The Govt makes cars safer to increase the road toll

[levymetal]

i disagree with you 100%. i've never heard the government say that you can speed because cars are safer in higher speed crashes. i've never heard them say that you can drive faster in worse conditions with a better car. the only thing i've ever heard them say is how new cars are safer in the same conditions as opposed to older cars.

are you suggesting we should be making cars less safer in order to reduce the road toll? seriously...

as far as i know, the rate of death is decreasing. sure some years are worse than the previous, but you have to remember that there are so many more people on the roads as well. instead of looking at the amount of deaths, you should look at the proportion of deaths to the amount of drivers... i'm sure you'll find that's decreasing every year.

 

[Morton]

thing is, my folks are always telling me when they were young you'd often do ~150 on country roads like going up to donald etc. it wasn't called hooning back then, just how it was done. and that was before abs, traction control, airbags, and with leaf suspension.

It's true, and in my experience there are still many "derestricted zone" signs up around the country (black circle with a slash through it) on rarely-used backroads.

 

[Unconnected]

im glad you said 'old mate of yours' coz clearly hes a toss that needs an accident to open his eyes to the world

yea he is, some how he hasnt managed to have an accident yet, thankfully the rest of my friends now can drive, and so they normally choose to drive themslefs rather then go with him, so when he does crash, he hopefully wont take 4 people with him.

while i do agree that my theory is not fool proof, i think that the govt does understand this ( my theory) but chooses to ignore it.

 

[1991_Vn2nV]

This is obviously true.

Thats why so many guys speed and drive like idiots in VL and VN commodores. Because of all their safety features... You know like the airbags and the ABS brakes and the ESP and what not. Oh wait... They don't have any of that.

No wonder everyone speeds in Volvo's instead...Oh no wait they don't do that either.

It must be all the people in brand new Mercs and BMW's with their safety features. No wait, they're not common speeders either.

Oh but if you go to a country where seat belts are not required and many cars are not even fitted with them, they obviously quite safely, like they do in Bali where most people are on scooters or in cars with no seat belts fitted or if they do have them they do not wear them. Oh but they drive like absolute nuts. Hmm...

It just happens to be mostly older spec vehicles that are driven like idiots above the speed limit and these vehicles just happen to have next to no safety features compared to brand new cars available today. But that means nothing.

 

[Hunter SS]

It's true, and in my experience there are still many "derestricted zone" signs up around the country (black circle with a slash through it) on rarely-used backroads.

these zones have an open speed limit, up to the maximum allowable on any formed road, which is 100kph.

 

[Calaber]

i feel their plan is more to target new drivers born around 1985>, as none of them are used to cars with no abs or remember times with out seatbelts etc. and are such used to relying on their car for protection.

an old mate of mine made a example of himslef when he drove 120kmh down the wakehust parkway at night, in one of the worst storms i have seen. when i told him to slow the **** down he said

"im driving the safest car in the world (mk5 golf) it has a 5 star euroNCAP and esp, im allowed to drive like this"

its people like this, and their are many these days, who are falling into the governments trap.

Well, I used to own a Mark 5 Golf and drive the Wakehurst Parkway pretty often. It wasn't me and I wouldn't have done it, in the Golf or any other car.

What a tool.

 

[Calaber]

All the info is out there on cyber space, apart from your not uncommon perception(amongst those that dont have the ability to drive to the regulations) that governments the world over only have traffic fines to gain revenue

There is some truth in the idea that people drive to a perceived level of safety, which has been offered as one of the reasons as to why there has been not much statistical difference in the accident rate between otherwise identical vehicles fitted with abs and those that dont. There are many factors here, like the attitude of those that insist their vehicle had abs in the 1st place.

However, go back over time and you will find the injury/fatality rate per km driven was much higher than today and that each feature that makes a car safer has helped to improve that rate.

Perhaps the more interesting aspects of this discussion would be whether the features that improve accident survivability(seat belts, air bags, chassis crumple zones etc) have more/less effect than improvements in handling, braking/tyres etc.

The road toll in NSW in the year I started driving (1970) was around 1100. There were probably 50% of the cars on the road then that there are now, yet last year's road toll was way below half the 1970 figure.

The roads are better, but not by nearly enough. The drivers are no better and there are probably twice as many of them. So why the huge reduction in deaths? Car design has to be a huge part of that improvement. Improved roads make up some of the difference. Increased policing? Nope, doubt it. Tougher laws and heavier fines....joke, right?

I think that car manufacturers can fairly claim to have done their bit for road safety. Now it's up to the rest of us to do our bit and keep doing it.

 

[Fekason]

Lateral Thinking!

Our technological advances in sfety have tended to make the driver safer first, with passengers getting assistance later on.

I once heard someone summize that if we removed the driver's airbag and replaced it with a sharp 30 cm steel spike pointing at the driver, we would lose less passengers. We might lose a few more drivers, but what would the overall effect on the road toll be?

IMHO, the reasons for the lowering of the road toll over the last forty years has been because of compulsory seat belts, RBT and the continuing improvements in car passive and active safety.

Have a safe day everyone.

 

[danja]

The road toll in NSW in the year I started driving (1970) was around 1100. There were probably 50% of the cars on the road then that there are now, yet last year's road toll was way below half the 1970 figure.

The roads are better, but not by nearly enough. The drivers are no better and there are probably twice as many of them. So why the huge reduction in deaths? Car design has to be a huge part of that improvement. Improved roads make up some of the difference. Increased policing? Nope, doubt it. Tougher laws and heavier fines....joke, right?

I think that car manufacturers can fairly claim to have done their bit for road safety. Now it's up to the rest of us to do our bit and keep doing it.

100% agree with you.

I found this the other day, quite interesting I thought:
Fatal Road Crash Database

Even in absolute terms the road fatality rate has been on the decline for years, then if you were to correlate that with the number of vehicle registrations (which has been steadily increasing) the trend would become even more pronounced.

There is also news that stability control (ESP) is going to become mandatory by 2011, which makes sense given a lot of experts have been claiming it's the best thing to happen for road safety since seat belts.
Stability control compulsory from 2011 - www.drive.com.au

Admittedly, the largest motivator for car makers to improve safety of their products is that it's a selling point, but none the less they've done a bloody good job IMO, and are continuing to do so. Most new Lexus have a forward mounted radar which scans for impending collisions and pre-tensions seatbelts and primes the brake-assist system, Honda have a forward looking infrared (night vision) camera which can automatically detect pedestrians walking into the path of the car several hundred meters away, and alerts the driver. It's all very clever stuff.

Drivers definitely need to pitch in and do their bit.

 

[commsirac]

Yes, the accident rate has dropped, but its not all due to improvements in vehicles.
Drink driving laws/detection and speed monitoring/detection have also played a large role here. Dropping the average speed of the suburban mob by just 5km/h(yes you've seen the ad) makes one hell of a difference.