Highway Patrol Australia

[LHutton]

I was just watching this on TV and saw people getting their license taken away and their car impounded for '45 over' in a '60 zone' that had been imposed because some cones were at the side of a 3 lane motorway.

At first I thought, fair cop, 115mph in a 60mph zone is a long way over.

Then I realised the speeds were in kph.:lol:

Maybe I should have posted this in the 'Thinking of going to Australia' thread over in the Pit Stop.

[Leon]

41kph (25mph) over gets you instant no licence and no car for 28 days here in New Zealand.

The police here are mental about speed limit control.

5kph (3mph) will get you a speeding ticket and demerit points.

On the positive side, there's almost *zero* emphasis on driver training / education. Oh wait ...

[Rare White Ape]

Police in Victoria wear camouflage and sit in the bushes while they point radar guns at you.

Apparently not being able to see them is a deterrence.

But you know. Every police minister talks up a highly mobile and highly visible police presence.

[Dicknose]

45 km/h over will get you in serious trouble in most states here.

A motorway would normally be 100 or even 110. But if there are roadworks the limit is lower, can be as low as 40km/h.
However it would be more than a few cones. They will have speed limit signs. Typically there would be a first sign to say "limit 60 ahead", then a sign to say "roadworks limit 60"

At the other end of the scale - the Northern Territory (our big empty state) has extended the no speed limit roads.
A few years back they had some roads without speed limits. Then they brought in a 140 limit. After this had little effect on the road toll (which is mostly due to drinking and no seat belts rather than speed), they trialled a small section with no limits. This was successful in that the road toll didnt increase and no incidents with extreme speed.

[Rare White Ape]

A good read about speed biased enforcement versus impaired driving or skills improvement:

http://www.caradvice.com.au/332771/are-speed-cameras-killing-us-the-stats-say-yes/#BxlhjVeg6IF2614r.01

[GB]

One of the nicer perks of living in my area is that, generally speaking (there's always exceptions), the police are more concerned if you're driving like an asshole than about your raw speed. 85mph in a 70mph area of the highway barely gets a sideways glance.

However, 80mph in the same area, but with tailgating, incessantly flashing your lights to clear the left lane, and numerous rapid lane changes will get you pulled instantly.

[SkylineObsession]

Drivers in this country are bloody hopeless. Every single day i see red/orange light runners, people not even remotely stopping at stop signs, bad merging, cellphone use while driving, tailgating and so on.

I'll happily seriously put money on the fact that if all licensed drivers in this country had to resit the driving test, 50-75% of them will fail.

But yet, as Leon said the focus is on 1-5km/h over the limit. Thats what is causing all the crashes. According to the government department that process fines anyway...

And with all the focus on modified cars/boy racers in terms of safety checks, funnily enough i'd say the majority of crashes don't involve a boy racer/car enthusiast/modified car. Perhaps because we've taken our cars to the limit (legally and illegally) before, so have a general idea of how to control them in emergencies.
But the focus is on speeding, not car control courses.

:smh: