I want to get my panel van licensed to carry 2 passengers in the back

[damienengland]

Well, to be fair expand that graph back to 1950. No really great advancements since 89. ABS and airbags.

As for speed cameras, they are a waste of time. Camera cars are worse.

The age when kids start to drive should be 10. Not on the road but in a controlled environment. Earlier exposure to driving will lead to better drivers.

RBT? No way I want to share the road with drunk drivers. They are a good thing.

Sorry, the stats i grabbed only went back to 1989 but it would be interesting to know. I like the idea of earlier introduction to driving and yes, cameras generally suck all round. When i moved to Victoria i got caught out by cameras and booked 3-4 times doing between 3 and 5 KM over the speed limit, I mean come on!

[Innuendo]

I'm not saying I wasn't part of it or guilty of being young and stupid.
But the older I get the more ridiculous it all appears. Someone needs to save us from our own stupidity.
But yes, some of those old days were fun. Others were tragic...

[Big Rob]

I bit the bullet a while back when my mates wife was visiting us and the wife and I took her out for dinner. My van was the easiest car to take and it was only a short trip, so I threw the wife in the back, mate's wife shotgun, and we drove to the restaurant.

I had the coolest flashback when we got there and I had to open the tailgate to let her out. It was just like back in the 70's, except I only had 2 chicks in the van now, often had a few more back in the day!

[damienengland]

Innuendo, i think you hit the nail with your statement but the second part is probably what i question in general: 'Someone needs to save us from our own stupidity' How far should authorities go to save everyone? I reckon there's a balance to be found somewhere. I wonder if we should graph the number of oppressive road rules over time vs incidents of road rage, maybe there's a connection. The only tragedy is when the innocents get caught up.

If we all drove like me we wouldn't need all the rules. In fact now that i think of it, if the whole world was like me it would be a great place to live!

[wbute]

If we all drove like me we wouldn't need all the rules. In fact now that i think of it, if the whole world was like me it would be a great place to live![/QUOTE]
Lol. Just like me.
Too many rules I agree. The new blinking when exiting a roundabout is a pointless one. But the keep left unless overtaking was removed. It made sense.
Distractions are the new worry. Sat nav, complicated radios, lots of extra electronic features, mobile phones, on top of all the old ones likes kids, wives, your own reflection in the shop windows...driving is still a dangerous thing. Actually, you can never eliminate human error so it always will be.

[Taily]

Well, to be fair expand that graph back to 1950. No really great advancements since 89. ABS and airbags.

As for speed cameras, they are a waste of time. Camera cars are worse.

The age when kids start to drive should be 10. Not on the road but in a controlled environment. Earlier exposure to driving will lead to better drivers.

RBT? No way I want to share the road with drunk drivers. They are a good thing.

I can think of a few more and they don't have to be "great" advances to save as many or more lives:

Electronic stability control - including electronic brake force distribution - even traction control if you think about it, driver monitoring (dozy drivers die), side mirror blind spot alert, lane departure warning, active cruise control/automatic braking, seatbelt pretensioners, even passive systems that only activate in a rear impact - such as submarining seats, brake release systems (which I never knew about until we were stationary behind traffic then rear-ended by a bloke in his BT50 at almost 70km/h a couple of years back), crumple zones (ANCAP/EuroNCAP) - these two have almost single handedly changed build designs towards unitary contruction.

There is probably as many more systems again, such as tyre/brake sizes and technology etc. A bit more than just ABS and airbags. I also think that kids should be taught earlier and in a more dynamic environment (think track days) than what they are now. If we had higher driver standards from earlier on we would either get less "young and dumb" type and more survivable accidents that would enable the vehicles own systems to work much better.

[wbute]

Personally I think most of that stuff is more a marketing exercise. Blind spot alert? Lane departure warning?
Air bags have absolutely no effect unless you crash in a certain way, same for crumple zones. The real advancements were abs as it works every time you brake heavily, preventing a lot of accidents.
Not to mention all that electronic gear adds shed loads of weight. Meaning you need bigger and better everything to compensate for it. Better tyres etc are really only compensating for the extra load and inertial force created by it.
In a way, pretty much most of this marketing safety stuff just ends up creating more problems than they solve in my opinion.

[Dr Terry]

If you look back to the 60s & 70s when the road toll was way over 1,000 per year in NSW alone & accelerating, the only 2 innovations since then that had a genuine effect on reducing these numbers were compulsory seat belts & RBT. Everything else is just window dressing & marketing.

My pet hates are the ridiculous 40 & 50 km/h suburban zones & speed cameras everywhere, these a just revenue raising, pure & simple.

Dr Terry

[davegmh]

Don't speed and no fine . Pure and simple. Don't be a party to raising revenue then complain.

[wbute]

Don't speed and no fine . Pure and simple. Don't be a party to raising revenue then complain.

Rubbish. There are plenty of roads that are quite safe for well over 100kph. It's rediculous to sit back and cop it and feel like a good citizen.
Those camera cars are the worst of the lot. Hiding in the dark with lights off. They don't save one life. Our money would be better spent employing those people to pick chewing gum off the footpath.