like an idiot should be shot. Those that survive and keep driving like idiots will be shot again.

[Adamal]

That means that most people on here would be shot

[rolla_fxgt]

my personal opinion on how to help fix problems:

minimum driving age 16
very strict rules etc for learners and restricted
minimum number of hours/kms before graduation, including proper defensive driving and lessons (including a variety of vehicles and road conditions)
harder tests, theory and practical
higher cost of getting licence
really harsh penalties for breaching licence conditions
re-sitting licence every 10 years
under 20, maybe up to 25, zero blood alcohol no matter what licence you have, also anybody older on restricted and learner licences
leave existing 400mccg or whatever it is as is for older drivers with full licence
no changing speed limits - they are fine as is (30-40kph past schools maybe)
more undercover cops policing speed in roadworks into/out of towns and past schools
make some holding up traffic/driving like an asshat rules
compulsory 3rd party insurance (with harsh penalties, and also regulated by govt so that insurance co's dont make it stupidly expensive)
cc ratings/turbo limitations or classes for younger/learner/restricted drivers
people that are repeat offenders are banned from driving permanently (ie drink driving etc)

I agree with everything apart from the cc rating limits for younger drivers, cause you know the govt would stuff it up & ban young people from driving 660cc turbo smarts, but yet let them drive commodores & falcons (as its what a lot of farmers have).

I'd also had warrant checks & a prac test for moped riders.
and Toughen up the WOFS a bit, some cars that get WOFS I really scratch my head at, especially to do with bald tires.
Make it an offence with a $150 fine & 20 demerits for having balding or unsafe tires.

[Silent Knight]

That means that most people on here would be shot

So be it.

[Santa'sBoostinSleigh]

my personal opinion on how to help fix problems:

bla bla bla... I'm an awesome angry individual with great ideas... bla bla bla

You my good friend, have lost the plot.
Do you have ANY idea what sort of ramifications will be faced by implementing all that sludge you just typed out?

Im lost, when did I ever have the plot?

ramifications: plenty of tossers that suddenly arent allowed to drive

[scottyj]

SBS for head of LTNZ

[scottyj]

SK for LTNZ enforcement arm

[Snaps]

Same here. Santa for Transport Minister?

We should do things like the Germans.. or something. We had some German exchange students at school recently, they said that getting a license over there was very hard and expensive. And a lot of them needed to save up to get one much like we save up to get a nice car.

[Zitchu]

You can always bring the autobahn into the arguement again. One of the safest roads in the world is also one the one where you can drive as fast as you want in sections so speed is obviously not the issue. Proper built roading and driver education is.

[Chelles]

Teach the people to driver properly and I believe that a good portion of the problem will go away. Imagine a world where people actually had the skill and ability to handle the car the point down the road each day. Shock and horror it might just reduce the accident rate!!

*slaps self* Oh thats right they don't like to train people... they just let anyone teach anyone to drive

[Loudtoy]

Teach the people to driver properly and I believe that a good portion of the problem will go away. Imagine a world where people actually had the skill and ability to handle the car the point down the road each day. Shock and horror it might just reduce the accident rate!!

*slaps self* Oh thats right they don't like to train people... they just let anyone teach anyone to drive

What i want to know is who teaches the teachers how to teach the young peoples to drive.
Raise car licence limit to 17 leave age at which you can get a bike licence at 15 infact maybe make it compulsory to have a bike/moped first so you get an idea of things before you get a car - instant hazard awareness perception of speed and everything else get either really good really quickly or you die,
An easy way to enforce the cc - performance rule is to put say a 1600cc cap on it and then use the msnz capacity calculation calculator to calculate the relative capacity of said engine - ie cc x 1.7 for turbo's or cc x 1.8 for rotary's (it may be the other way round but can't be bothered looking for it). That would mean the nice police man who pulls the young fella up in his 3 cylinder charade turbo would be able to say oi you can't drive that it's to fast for you.
Maybe have no limit on what they can drive so long as they are with a driver over the age of 25 who has had there licence for 5 plus years, they tend to be at least a little bit sane when it comes to doing stupid things

[Stupra]

I agree with most of what you guys say for sure!
If I was the Transport minister id go for:
1. 3rd party insurance compulsory.
2. Make the learners license go for a year and expire after two years so drivers must go for there full eliminating need for a restricted lisence.
3. Encourage more private roading projects.

The full lisence would go along the lines of what the Germans, Scandinavian training is like. 'Learn to handle a car'. Its all good and well understanding the rules / road code, how to drive at 50k and use your indicators etc but there's always going to be situations when some idiot pulls out in front of you or you hit a greasy wet patch on the road and lose control. We are not taught how to handle those situations which is the cause of most of the accidents.

Training for your full will include gravel and snow training, how to handle a car in the wet if you lose control, lock your breaks, lose the rear end and emergency breaking, collision avoidance etc. Those parts are included in the German and Scandinavian training and the success of that is evident when they have low road fatalities, greater speed limits and rule the F1 and Rally championships regularly.

The other new part of the full license training should be learning how to read the traffic flow such as how to drive smooth and assertive to help eliminate poor lane changing, taking forever to get up to 100 on on-ramps and distrupting the flow of traffic plus more emphasis on skills such as parking, reversing, city driving, manners etc.

The other thing id suggest is privatise more roads and get them to a really high safe standard. NZ may be too small to bother with this idea on a big scale but the best roads in the world are often private tolled roads as they are super smooth, fast, wide and super safe.
NZ's main highways are shockers with all the road works, poor bitumix surface, lack of barriers, lighting etc. We can't keep dumbing down the rules such as lowering speed limits, more regulation etc to change the statistics. We will just end up with more useless and less confident drivers and add to the problem not fix it.

Fix the problem at its root cause, driver training and better roads and your on a winner. May be more expensive in the short run but cheaper and more beneficial for all road users in the long run.

Stupra.

[molex]

I agree in principle with what the majority are saying, driver training/better roads/euthenasia, however realistically compulsory insurance is unlikely to happen and if it did, it would be cocked up somehow. Raising the driving age to 16 sounds like a damn good idea. 15 year olds have no place on public roads (if you're 15, read this and take offense.. good, you're shite at driving)

Only thing of significance Santa posted that I genuinely disagree with is the zero tolerence for alcohol under 25. I'm no boozer but were I to have a beer with dinner and pop down to the shops for a Memphis meltdown I would be mildly irritated by a DUI conviction.

CC based restrictions are stupid, hardly fair cop to compare a civic type R to a lada niva for instance. I hate to say it but the Australians had a good idea with their power/weight ratio database.

As somebody touched on earlier, the root cause of many of the thingsthat annoy us as "car enthusiasts" is the policy of the rta, an organisation dominated with overly pc, pedestrian loving, bicycle riding hippy holding wannabes. Our transportation sector (with regards to cars) should be looked after people who at least USE them, preferably LIKE them.

Personally I think people should have to drive without speedos, it would encourage people to actually pay attention to WTF they're doing instead of mindlessly correcting to an arbitrary and often irrelevent velocity. I pootke about town at 40ish ks, maintaining good gaps and driving smoothly between lights but given a wide well lit street with nobody on itand uncontrolled intersections I'm not going to get held up by I find myself regulating to a speed slightly north of what the boys in blue would deem appropriate. Yet as it stands very few police would care about the circumstances of the situation.

[BlakJak]

One point about raising the driving age; I didnt get my learners until I was 19 for various reasons...

So at age 19-20 I made similar mistakes to guys 16-18. Including being in 3 seperate accidents and writing off my car, and at least one other.

Agree with the argument that it's a combination of training and experience. Age counts for relatively little.

( I can tell you that the dropkick teenagers living next to me aren't improving with age!! )

[Mad Murphy]

The vast majority of stupid, careless and lazy driving I see is done by people who appear over 25. Indicating for instance seems to be a forgotten art, as does checking for space before doing lane changes. Also, not turning your lights on in fog/dusk seems to be a big one. Not stopping/giving way at intersections is another biggie as is the general disregard for any laws that many people have who quite happily drive everywhere foot flat to the floor passing everyone and never backing off for corners or residential zones. These are the same people who are teaching their kids to drive, I think the one biggest and most significant change to driving would to ban parents from teaching kids to drive and make them take proper lessons instead so they don't pick up their parents bad habits. That said, a vast improvement in driver education standards is required to assist kids in understanding driving. I learned driving on the road from an AA instructor (as opposed to learning to operate a car which I'm sure anyone who grows up in the country learns when they're old enough to reach the pedals) and it covered exactly zero car control or emergency driving skills and was equally thin on things such as hill driving, open road driving and driving in the CBD. [I over my solution to this at the end of the post]

I don't think raising the age is a good idea, as BlakJak said, you just wind up making the stupid mistakes when you're older. Besides, it's easier to learn things the younger you start. Look at how much easier it is for kids to learn to play music, speak another language, get started in motorsport and how much better they get because of this than someone who starts later.

As for alcohol, I think the legal limit is probably a bit high for adults, that said there's very little good information of exactly what the limit constitutes in terms of quantity of drinks vs. time drunken over. I think that zero tolerance for anyone on a restricted is important, restricted drivers shouldn't have any distractions. As for full licenced drivers over 18, you shouldn't be a criminal for having a couple of beers or a wine for dinner and driving home, I'm sure almost everyone in New Zealand has done this, these people aren't the problem anyway, it's the same law disregarders who think it's fine to drive after drinking a couple of bottles of wine or a box of beer who are the biggest danger.

It's really easy for people to just go bloody teenagers, lets take away their rights while forgetting that you were one probably not that many years ago (I'm sure there's a lot of people commenting on this topic in their early-mid 20s). Penalizing people is rarely a good way to prevent bad behaviour, people still speed even though the police spend a large amount of time ticketing speeders, people still commit murder and violent crimes even though prison terms are longer now than ever and people still drive cars with loud exhausts even though you can (and likely will) get a ticket for it. Punishment as a means to institute change almost never works (new taxes for pollution is a perfect example of flawed thinking), I'd rather see driving taught as an option through schools as NZQA unit standards that require certain things to complete, ie. x number of hours wheel time on the road with an instructor, completing defensive driving and practical car control skills courses and so on. Only once standards are achieved can a pupil can sit a test.

[Gonad]

Training for your full will include gravel and snow training, how to handle a car in the wet if you lose control, lock your breaks, lose the rear end and emergency breaking, collision avoidance etc. Those parts are included in the German and Scandinavian training and the success of that is evident when they have low road fatalities, greater speed limits and rule the F1 and Rally championships regularly.
Stupra.

Didn't a lot of this stuff used to be taught by prodrive?
Didnt the government choose not to support that when they were hard up for funds, despite the fact it was a fraction of what it spends on TV ads?

The government knows best......Tui billboard anyone?

[duddley]

and how come they want to crush "boy racers" cars but i havent heard anything about crushing drunk drivers cars?. last time i checkt drink drivers cause a hell of alot more damage then a noisy exhaust

[crispy'86]

I did the prodrive course when i was still at school, bloody good course to have taken because they explained things in a classsroom situation then went out and took us for a practical on a grass paddock. I say that's a must for everyone getting a licence, attend a practical car control course.
Althoguh i did this and had a few grass areas to slide round when i was younger, thanks to the farm we helped out on.

[Adoom]

I dont think its the driving age that is the problem but the process you take to get it. Getting my license was so easy it was a joke.
How is driving with your parants for 6 months going to teach you to drive it certainly didnt teach me much maybe the give way rule thats about it.
They need some form of driving programe that you must do and do well to get your restricted, where you do one of those driving courses with them skid car things unsure of the name.

The defensive driving course is a joke all i did was watch a few boring videos ask the tutor for the answers pass and than bang have six months of the time it takes to get your full.

I also think every say 10 years you must update your licence and do the driving course, theres so many older people out there that cant drive for sh*t!!

The nz licencing system only teaches road rules..... I reckon a lot of people crash because they never learned car control.
Road rules aren't going to help you drive on a gravel road.
Road rules aren't going to help you drive on ice.
Road rules aren't going to help you drive in TORRENTIAL rain.
And so on....
But teaching everyone car control goes in the 'too hard basket', and you might find that a large amount of the population don't really care if they can control a car or not. So just make them go SO SLOW, that when they crash ANYWAY they just don't get so $&#$% up and die. So the road toll(but not accidents) goes down, and the law makers look 'good'.

[Mr Revhead]

hey! come on guys!!

this is toyspeed!!! enough with the common sense