Final nail in the coffin?

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Daily Telegraph said:

The new Intelligent Speed Adaptation technology was the subject of a landmark six-month trial involving 100 vehicles and the RTA believes it shows a dramatic change in driver behaviour.

It is the first step towards the RTA's long-term goal of having all new cars in NSW fitted with anti-speeding devices that can cut power to the accelerator. The ISA machines were trialled in the Illawarra region between September 2009 and March this year.

They were linked to a detailed mapping system of every road and its speed limit. The display flashes red and beeps repeatedly if the speed limit is exceeded, warning the driver to stop accelerating.

I don't know which organisation is the worse; the lying sensationalist media making a story out of nothing or the RTA themselves - I actually wouldn't put it past them to introduce such a bullst system. I know they've been talked about for ages and widely and correctly labelled dangerous and absurd. But that's never stopped them before.

At least for once the public response comments are headed in the right direction - I half expected to see such comments as 'about time we got these murdering speeding mongrels to slow down' etc.

It's very clear to me that they simply cannot ever introduce such a clear danger. Can they?

[mybrainhurts]

Control freaks are the same the world over...

But yours seem to be some way ahead....

Might be worth trying to find out what happened to the fleet of Skodas Leeds University put on the road some years ago. They were given to volunteers in order to assess speed control by satellite.

We never heard the results of this experiment. It went very quiet, very quickly.

Make of that what you will...

[Colonial]

Well, I guess I don't need to post it up now.

Had it copied and was about to do the same.

Load of crap. But I don't think it will happen. But if it does I'm sure there will be a way of hacking it so that it doesn't record speeds.

BRB - going to make friends with the IT nerds in the basement.

[astonmartinv8]

It may happen, at least until the system is shown as the cause of a crash / death.

Weird that Australians are so accepting. In many countries there would be absolute outrage. I guess this is what comes of living in such a great place. People become slow, fat and happy perhaps?

[Colonial]

astonmartinv8 said:

It may happen, at least until the system is shown as the cause of a crash / death.

Weird that Australians are so accepting. In many countries there would be absolute outrage. I guess this is what comes of living in such a great place. People become slow, fat and happy perhaps?

No. Just stupid, lazy and brainwashed by the speed kills mantra.

[Captain Flashman]

Colonial said:

astonmartinv8 said:

It may happen, at least until the system is shown as the cause of a crash / death.

Weird that Australians are so accepting. In many countries there would be absolute outrage. I guess this is what comes of living in such a great place. People become slow, fat and happy perhaps?

No. Just stupid, lazy and brainwashed by the speed kills mantra.

I think its that the majority of Australians don't have access to the media and organised politics. Most people get turned off by bureaucracy and aren't able to organise effective resistance to entrenched interests and lobby groups.

[custardtart]

I'm always amazed at these hair brained ideas when the real problem is staring the politicians in the face - they should just look in the mirror.

The absolute first thing they should do is improve the quality of the nut behind the wheel but of course that might be unpopular so lets think up ways of blaming non voting things for all the crashes. I mean, the driving standards here are appalling.

However, they're not helped by a number of things. (anyone see Mark Skaife's TV investigation? )

So in no particular order these are the things that frustrate me most about driving here.
1. Attrocious road surfaces, particulary in important places like corners. (Try the eastern Distributor northbound access onto the Syndey Harbour Bridge as one of hundreds of examples and it's been like that since I was here in 03)

2. Too many bl**dy road signs, if the driver even tries to take on board all the messaging they are bombarded with they WILL crash into something.

3. Too many variable speedlimits meaning you have to try and read all the bl**dy road signs so you don't get done for speeding. (me, no speeding points in the last 20 years in the UK, done twice in 4 months here)

4. Unmarked speed cameras that give no warning and cause hard braking and numerous rear enders as a result, usually in rush hour which compounds congestion.

5. No right turns, how fecking annoying are they and how many uturns and subsequent crashes, additional road time/ tolls do they account for! Have they not heard of roundabouts or forward planning!

6. Speed limits too slow, I just travelled up the M2 motorway on Saturday, there's was little traffic but I'm stuck at 70kph for long sections then bits at 80kph and then 100kph for the rest on roads that in the UK would easily be 70mph with ten times the traffic load.

I'm sure there's loads of others but that's enough for now, sort that out before looking at hair brained ideas like satt tracking etc.

Fortunately I discovered the coastal road to Woollongong the other week so can at least get some fix of decent driving, anyone know of any others? Maybe we should start a thread on the best driving roads?

[RDMcG]

It seems odd to have speed limits in areas with virtually no traffic,which is certainly true for some of the roads across Australia. Used to be one of the last places where you could get out of third gear.......

[Della]

There's no chance of that coming to Perth. They can't even roll out a scheme to have insulation fitted to your house without making a balls up of it!!!
The biggest reason though is the fact that there is no MOT of any sorts over here so even if you had the system, you could rip it out and nobody would be any the wiser.

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Della said:

There's no chance of that coming to Perth. They can't even roll out a scheme to have insulation fitted to your house without making a balls up of it!!!

That's the point; ridiculous ill-thought-out plans driven by the media sensationalism. Part of the tapestry here.

[robm3]

RDMcG said:

It seems odd to have speed limits in areas with virtually no traffic,which is certainly true for some of the roads across Australia. Used to be one of the last places where you could get out of third gear.......

M2 is due to noise complaints/concerns from residential properties. Many Aussie motorways are restricted due to this such as Pacific Hwy for around 5km when you first get on it (heading north out of Sydney).