p plate exemption for family statesman

[aaronevolution]

He's driving an incredibly safe and well engineered car which the RTA deem to be too dangerous for him to drive. But he could sell the M3 and buy a VL commodore with no airbags, abs, and archaic occupant protection standards and the RTA deem THAT to be safe because it has less killerwasps. Surely you see that makes no sense?

No mate. He thinks he's special because he has money.

I guarantee that's not the first time he was driving it around for fun.

 

[monkeys437]

No mate. He thinks he's special because he has money.

I guarantee that's not the first time he was driving it around for fun.

My point is he should be able to drive the M3 around anywhere for any reason. It's a very good and very safe car. Safer than whatever the vast majority of p-platers drive and only the most backwards legislation imaginable would prohibit him from driving it.

 

[acex1138]

First up.. I agree with your statement that weekly lessons should be encouraged (Not mandated) in the exact period you mentioned (Grades 10 -12). Second up the rest of what you said is full of ****.

Yeah I'm not 100% in agreement with the laws, but my reasoning is that there are ways around it, especially in Queensland where it's cylinder restrictions etc.. However, Money wasted on silly laws is next to nothing compared to how much money it would cost for the government to invest in funding kids "Track Days" and mandating driver training every week for 2 freaking years. There is no reason a kid needs to know how to handle a V8, RWD, FWD, 4x4, TURBO blah blah blah.. You forgot the rich kids might get a V10 or V12. Why not through in a buggati while we are there and give every kid a lesson in a W16? The deadset fact is when driven normally, all these cars handle the same.

If this course actually saved lives I know alot of people in the government that would actually be interested in it.. But how do you prove that it saves lives? Also how do you prove that the limits on P Platers don't save lives?

How does teaching a kid to maintain a vehicle even come into the equation?

P Platers are a minority.. Dick head ones are an even smaller minority. But it's a prime example of the minority spoiling it for the majority.. It's not stupid governments.. It's a fact of life.

As far as changing the attitudes of kids.. I've been working in Road Safety for 5 years.. Every year I make trips to as many schools as I can that invite me (No cost to the school). Do I think I make a difference? Nope. I just secretly hope that maybe 1 or 2 idiots slow down a bit because of what I say.

The issue is that a 17 year old driver doesn't actually have a fully developed brain. Add to that the human eye/brain relationship until a kid starts driving themselves rarely requires to process any visual stimulus faster then walking speed.

Blame the government all you want but I'm a big believer that parents need to take some of the responsibility. Giving a kid keys to a car is in effect similar to giving them a loaded gun. Some kids are mature enough to handle it. Others aren't. No amount of education will change that excitement the first time you're holding a gun by yourself.

Oh and to the OP I just found out that my cousin got an exemption in QLD no worries.. But he works at a mercedes dealership and takes some ridiculously powerful cars for drives.. His work car is a V8 4wd.

How does teaching a kid to maintain a vehicle come into the equation? im sorry I have to stop right there.... im not having a go at you but if you've worked in road safety for 5 years..... and you believe knowing how to maintain a vehicle does not come into an equation for saving lives you ARE IN THE WRONG JOB.

I've been to more callouts then you as a member of cfs and even first on scene a couple of times on my own, the amount of times it is a YOUNG person p plates or not where they have either killed or nearly killed themselves due to an neglected vehicle.

If you teach someone the limits of their vehicle... they are more likely not to push it to it, the amount of time's we've pulled daddys little girl out who didnt know that driving with 2 bald tires on the front of her fwd was dangerous, she didnt know what a bald tire was.

She was hysterical when she found out that when going around a corner in the hills at 30km an hour in a 60km zone would spin her out and send her through an embankment.

She was 24 and had been off her p plates for 5 years...... training would have helped her to recognized safety hazards with her car.

We have this happen quite frequently, the other big one is girls not knowing anything about brakepads or replacing them.


In all your visits to a school have you ever had to go there because 2 of their classmates had died on the roads due to not maintaining their car, so a workshop was held there teaching kids how simple things like mentioned above can get you 6 feet under?

we know not all of them listened, but enough of them did.

 

[aaronevolution]

My point is he should be able to drive the M3 around anywhere for any reason. It's a very good and very safe car. Safer than whatever the vast majority of p-platers drive and only the most backwards legislation imaginable would prohibit him from driving it.

Yeah mate. Give an 18 year old a car that does 0-100 in 3.9 seconds because he can afford it. Well done. Should we let them drive Ferrari's aswell? They seem to be pretty safe.

 

[Brenno]

How does teaching a kid to maintain a vehicle come into the equation? im sorry I have to stop right there.... im not having a go at you but if you've worked in road safety for 5 years..... and you believe knowing how to maintain a vehicle does not come into an equation for saving lives you ARE IN THE WRONG JOB.

I've been to more callouts then you as a member of cfs and even first on scene a couple of times on my own, the amount of times it is a YOUNG person p plates or not where they have either killed or nearly killed themselves due to an neglected vehicle.

If you teach someone the limits of their vehicle... they are more likely not to push it to it, the amount of time's we've pulled daddys little girl out who didnt know that driving with 2 bald tires on the front of her fwd was dangerous, she didnt know what a bald tire was.

She was hysterical when she found out that when going around a corner in the hills at 30km an hour in a 60km zone would spin her out and send her through an embankment.

She was 24 and had been off her p plates for 5 years...... training would have helped her to recognized safety hazards with her car.

We have this happen quite frequently, the other big one is girls not knowing anything about brakepads or replacing them.


In all your visits to a school have you ever had to go there because 2 of their classmates had died on the roads due to not maintaining their car, so a workshop was held there teaching kids how simple things like mentioned above can get you 6 feet under?

we know not all of them listened, but enough of them did.

Neglecting a vehicle and maintaining a vehicle are two completely different things. I am not going to toy with the idea that every kids needs to be taught vehicle maintenance. I get your point that bald tyres are bad but I was assuming common sense comes into play there.. When you said vehicle maintenance my mind straight away goes to things like oil changes, coolant systems, brake flushes etc. Teaching people basic maintenance can go very wrong.. Especially once every 18 year old kid thinks they know how to flush and bleed their brake system properly or how to dismantle and service a drum brake. However I am going to say that if a young driver doesn't understand tyre tread and inflation then I believe the learner driver trainer failed there. It was one of the first things I went through before I drove in a learner car.

Obviously being a member of CFS (Assuming Country Fire Service? Correct me if I'm wrong) you know so much more about this then me. I mean I'm obviously in the wrong profession (as you kindly pointed out). Yet for some reason I've got a bunch of certificates from many many years of study.. I'm qualified as an Road Crash Investigator (Alot more further study). I'm often called upon to calculate things such as road exit/impact speed and recreate road crashes using computers for forensic analysis and yes I'm expected to A) carry sufficient insurance in case I am wrong and B) Testify my findings in the coroners court. And in my spare time sometimes an insurance company uses me to confirm/object someones crash details. So I think I do know a bit about what I'm saying..

I will saythat you've obviously had a much different experience to me.. So far I've only had one accident where a P Plater was involved. I was asked to analyse the car and I can tell you they left the road for no fault of there own or the vehicles. Even though everyone else (including the media) were ready to crucify them for it.

Of all the accidents I've attended.. And no.. I don't count them so I'm not gonna claim I've been to more then you (**** mate I don't know you I don't wanna have a pissing match), very few of them have involved faulty or under maintained vehicles. Actually right at this moment I'm doing an analysis of every single accident on a very major highway in Queensland in an application for federal funding. AND GUESS WHAT.. I'm only 583 pages (Yes I'm counting these cause I can't wait for it to be over) into the reports and Not one of those accidents has been pinned on mechanical fault.

Every time I've visited a school we recommend that vehicles be checked by a qualified mechanic every 15-20 thousand kms minimum.. Yeah I know I don't leave it that long. But it's a figure we use because it's considered likely/affordable for lower socio-economic groups. We stress the importance of checking tyres and pressures (I go as far as saying to check tyre and pressure once every month).

No I haven't been to a school where two classmates died due to not maintaining a car. I've been to a school where they lost some classmates in a car accident but it wasn't mechanical fault it was driver fault. Do I believe that training and education could've prevented that accident? No I don't. Some kids lost out because they were having temporary stupidity, which in all the research papers I've read is actually an incurable disease for which the symptoms are most likely present in 17-22 year old males.


I agree with what you say about the girl.. Training would've helped her realise bald tyres are a bad thing.. But WTF were her parents doing? And why is teaching someone about car tyres the governments responsibility? Also can you imagine sticking a bunch of your average 16 year old girls in a vehicle maintenance theory session? They'd be asleep/zoned out/texting their friends in minutes..

 

[monkeys437]

Yeah mate. Give an 18 year old a car that does 0-100 in 3.9 seconds because he can afford it. Well done. Should we let them drive Ferrari's aswell? They seem to be pretty safe.

I fail to see how being capable of reaching our very conservative speed limits a bit faster than an 18 year old in an SV6 is dangerous. If you're cruising along at 100km/h all that matters are the laws of physics, and that doesn't change whether you spent 4 seconds or 1 minute accelerating when you pulled onto the road.

The fact remains, it's a much safer car than what most kids drive around in and you can not possibly deny that.

For what its worth I'm 26 so these nonsensical laws don't affect me

 

[acex1138]

Neglecting a vehicle and maintaining a vehicle are two completely different things. I am not going to toy with the idea that every kids needs to be taught vehicle maintenance. I get your point that bald tyres are bad but I was assuming common sense comes into play there.. When you said vehicle maintenance my mind straight away goes to things like oil changes, coolant systems, brake flushes etc. Teaching people basic maintenance can go very wrong.. Especially once every 18 year old kid thinks they know how to flush and bleed their brake system properly or how to dismantle and service a drum brake. However I am going to say that if a young driver doesn't understand tyre tread and inflation then I believe the learner driver trainer failed there. It was one of the first things I went through before I drove in a learner car.

Obviously being a member of CFS (Assuming Country Fire Service? Correct me if I'm wrong) you know so much more about this then me. I mean I'm obviously in the wrong profession (as you kindly pointed out). Yet for some reason I've got a bunch of certificates from many many years of study.. I'm qualified as an Road Crash Investigator (Alot more further study). I'm often called upon to calculate things such as road exit/impact speed and recreate road crashes using computers for forensic analysis and yes I'm expected to A) carry sufficient insurance in case I am wrong and B) Testify my findings in the coroners court. And in my spare time sometimes an insurance company uses me to confirm/object someones crash details. So I think I do know a bit about what I'm saying..

I will saythat you've obviously had a much different experience to me.. So far I've only had one accident where a P Plater was involved. I was asked to analyse the car and I can tell you they left the road for no fault of there own or the vehicles. Even though everyone else (including the media) were ready to crucify them for it.

Of all the accidents I've attended.. And no.. I don't count them so I'm not gonna claim I've been to more then you (**** mate I don't know you I don't wanna have a pissing match), very few of them have involved faulty or under maintained vehicles. Actually right at this moment I'm doing an analysis of every single accident on a very major highway in Queensland in an application for federal funding. AND GUESS WHAT.. I'm only 583 pages (Yes I'm counting these cause I can't wait for it to be over) into the reports and Not one of those accidents has been pinned on mechanical fault.

Every time I've visited a school we recommend that vehicles be checked by a qualified mechanic every 15-20 thousand kms minimum.. Yeah I know I don't leave it that long. But it's a figure we use because it's considered likely/affordable for lower socio-economic groups. We stress the importance of checking tyres and pressures (I go as far as saying to check tyre and pressure once every month).

No I haven't been to a school where two classmates died due to not maintaining a car. I've been to a school where they lost some classmates in a car accident but it wasn't mechanical fault it was driver fault. Do I believe that training and education could've prevented that accident? No I don't. Some kids lost out because they were having temporary stupidity, which in all the research papers I've read is actually an incurable disease for which the symptoms are most likely present in 17-22 year old males.


I agree with what you say about the girl.. Training would've helped her realise bald tyres are a bad thing.. But WTF were her parents doing? And why is teaching someone about car tyres the governments responsibility? Also can you imagine sticking a bunch of your average 16 year old girls in a vehicle maintenance theory session? They'd be asleep/zoned out/texting their friends in minutes..

^ that girl mentioned above like a lot of others didnt have parents..... so who would have taught her or enforced it?... and yeah its not really hard to add another 10 compulsory questions on vehicle safety such as checking tyres and brakes.

Engineering - Automotive and suspension over here...... we're both coming at it as different sides of the same coin. We both wanna stop kids killing themselves, you've obviously got firm beliefs these laws work.

I have not seen it yet, i'd still like to see evidence from the eastern states that restricting vehicles has lowered fatalities dramatically like claimed.

I'm sure everyone can agree we need to give new drivers more training.... upping the hours required in the current system is not working, its just encouraging more kids to get someone to write them up (whether getting their rents to fake the hours or bribing a driving instructor, this is pretty common place where I am).

I'm all in favour of school based learning that prevents you getting a license full stop without training. I'm not saying hey we now have to buy brand new GTR's and a veyron.

There are enough police stations with SS's and xr6 turbos that never see much use (its illegal in most places to give chase now). So theres your learning vehicles when they arent in use at the cop shop.

Even if its only one lesson to teach a kid, you drive this like you drive normally hey you'l probably kill someone.

Combine that with manual and auto learning, and fwd/rwd learning.

And your asking why this is a big one for me?......... several callouts where the person didnt know whether their car was fwd or rear wheel drive, we all have that natural response when skidding out of trying to compensate, its different in fwd and rwd.

We had a callout 6 weeks ago where some girl had skidded out and scraped her car in the hills...... expecting that she'd tried to compensate in a fwd like normal and got herself in more trouble we got to the scene and found her in pretty good condition (unlike a lot of other calls we've had where they fishtail out and smash).

Turned out her brother is a racer..... he taught her what to do when you skid out in a fwd, saved her life.

The amount of callouts the cfs, mfs and sapol have had in similar circumstances where the opposite of that happened is staggering.

 

[Brenno]

Look I fully get what your saying and if you read my previous posts you'd see I didn't agree with the P Plater performance restrictions 100%. There is a fair bit of supporting documentation in regards to these restrictions but it's predominantly related to single vehicle "Off Path" and "Off Path on Curve" type accidents (Loss of Control accidents). As far as I know none of the research into performance restrictions has been undertaken in australia. I believe it's mostly by European road authorities. Also should point out that the european restrictions are all power/weight ratio restrictions.. I don't believe cylinders or turbos come into it.. I remember talking to one guy from germany who said provisional license holders loved the VW golf turbo diesel because rego was cheap and it was legal provided it was unmodified.

The reason I'm getting a bit narky here is everything you've said are arguments I deal with on a daily basis. The cost of introducing the kind of program you are talking about on a national or even state level are absolutely mind blowing and every state in australia's economy is already sliding down the crapper.

As far as teaching people the difference between a FWD or RWD car. You need to step back from this argument and take off your car lover hat (I'm assuming your a car lover since you're on a car forum). Think logically, if I lined up a Toyota Camry, a Honda Accord, a Ford Falcon and a Holden Commodore, how would you get someone who's been chucked the keys to either of those cars and knows nothing about it to assess whether it's a FWD or RWD in 20 seconds before they jump in and start it. I read so much about cars I know just about every car straight up whether it's FWD or RWD. I understand there are vast differences between FWD and RWD cars. I constantly test roads using a VERICOM device and we test in both a FWD and RWD car (as needed). However, all the testing is 'Extreme Case'.. I stand by my argument that if you're driving either car sensibly and to the conditions they handle basically the same (again you need to not be thinking like a car lover here).

I can dig you up a very interesting piece of research done by the americans in regards to skid recovery in an unexpected situation. It was some crazy number of people they tested (Americans have so much nicer budgets for this stuff then we do), that had undertaken defensive driving and skid recovery/correction courses. In an unexpected skid or slide or momentary loss of control it was over 90% of these people still instantly went for the brakes and steered against the slide. So again I get where you're coming from but if you spend tens of millions on training (Yes it would cost that much if not more) every school kid on skid recovery for under 10% to get anything out of it?

My own wife is possibly the worst driver I've ever met. Knows nothing about cars/tyres or anything. Her belief is the key starts, right pedal makes it go forward, left pedal makes it slow down. She represents the majority of drivers on our roads!!! If we go about educating everyone the costs are staggering. I'm not trying to brush off how serious a road fatality actually is. But there really isn't that many of them compared to the huge number of drivers on the roads. So example, some highways I spend alot of time near may carry 20-25 thousand vehicles a day. So not including weekends which are generally around 60% traffic volumes.. You're talking 5.85 million vehicles per year on weekdays (Which is where peak traffic periods occur and crashes are higher risk). Yet it's unlikely that this road has seen more then 3 fatalities in 10 years. (all roads are different this is just an example). That means to drive on this road you've got less then 3 in 58.5million chance of being a statistic.

I feel for the girl you mentioned.. Not having parents would be hard.. But I still don't see how people can not buck up take some responsibility for themselves and not expect the government to do everything for them.

And again I completely get what you're saying but these are arguments that have been had at very high levels.. Many Many Times.. (So much in fact it's like a broken record in my head). I am completely against teaching kids controlled skidding or even putting them in a car and saying don't do this then sliding them around a race track. 1) Over 90% of them are going to forget it in an emergency. 2) 3% are going to think it qualifies them as mountain 'drifters and racers' and we'll be pulling a bunch more kids out of ravines.

I'd teach kids the basics about tyre inflation and tread depth. But it won't fix the problem. Those that want to ignore it will.. Even if you made an extra 10 questions on a license test.. They'll learn it.. Pass the test and forget it.

The fact is anyone can kill themselves in a car going 100km/h. Even 80km/h is dicey.. I don't believe the current laws 'work'.. But I also don't believe we'd be better without them and I also don't believe there is a completely viable solution to any of these arguments.. I'm all for completely automated vehicles and google is making some good progress on those so far..

 

[iChris]

I'm so glad that I live in western australia where these discriminatory laws don't exist. Bigotry at it's finest concocted by the clowns that feel they can tell us how to live our lives. as posted above, these laws are a waste of time and money. it was for these reasons we don't have such laws in WA.

what if for example my mum was unable to drive for some reason (sick or injured perhaps?) and the car she drives happens to fall outside the class for a p-plater to drive, what then? leave the car on the side of the road and take a cab home? pure lunacy.

perhaps I'll go and buy a WRX tomorrow and drive it on my p's (which I get in about 2 months) just because I can. If I crash it, burn and die, it's no skin off their noses anyway. for a bunch of people who seem to "care" (which is why one assumes we have such laws - to protect us from ourselves) about p-platers it's not like they would show for my funeral anyway or even watch the news report. in saying that, I'm not a ######## on the road anyway.

if they want to improve the road death toll, make everybody re-do a practical driving assessment once yearly and work more at changing the attitudes of p-platers. I've seen heaps of fully licensed drivers behave like idiots behind the wheel. not only that, I can almost guarantee that most baby boomers out there would fail the test anyway. oh wouldn't there be an uproar then?

 

[dirt drifter]

Bernard Tomich is a good example of this. Why the hell would the QLD RTA let him drive an M3 on his P's? He clearly earns enough money to buy a less powerful car. What a tool.

i had to laugh when he apparently buggered off to live in monaco after that whole fiasco happened. because of some bullcrap law tomic moved to a place where he pays no tax, can drive whatever he wants and has some wicked driving roads close by that are policed by cops who wouldn't be near as savage as ours. and the aussie government misses out all the tax dollars he would have been paying if he stayed here. nice work