Why just blame 200kmh+ "hoons" for speeding? #cars #language #society

The old-world media love to beat this stuff up:

Last year three of the highest speeds recorded on Queensland roads occurred on the M1, including two at Stapylton of 243km/h and 237km/h and one at Helensvale, of 235km/h.

Let me guess, they were probably young males in one of (a) turbocharged grey market Nissan Skylines; (b) another brand of after-market hotted up Japanese car or (c) high-end US-style V8 sedans (what some of us imagine to be "Aussie" cars, simply because we build or assemble some part of them here). But they could just have easily have been white-shoed cardigan wearers in their Maseratis, Ferraris or Astons. Except they aren't as news-worthy, unless of course they are a "celebrity" or a politician responsible for road safety.

Of course it goes without saying that the police are "exasperated". And naturally it's downplayed as just lucky that there have been "no fatal crashes on the motorway so far this year.

We can all draw the pictures in our minds, of these criminally insane law-breakers tearing around at stupidly excessive speed, but truth be told every motorist exceeds the posted speed limit at some point in their driving lives. Perhaps not by these speeds, but certainly by non-trivial amounts. Perhaps you choose to do it, I don't know. But whereas here in this article we are looking at just 3 incidences of clearly deliberate and excessive speeding on one motorway, the majority of otherwise law-abiding "speeders" are equally deliberately going 10, 20 or 30 kilometres an hour over the limit, usually on potholed suburban streets littered with intersections, driveways, cyclists and pedestrians to boot. Now whilst we can easily say that "if they crash (at these extreme speeds), they'll likely die - police" we can also quite justifiably say that far more people are taking equally life-threatening risks on a daily basis. Sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes by carelessness or ignorance. But tell me, why focus on the extreme "hoons" when the greater risk is all around us?

Why indeed do we make, sell or modify road-registerable cars that can easily double the speed limit? And why do we spend so much money replacing narrow, curvy roads with straighter, safer and faster multi-lane motorways? If we seriously wanted to reduce speeding we'd govern cars and restrict traffic flow (ok, we do that now - they are called traffic jams). Fact is, humans like to get places faster, not slower, and they enjoy some degree of personal risk-taking; indeed some of our community simply enjoy living closer to the edge.

None of which is particularly helpful in reducing death or injury on our roads, or saving us from our wasteful, unsustainable selves. But it does give us something to read in the press.

Puerile, gutter-level fun drops audience

I have to laugh when the puerile, self-indulgent antics of the "Footy Show" is outrated by the public broadcaster's knee-jerk attempt to balance right and left-wing views, the surprisingly watchable "QandA": But at least someone was watching, as The Footy Show recorded one its worst ratings performances of the year in Sydney with less than 200,000 tuning in. It was again beaten by the ABC's interactive political debate show Q&A, which had 249,000 viewers to The Footy Show's 191,000, pushing The Footy Show into fourth behind Law and Order: SVU and Ghost Whisperer.

Maybe the TV audience is growing up. Shame Channel 9 can't get their collective heads around that idea!

The charter of the Pedestrian Council of Australia

For the record, I thoroughly and utterly support the charter of the Pedestrian Council of Australia. I love cars, especially Italian sports cars starting with the letter A, but the damage being done by our over-indulgence in motorised transport is plainly ridiculous. We are destroying our society and our planet whilst somehow managing to justify subsidising the destruction at the same time. Where's the sense?