Solution 1 would be to take the licenses off them, and jail them where they might learn how to speed while walking!
But seriously, that’s not a entirely realistic solution, as all it will acheive is more people in prison, but the roads will obviously end up “less dangerous”, purely because speeding would be removed as a statistic in the overall make up (among all the other various reasons for incidents involving motor vehicles).
A better solution, which has many side effects that I was discussing on the Whirlpool forums (In the News), is the solution involving GPS tracking.
Essentially, all registered vehicles will require a GPS tracker fitted to the vehicle, in such a manner that removal would be damaging.
The GPS device than behaves like a normal GPS unit, logging where the driver has driven, the speed between two points is regularly checked, and the speed limit is obtained by a database after accurately identifying the road they are travelling on (using GPS + database).
When a vehicle is found to be speeding, fine the driver or slow the vehicle down.
This had a heap of flow on realisations too!
GPS tracking will allow to identify where a registered vehicle is at anytime.
A significant number of crimes involve motor vehicles, eg. bank robbery, auto theft, and so forth.
What would happen to those criminals if they stole a car for example, robbed a bank? Well, they’d be able to track which vehicle it was due to logging, and then trace that vehicle’s location near immediately and have cars on its rear in minutes.
There’d be no getting away, as changing vehicles would be detected by the remote command centre where they’d be actively following the chase and be able to determine when a vehicle is slowing down.
We’d see a drastic change, there’d be no to low speeding, due to the high risk of getting caught – why bother with fixed speed cameras, when you can have the speed trap follow the vehicle at all times?
Auto theft would hit low to no levels, mainly because tracking the vehicle down would be a simple task, and the logging would see any link between the theft and the criminals path of travel (and any subsequent vehicles stolen on the path).
Crimes involving motor vehicles would definitely decrease. We’d be putting a large number of criminals out of a job. They’d not be able to steal and respray cars to make a living. They’d not be able to rob a servo and speed off in an effort to ‘lose the police’.
The downside to it? None really, aside from the privacy obviously, but who cares if its logged where your vehicle has been? If anything that logging would prove very useful in fighting crimes, and again, reduce the spending on speed cameras, and probably remove speeding related offences altogether.
There are numerous other alternatives too, which aren’t as privacy intrusive, one of which would be an array of speed cameras to ensure accuracy, and even be used to determine the average speed across a stretch of road.
My favourite overall aside from the GPS tracking unit, but has less of an overall effect (won’t stop motor vehicle related crimes) is the unsigned speed camera array.
Setup a array of speed cameras (using any of a road sensor type sensor) at any chosen legitimate area (not near a hill, etc.). Calibrate the trap, and ensure it is accurate.
Then, that’s it. Don’t put signs up. Try and hide them along light posts or the like to make them less visible, and wait.
Because drivers don’t know about it being there, and there’s no notice of it, they’ll speed right through it and get a fine in the mail.
That’ll teach them ignorant idiots that our speeding laws exist for the safety of all road users.
It’ll introduce an element of fear into them as well, fear of the unknown. They don’t know where the cameras are, so they are less likely to speed, and therefore remove speed out of many of the excuses for an accident, and likely reduce fatality rates.
So the concentration can then be put into the more pressing areas, after removing speeding, such as educating kids to not run out on roads, and drink driving, and all those other accidents that go with speeding to contribute to the accident.
Eg. Speeding isn’t directly responsible, the other half is a wrong turn, illegal overtake, cutting a car off, whatever the reason, there’s two parts here.
Speeding is just significant because it is indeed involved in many of the accidents, but not always directly responsible.
So, remove speeding and we get to focus on the real details. Whilst speeding may not be the cause of accidents, fatalities are contributed to highly by how fast the vehicle is going (slower vehicle, less impact damage, etc).
Oh, and if you are wondering where I started thinking about this, a story was published on news.com.au a while ago, a 54 year old whinging he’d lose his job, mortgage, kids etc, as a result of a row of speeding fines from a speed camera which didn’t get proper signage until August (his fines were in July).
He wants to sue the RTA in a class action for failing to put signs there is a speed camera there.
But that doesn’t change the fact he was speeding…
I just stole 3 cars and a boat because I didn’t think I’d get caught, please let me get away your honour?
Somehow I think he has little left to stand on, because the laws of speeding still stand, even if the enforcement was not exactly correct.
He lost his license already, and got it back, works as a professional driver, and speeds.
If only there was a poll on whether he deserves to ever be let on our roads again! I’m sure the result would be no, he has had and lost his chances!!
Don’t speed on our roads. You are not a hero, you are a careless idiot, and deserve to lose your license for speeding in the first place. It’s a privilege to drive on our roads. Treat it that way.
Enjoy!