The Nanny State.

[Pete McCluskey.]

By Amanda Devine.


Snarl, you're on nanny camera: a cynical lurk to drive us crazy
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<st1:City w:st="on">Melbourne</st1:City></st1lace> police have worse people to arrest than the formula one driver Lewis Hamilton? His "crime" was to smoke his tyres while doing a bit of a fishtail as he left the grand prix circuit at Albert Park.<o></o>
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A stiff talking-to might have been in order, or perhaps an offer he couldn't refuse - to appear in a road safety ad. But detaining him? Impounding his Mercedes C63? Charging him with "improper use of a motor vehicle" by "deliberately losing traction"? What a joke.<o></o>
<st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Hamilton</st1:City></st1lace> is one of the safest, most skilled drivers in the world.<o></o>
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If we had more motorists with a fraction of his ability our roads would be safer than they are with all the cameras and rules and signs and speed limits and penalties dreamed up by car-hating bureaucrats and money-hungry politicians.<o></o>
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But Victoria took <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Hamilton</st1lace></st1:City>'s harmless Friday night show so seriously, the Roads Minister even called him a "dickhead" on radio.<o></o>
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So now, instead of a handful of onlookers seeing <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Hamilton</st1:City></st1lace>'s antics, the whole world knows, vastly increasing the number of copycat admirers, if that's the concern. You may as well arrest the entire cast of Top Gear. No wonder the homegrown driver Mark Webber came to <st1:City w:st="on">Hamilton</st1:City>'s defence this week, blasting <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region></st1lace> as a "nanny state".<o></o>
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''I think we've got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed - what we can do and what we can't do,'' he said. ''It's certainly changed since I left here. It pisses me off coming back here to be honest. It's a great country but we've got to be responsible for our actions and it's certainly a bloody nanny state when it comes to what we can do.''<o></o>
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NSW is almost as bad as <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">Victoria</st1:State></st1lace>. Despite all the promises last year from the Roads Minister, Michael Daly, of a new age of commonsense for drivers, it seems the lunatics are back in control of policy.<o></o>
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The latest attempt to hammer NSW's beleaguered drivers into submission is the introduction in July of mobile speed cameras operated by the Roads and Traffic Authority with the usual ruthless efficiency government instrumentalities reserve solely for revenue raising.<o></o>
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The Premier, Kristina Keneally, doesn't want us to be the wowser state, when it comes to acting on the sensible concerns of a coalition of health and emergency workers about drunken violence outside all-night pubs. But she's quite happy for us to be the nanny state with speed cameras. As one newspaper letter-writer, Joan Moss, of Malabar, wrote: ''Rolling out more speed cameras will only raise revenue from ordinary safe-driving mums and dads travelling a few kilometres over the speed limit … The real culprits - car thieves, drunk drivers, sections of irresponsible testosterone charged youths - most of whom have little or nothing to lose, are let loose with a bit of a reprimand from our legal system to do the same thing again and again."<o></o>
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We are heading into another double-demerit Easter in which driving 11km/h over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt will lose you six points a piece. Do both at once and you've lost your licence.<o></o>
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Yet, despite this punitive regime, and the growing number of speed cameras, the road toll is getting worse, not better, with a 25 per cent increase in fatalities last year.<o></o>
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The response of authorities is to do more of the same that hasn't been working. It's time for new thinking.<o></o>
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Replacing flesh-and-blood police in highly visible patrol cars with cameras has been a flop. The more draconian the speed limits, fines, penalties and the more ubiquitous the cameras, the worse the road toll. The 5 per cent of really dangerous drivers speed with impunity, knowing where the cameras are and adjusting their behaviour accordingly.<o></o>
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As Michael Lane, spokesman for the lobby group the National Motorists Association of Australia, points out, despite the increasingly harsh restrictions on drivers, the road toll has increased, especially in Victoria, the state with the most vigorous camera regime. ''So much for the alleged benefit of speed cameras.''<o></o>
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In <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region></st1lace>, where autobahns have no speed limits, the road toll has dropped significantly over 20 years. In NSW, the RTA keeps pushing its mantra of "speed kills", and when the road toll is going the wrong way, it just redoubles its efforts, like any good ideologue incapable of change. Yet the people who are the most dangerous on the roads are good at avoiding speed cameras, or working the system to avoid losing demerit points.<o></o>
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In December, the RTA even dropped the speed limit on the Newell Highway from 110km/h in places to 100km/h, prompting the NRMA's regional director, Graham Blight, to claim it was part of a hidden agenda to drop the limit across NSW to 90km/h. Driving so slowly would mean you would spend more time driving to your destination, thus increasing the likelihood of crashes caused by fatigue, not to mention boredom and inattention when you are forced to travel at a speed below comfort level.<o></o>
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Police have been largely cut out of traffic enforcement by technology and have lost any discretion to apply the sort of commonsense which makes our roads safe - the sort of discretion which would have given Lewis Hamilton a slap on the wrist rather than create an international incident.<o></o>
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In Queensland, the Police Union has openly scoffed at the latest rollout of speed cameras, saying: ''There has been a big increase in the money collected by speed cameras in recent years, but there has been little discernible positive impact on the road toll. It's time the focus moved more towards increasing traffic enforcement by officers … who are capable of detecting drink-driving, unlicensed or dangerous driving and unroadworthy vehicles.''<o></o>
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Amen to that..<o></o>
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[Simon]

The UK has been going down the "camera enforcement" road for some time now. I'd really like someone to ask the government to donate ALL profits from "road safety" cameras to charity rather than using it to prop up services. It'd be interesting to see how many new schemes were rolled out if they weren't making any money from them.

Simon

 

[Keith]

Pete! What a brilliant idea mate. This can be the official lunatic 'Elf & Safety' Rules Thread. Please post the post ridiculous signs, rules and actions here for instant informed critique (& ridicule). :thumbsup:

I'll start off with a humerous example, just to get your attention.

HOW TO HOLD ON SAFELY IN A TRAIN.

No! Not her! :furious: The old boy by the door!

 

[Al Wohlstrom]

geeez, I bet that camel toe has him wishing he was thirty!

 

[Chris P.]

You know that old saying "I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole." ? Well, I'm coining a new one: "I would love to be that 10 foot pole."

 

[Jack]

Ass-emetry at it's best!

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

There has been a bit about Nanny States in the news recently, albeit relating to road rules. But a major Nanny State intervention seems to have slipped through the media radar – the new consumer credit laws that come into play on July 1.
These laws bring various different State Laws such as licensing requirements under a single Commonwealth scheme – a good thing in general. But buried in the Act are requirements that effectively state that a credit provider must only lend to a client if they (the credit provider) believe that it is in the client’s interest. Put another way, the borrower has to be protected from their own stupidity by the credit provider.
Why is this odd? Well imagine that you walked into a McDonalds and the person behind the counter had to judge whether or not your purchase was in your best interest before you could buy a burger.
“Sorry Sir, you look a bit overweight. No Big Mac for you but I can sell you a salad.”
Or perhaps when you go to the movies. “Sorry Madam, this movie is not a ‘chick flick’ despite the presence of Sandra Bullock so I can’t sell you a ticket”.
Well, that appears to be the direction of the credit legislation. A summary is here.

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The Labour Governments of Australia (State and Federal) appear to be taking the role of governing body far too seriously.
Aside from their ludicrous and dangerous attempts to filter the internet, they are trialling several other ideas to take away your freedom of thought. Among other things this includes a GPS based device which will track the road your car is on and force you to adhere to the speed limit, by cutting the petrol to your engine if you exceed it (never mind the fact that you may need to overtake someone or worse yet, the GPS may pick up the wrong street and wrong speed limit).
They also plan to eventually ban cigarettes and are trying to ban alco-pops (alcoholic drinks designed to taste more like soda). They are likewise currently working on making alcohol socially unacceptable, with the long term strategy of banning it, as well.
While the WSTOTC (won't somebody think of the children) set will no doubt applaud all of the above stupid ideas, while utterly ignoring their negatives and ease of which they will be circumvented, their latest initiative must surely test the patience of even the most adamant supporters.
So what is this latest nanny-state initiative, to protect us from ourselves?
They're trying to pass a law banning teachers from using red pens.
Seriously.
Why? Because "red is aggressive".
For those overseas, Australian education has already gotten to the point where kids basically cannot fail - they get "pending passes", instead. Kid's can't get an F, because it might be embarrassing.
It was on a trip last year I took to Israel that I first realised just how nanny-state Australia actually was. A country where the construction workers never seemed to wear safety gear and seatbelts are something of an afterthought. Yet the road fatalities are lower per capita than here and less people are killed in construction accidents. A country where alcohol is available in supermarkets to anyone with the funds to purchase it, regardless of age - yet alcohol abuse and problem drinking is amongst the lowest in the developed World. Could it be that when you treat people like adults, they behave more like them?
The government seems to believe it can sugar-coat the World, cover it in fluffy padding and maybe no one will notice when the economy collapses - after all, it's not a total failure of the economic system - it's a pending pass.

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