Road safety

ᔥ The Telegraph

Len Brown should be looking at this initiative in Nevada instead of wasting billions on a silly trainset:

Driverless cars are to be allowed on the roads of Nevada, which has become the first state in America to allow the vehicles to licence their use.

Google which has embarked on an extensive testing programme of the cars secured the approval of the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

Motor manufacturers have been working on taking human error out of driving for more than a decade with innovations such as lane departure warning, self applying brakes and cars which park themselves.

Google, however, has come up with the ultimate version of cruise control, by removing the driver completely with the help of video cameras, lasers and radar sensors.

It relies on mapping which is created by Google’s own staff who drive the route filling in the location of lane markings and road signs.

Despite being controlled by a computer, two people must sit in the car at all times.

They will be held responsible for the car’s behaviour. As the vehicle will only be able to break the speed limit if the driver takes control, he or she would receive the speeding fine.

But he or she will be able to spend the journey on the phone or even texting without putting other road users at risk.

A test car, which has already been tested in California, has already covered 140,000 miles without any mishap – apart from being nudged from behind at a set of traffic lights.

Tv3 ran a story about the new driving tests. The reporter in the clip wasn’t wearing her seatbelt correctly. Regan at Throng blogs about it:

On 3 News on Sunday night, Janika Ter Ellen did a story on changes to driving tests that will make it more difficult to get a license.  At the end of the story, the driving instructor told her

You’ve passed the test, so congratulations.

But did she?

Looking at the above photo, taken from the full bulletin (20:35), you can clearly see that Janika is driving with her seatbelt under her arm.

According to the road code,

There should be just enough room to slide the palm of your hand between the belt and your chest.

We found one case online where police threatened to issue a ticket in a similar situation.  Anyone who has sat a restricted driving test knows how pedantic the instructors can be so we’re curious to know why a pass was given in this instance.

Interestingly enough, this clip appears to have been edited out of the individual story.

The cops are going to crack down on slow drivers:

They’re tough on speeding, drunk and cellphone-using motorists – now police are turning their attention to those below the speed limit.

Officers will aim to keep busy holiday roads moving by keeping an eye on slow drivers, and say those caught holding up traffic could face fines.

National road safety adviser Superintendent Paula Rose said people were welcome to drive slowly but they needed to be courteous by allowing other road-users to pass safely.

“We are acutely aware of how slow drivers can cause frustration and impatience with other drivers, and sometimes people make bad choices to overtake in a bad spot because the person in front has a queue of traffic behind them,” she said.

“When you’ve got car after car behind a driver going 60km, 30km or 20km below the speed limit, all we’re saying is when there’s an safe opportunity to pull over to the side of the road, please, please do so.”

In some cases, slow driving could amount to careless driving, which could lead to fines or licence disqualification, Ms Rose said.

If I was dictator for life I would pass road safety laws that prohibit people with boats, caravans and trailers from travelling in the holiday season, public holidays etc at any times other than between 2am and 6am.

The Southland Times editorial has picked up what Labour has so far failed to…that their election campaign using illegal stop sign facsimiles has failed.

It was inevitable, of course. The only real surprise is that it has taken almost three weeks for Labour’s latest attention-grabbing bid to crash and burn.The “Stop asset sales vote Labour” campaign, launched in Auckland on April 4, effectively died of scornful, mocking laughter on Thursday. It should not be lamented, even by the most ardent of Labour supporters.

In itself, there was nothing wrong with the concept and a great deal to recommend it. National’s publicly announced plans to begin selling off state assets if (when) it wins the next general election have found so little favour with the electorate that even prominent business leaders have voiced their opposition.

Handled with skill, finesse and a little luck Labour’s campaign could have been, if not a winner, at least a long poll with which to poke the borax. It could even have become long enough to lever the party back up the popularity ladder. Few will look back with favour on the raft of sales of some of our most valuable state assets in the 80s and 90s by successive Labour and National governments.

So the concept was good. The only parts missing were the skill, finesse and luck.

And that scornful, mocking laughter was very loud at my place.

Whoever came up with the concept of plastering the message on imitation road stop signs should be led away to a disused shed out the back somewhere, put under 24-hour guard and released only after the next general election is over.

Whoever then came up with the idea of selling these signs to the party faithful at $10 a pop should be made to share the shed.

But a desert island, a really remote desert island, should be reserved for the genius who came up with the idea of putting the signs, signs with the same shape and colouring of real road stop signs, along the median strip of a road in the Hutt Valley this week.

And Labour still thinks everything is fine with their campaign and they will continue to run their Ponzi scheme. Sue Moroney was even skiting on Facebook about her illegal sign activities in Hamilton long after the issue was highlighted for all to see.

The Land Transport Safety Authority takes a dim view of any roadside signs that could distract drivers. The regulations are pretty clear: “A person must not install on a road, or in or on a place visible from a road, a sign, device or object that is not a traffic control device, but that may be mistaken for a traffic control device.”

You’d think that even if someone was a sheep short in the top paddock he or she would realise that slapping big stop signs along a busy road might have caused a few problems for motorists, but no.

Up they went. And within an hour, down they came again, courtesy of the Hutt City Council, responsible for controlling the roads in the area. The signs, the council noted in a press release, did not meet any road signage requirements and following a complaint from the public they were removed.

Labour still insists that every thing is ok and they are #winning. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they spin the facts the law is the law and their signs are illegal and can’t be displayed.

Unfortunately, the Labour Party still didn’t get it. General secretary Chris Flatt huffed that it was all a dastardly plot by National Party bloggers and right-wing groups to ruin the campaign. “Any reasonable person would see that the nature of the writing and the `vote Labour’ on there indicates they’re not traffic control devices,” he insisted, and vowed party supporters would continue using the signs, though they had been told to be more cautious near roads.

We have some advice for Mr Flatt: throw the signs in the shed, or ship them off to the island. Consult Marketing, 101. Get rid of the negative Stop the asset sales. Be positive. Try something like Save our assets. On a sign that does not look like a road stop sign, or a give way, or even a pedestrian crossing. Do not erect the new signs anywhere near roads. Let’s try to keep the road toll down.

Perhaps some Labour MPs are getting it, they have started removing the avatar from their Facebook profiles, although their transport safety spokesperson was a little slow to grasp the problem for her. She still has the sign in her profile pictures though making her position on anything remotely connected with road safety somewhat tenuous. Especially when there is a photo of her standing ON a road waving an illegal sign.

Annette King is a former transport Minister, you would think she would get it? Nope, not likely:

Andrew Geddis keeps pointing out Labour’s folly:

There are none so blind as those that will not see.

Despite their leader saying this morning that the signs would be staying, Labour is now busily removing the signs. NZPA reportson Labour’s sign U-Turn:

A number of Labour Party campaign signs have been removed from a Hutt Valley street after being found to be in breach of road requirements.

The signs, which emulate road stop signs in shape and colour, but contain the message “Stop asset sales vote Labour”, had been erected along the median strip of a road in Petone….

…The Hutt City Council, which is the road controlling authority for the area, said this afternoon that the signs had been taken down.

“The signs did not meet any road signage requirements and following a complaint from the public they were removed,” the council said in a statement.

General secretary of the Labour Party Chris Flatt said the party had not been formally told of any rules the signs had breached.

“We were told they were taken down within an hour,” Mr Flatt told NZPA.

“Any reasonable person would see that the nature of the writing and the ‘vote Labour’ on there indicates they’re not traffic control devices.”

Mr Flatt said the party would continue to use the signs and had told members to be cautious near roads.

“We’re aware of these things but we think this is a little bit of a campaign by National Party bloggers and right-wing groups to take the issue away from the actual campaign.”

So they take the signs down and now say they will continue to use them despite them being a) Against the law and b) a safety hazard.

Labour still isn’t getting it.

There are very serious reasons why there is an international consensus and convention on road signs. For Phil Goff to brush aside the law and say it does not apply to Labour is cavalier to the point of recklessness.

Wikipedia makes it clear why signs have been standardised around the world:

“countries have adopted pictorial signs or otherwise simplified and standardized their signs to facilitate international travel where language differences would create barriers”

As mentioned there’s an international convention on signs:

Road sign standardization was set since language differs in every country so an international road signs was developed and adopted. In fact, during the Vienna Convention on Road signs and signals of Nov 8 1968, 8 main categories were defined.

Why it is important not to copy road signs:

“The shapes and colors of traffic signs have specific meanings and you have to be able to recognize them immediately.  Why? Even if a stop sign is damaged or blocked by dirt or snow, you know by the octagonal shape and red color that you must stop.”

And in the US, three chaps who removed a road sign that led to a triple fatality crash were sentenced to 30 years prison on manslaughter charges.

The reason I mention all this – is because this year, when Labour is ‘blanketing the country‘ with its illegal signs – we’ll have more tourists travelling on our roads than ever before for the Rugby World Cup.  This is a recipe for serious confusion and the NZTA should act.

Labour’s Stop Sign campaign has hit a brick wall. David Farrar has just posted that these signs and the campaign they have mounted is actually illegal. The traffic sign rule book makes this clear.

Labour has placed their MPs and campaign workers, people who’ve waved or placed the signs near to the road, in a pickle. They are breaking the law anytime they go anywhere near a road with the signs. They should come clean and pay the fines.

Their Facebook site is filled with pictures of the guilty MPs and their supporters clearly breaking the law.

Iain Lees-Galloway looks guilty in his recent nasty campaign outside the business of the National candidate on a busy Palmerston North road:

Louisa Wall is clutching a sign in one of these pics – did she go near a road at all?

Darien Fenton is actually standing ON THE road:

Michael Wood’s campaign team is in serious hot water with these shots at the busiest intersection in Botany.

Trevor Mallard’s election campaign has a small set back with all his illegal signs:

The C*ck of the Week – Carlton Adrian Morris, has phoned me just now.

He has told me I have made the mistake of the century, one I will regret. Apparently I am a sad, nasty little man.

Everything I described in my blog post yesterday, apparently, is a figment of my imagination and he is going to ring the Police.

Along with that he will be making me regret what I have done.

About the only line he didn’t use in his abusive, threatening rant was “Do you know who I am?”, but since I’ve posted all his details I guess I do.

So, Carlton Adrian Morris, since you are a pommy git as well, and a recent arrival, I suggest you do a bit of research about Whaleoil and my blog before running your gob off down the phone at me. I don’t bow to threats, I’m not afraid of the Police and you are a prize c*ck.

You would be better off making a donation to MY legal fees fund and one to a road safety organisation than threatening me.

NFWAB (Never Fuck With A Blogger)

UPDATE: Nice pictures of his house on Bayleys website.

UPDATE 2: Carlton must have a small penis because not only does he like fast cars he is also after a fast boat. Probably a micro-penis given the style of boat. he is after.

The “death free” Queens Birthday weekend had terrible weather conditions, and as a result there were less accidents because people tended to drive to the conditions, or didn’t drive at all. In other words the weather was the educating and common sense factor, not the vaunted crack down on the policing tolerance of the speed limit.

From what I can see of the deaths in the weekend they were not merely as a result of speed, but of poor driving and poor vehicle control and knowledge.

By definition every motor accident is a result of speed, as two stationary vehicle will not hit each other or anything else.

The battle that needs to be fought is the poor standard of driving, not a battle against exceeding an arbitrary speed limit.

In France or Germany a piece of straight motorway is safe at 130 kph, while a similar straight piece of road in NZ is unsafe at 130kph. How does that work?

Is a French or German driver safer at 130 than a Kiwi? Doubtless the answer is yes, because Kiwi’s can’t drive. It is too easy to get a licence, and the Police are only interested in revenue rather than education.

The only thing that has reduced road deaths in recent years is the improvement in vehicle and road engineering. The Police speed campaign can not lay claim to any gains, as has been clearly demonstrated this past weekend.

NZ Road Toll 2004-2008. Statistics: http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/road-toll/

Peter Cresswell is perhaps one of the best thinkers in the NZ Blogosphere. Today he has a post on the failure of the Police campaign to scare us into driving safely on the long weekend.

Eight people killed on the roads over one long weekend is a tragedy.

The tragedy of this weekend’s road toll is that police were led to pursue a flawed traffic policing policy this holiday weekend on the basis of believing their own headlines.

They were put off by the statistical anomaly of Queens Birthday weekend, when a weekend with no deaths on the roads followed the announcement for that weekend of a traffic policing policy of “zero tolerance” for speed. (A policy that also generated a huge uptick in revenue.)

All the authorities trumpeted that the policy caused the triumph with the road toll. They were so certain they re-imposed the policy this weekend, and re-ran all the ads and notices warning motorists to watch out for policemen watching them.

But they forgot that correlation is not causality.

Trying to convince drivers that speed is everything—that driving a few kph over the speed limit is going to kill us all—and convinced themselves by their own publicity, they  succeeded only in fooling themselves, and being surprised this morning at a number they thought they had no right to expect.

Eight people killed is a tragedy.  Perhaps some of those drivers might not have died if police over the weekend had focussed on dangerous driving instead of sitting on their bums to collect revenue from motorists driving a few kph over the speed limit.

A serious re-think over the focus on speed alone needs to be done in PNHQ. Focusing on speed fails the logic test, especially on a weekend where the weather was good and the roads were dry.

Accidents do happen and for a whole lot of reasons, not all of them are because of speed. The Police need to realise this, unless of course their big focus is for revenue reasons rather than for safety reasons.

It also stands to reason that there is an inherent number of deaths that will always be associated with roading and driving. We must surely be approaching that number of annualised roading deaths now, meaning that spending millions advertising to stop more deaths will do nothing. In fact the case can be argued that non-governmental initiatives like side intrusion beams, air-bags, collapsible steering columns, better suspension, better roading technologies and crumple zones have done more to alleviate road deaths than any government advertising campaigns.

Peter Cresswell raising an interesting point about the thinking of the Police. That if “the statistical anomaly of Queens Birthday weekend, when a weekend with no deaths on the roads followed the announcement for that weekend of a traffic policing policy of “zero tolerance” for speed is correct” then now the reverse must be true, that putting more Police out on the roads actually caused more accidents.

There is nothing more annoying than when you travel on the motorway and discover some halfwit is going at 70, or on state highway one and there is moron travelling at 80, with a huge tail back being caused by one driver’s selfish decision to drive below the speed limit.

Slow drivers on open roads cause crashes. They force people that just want to travel at the speed limit to take tough decisions about passing, and some of these cause accidents.

So the Whaleoil transport policy is that there will be minimum speed limits on motorways and main roads. If you drive more than 10 km under limit when there is no good reason too (being old, dopey or useless is not a good reason) you should be fined for holding up traffic and creating anger among fellow tax payers who expect you to drive at the speed limit.

Given that the ratepayers of Albany Ward overwhelming favour using their cars for transport this is a sensible policy for them to support.

Responsibilities come with along with rights. If you want the right to drive on the main road, you have the responsibility to ensure you travel at a speed that allows traffic to flow.

Under Whaleoil’s transport policy people whinging about a minimum speed limit are classed as other people, and will be forced to become mandatory users of public transport.

And the impact of slow drivers on productivity is huge, so we need to stop slow drivers from wrecking the driving experience for the rest of us, as well as costing the economy.