It’s amazing how many people will do stupid things on the road.
I was out tonight, up for a bit of ice cream, so we went to the shops, and as I went around- I don’t need to say this, do I, you guessed it, a roundabout, some idiot decides that slowing down and indicating intentions at roundabouts is a thing of the past.
According to this idiot, you simply drive straight through them, without regard for lane markings, other vehicles on, or approaching the roundabout, and heck, we won’t tell anyone what we are doing either.
I was approaching the roundabout, was fully aware another vehicle was around 3 seconds behind me. Nice and safe, and so was the driver behind me.
As I slowed to enter the roundabout, I check to see all is clear, I see nothing hazardous or potentially hazardous within view, so I continue and complete an entrance and right turn at the roundabout, indicating my intentions as I was coming off also.
As I was coming off, I saw an idiot coming in a bit fast. Didn’t slow down at all, and the other driver behind me entered the roundabout after I did.
You guessed it, a near collision, between the two of them. Who was at fault? Well, a roundabout is a circular raised concrete (normally) structure in the centre of the road. You have 4 triangular signs on each approach side of the roundabout. The purpose? To slow vehicles down, and allow the efficient move of traffic through an intersection without traffic lights.
So, the roundabout seems fine, it does it’s job.
The drivers here on the other hand, the car behind me, after I entered, would have had to stop, check for traffic, and then enter.
The driver who came screaming through the roundabout, didn’t slow down, check, and enter.
To me (after I had left the roundabout), all I heard was a horn going off, and someone yelling out “Sorry”.
It looked as though it was a very close incident, but a near miss.
The idiot going through, without slowing down, anticipating other vehicles being there, is in my opinion, at fault. Had I not have been as quick around it, it could have been my arse he hit.
That said, as I came around the roundabout, I saw him, anticipated (as in predicted, felt, knew) he was not going to slow, and it’d be a close call or accident behind me. I saw him and immediately knew he was not going to stop.
Then, to make things different, another idiot, on the way back, driving a four wheel drive, approached a roundabout, as I was preparing to enter (1st selected, friction point found), and he just came straight through.
Some people just don’t deserve a licence, I’m telling you! They disobey Give Way signs at each roundabout. Then, you get others who think a 10k zone is a 40k zone and insist on going faster. And, cap it off with all the other fools who don’t indicate coming off a roundabout, like you are required to!
Add on mobile phone usage (we saw a police officer driving with a phone next to his ear), and SMS while driving, among the other things, and I’m amazed there isn’t dedicated forces out there tackling these, and getting the fines in to fix the stupid roads that are so screwed up in several different ways.
That, also brings me to my next point. Where is the near thousand dollars in rego going?
It costs me near $800 a year to put the car on the road, yet, the surface I must drive on is equivilent to a 4WD off road track!
What does my $800 get me? It looks to me like a bit of tar here and there, and the rest goes to pay for the drunk drivers pole replacements, speeding wankers, and well, the idiots above who have no concept of Give Way.
I think I’d rather keep my $800, but then, I can’t use my car on the road, because they force you to pay exhorbitant prices.
It’s $500 for a green slip for me, yet, I’m not the cause of accidents, as can be seen from the above, the stupid tourists are. The pushy arseholes of drivers who are in the 40 year plus bracket are.
The habitual speeders who insist 50 means 65 are. Yet, the $800 doesn’t go to giving them fines and getting their dollars to fix the roads. No. Not at all. They’d all revolt and vote the state government out, wouldn’t they!
It’s amazing the double standards approached here.
Then, further, in yet another roundabout, I had 4 people walking on the roundabout, where I’d have to actually run them over to get past, had I had been that lunatic who didn’t seem to SLOW down at the roundabout.
Mind you, none of them where P platers. But, if they came rushing around that corner, they’d have flattened at least 3 of them. And whose dollars pay for it? Not the $300 they pay, no, the leftover profits from the 20 – 25 year old age group picks up the tab, I’m sure.
Rate The Plate.com.au has the right idea if you ask me. Get peers to rate other road users, and get sufficient data to report on the drivers, such as age groups of those involved in accidents, who was at fault, and so forth.
Insurance itself really should be based on driver ability, if a driver doesn’t have any incidents at all, they should hit the mainstream rate across the board for all drivers. If a driver slips up, peer reporting works. Sure, they don’t give them too much weight, but if you follow some of the plates listed on Rate the plate, you get a good picture of just what happens, when an idiot hits the roads. They’ll get rated by more than one person.
An insurance company can then use this driver assessing data to determine the abilities of a driver, whether they make many driving errors, whether they cause many incidents, and base an insurance rate off that.
User pays system. Insurance goes up if you are demonstrated (at any age group) to be a bad driver, goes down if you can demonstrate good driving, at any age group.
Demerit points might also be considered here too, so that way they get a real good idea.
I just don’t see how paying $500 for a green slip, is anywhere near realistic, for someone who maintains a clean driving history. If people want to be idiots, bill them directly for it. We all shouldn’t have to suffer.
That said though, our road toll has improved over the christmas period, that says enough to me to say that the rates of insurance should improve within those margins as well. Much like petrol I suppose, it climbs when the bowsers are low, drops when they gotta move the juice. If they get heaps of accidents reported a year, raise the prices, if it drops the mainstream rate drops, and if you are accident prone, you get a higher rate.
There’s only a few years left for me to suffer these intolerably high green slip prices, and then they’ll go down enough to be called reasonable.
I still do question however, where on earth our local registration dollars are going, I’d take some pictures of some pretty bad road surface, except, I can’t take photos driving.
If you live on the central coast, you’ll know what I am talking about. It’s pitiful.
Enjoy!