While wandering across the web recently, I found an interesting article from behavioural psychologist, John Staddon, on how the proliferation of road signage is actually detrimental to road safety. His assertion is that the mass of instructions results, short term, in distracting drivers from actually driving. Long term, it dumbs motorists down. In other words, it puts their lives at risk.
The reality is that councils and road authorities are just inserting signs anywhere and everywhere purely to avoid liability. If you have a “duty of care”, no matter how tenuous, and don’t warn someone of a blindingly obvious danger, then that mouth-breather can sue you. As a result, packets of peanuts need to contain a “Caution: Contents May Contain Peanuts” warning. In the same way, if motorists aren’t told not to kill themselves by driving like one-legged lemmings, then they will proceed do so. That’s why we have so many signs.
If Staddon’s assertion is true—and he would be considered an expert in the field—then it appears that motorists are in a race with road engineers to see by what sort of margin we can reduce overpopulation. If we don’t tell people about every danger, they hurt themselves. If we tell people about every danger, they hurt themselves. For those with a desire to see idiots removed from the species, it’s a win-win.
It just goes to show that there’s no helping some people. Yet, we still permit these people to drive. Driving is probably one of the more dangerous things your average person will do. The typical speed limit on your average metropolitan road—60kmh—is practically unsurvivable for any pedestrian Larry Lunkhead might happen to bowl over. On roads where there cannot be footpaths for pedestrians, such as freeways, the cars will travel at practically double that speed. With current levels of technology, a collision with an immovable object at 80kmh is fatal, regardless of the safety features. That’s just under three quarters of the speed limit.
Given this risk of disaster, you’d think that the government department responsible for regulating road use would set pre-requisites to ensure that the people qualified to operate motor vehicles would exhibit good judgement and sense of responsibility, solid hand/eye co-ordination, a level head, initiative and reasoning skills.
Then I look at the average motorist I have to share the road with during the day, and I wonder if the license-obtaining bar is set so low because the aforementioned bureaucrats are fans of Thomas Malthus, and are disappointed at the successes that modern medicine and agriculture have had in unbalancing his theory.
In my prior column, I said the behaviour of motorists in peak hour traffic should be reason enough for them to consider catching public transport. I’ve always said that your average person is too stupid to drive a car. Now, it appears as if science is backing me up. I don’t know if that’s a comfort or not.
In general, I’m all about freedom of choice rather than over-regulating people’s lives, but at the same time I’m not an anarchist libertarian either. We have rules, and they’re mostly good for social cohesion and preserving life. Letting people drive falls into the latter. It’s not a right. People should have to qualify for the privilege.
And that is how the system is set up, but the qualifications are so low that the rules may as well not exist. If you can do a lap around the block of suburbia and park a little hatchback in fair weather you’re apparently good enough to drive any car in any situation. Pardon my French, but that’s just bullshit.
Something needs to be done about the low skill standards on the road. It’s going to take a seismic shift in attitudes, both from the public and the government, but it needs to be done. We need for people, who don’t particularly enjoy driving and evidently shouldn’t do it anyway, to stand up and say, “Give me another option”. They need to be willing to put up with some inconvenience to get it followed, by a consistent willingness to use it. We need our government to have the stones to actually follow through with what people want, and bring in engineers that weren’t scraped from the bottom of the barrel.
In other words, I think I’m praying for a miracle.
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I’m a very average driver with less than a year’s experience on the road. Prior to driving I used public transport (busses, mainly) without a fuss. When I began working full-time though, I found that taking 65 minutes to travel a 20 minute route was ridiculous (when working a nine hour shift, especially).
I learnt to drive because of this. I failed my written test three times. I spent six and a half months learning to drive with an accredited instructor (37 hours total) before taking my practical test. I passed first time. I have had two accidents (one scrape on a country road, one incident where the front of my car was torn off while making a maljudged U-turn) but continue to build up experience.
I will learn from my mistakes and if I don’t I will pay for them (I understand this: one friend lost his license and two others lost their lives). I will obey the law but I will NOT be pressured into staying off the road because a group of revheads in overpowered cars (not you guys, of course) think they have more of a right to be on the roads than I do.
That is not how this country should work.
I like your attitude Hugo.
Hugo. I’ve got no issue with people willing to learn to improve. You don’t need to be a revhead, and nor does owning an overpowered car imbue its driver with magical driving skills.
The grinding comes from people who couldn’t care less about how they drive. Who have no interest in improving their skills. Who look upon driving as a chore, and try to scrape by with the bare minimum required.
These are people who can’t learn to recognise signs of potential danger and show some level of initiative and intuition, and need to have every road minutae emblazoned in a billboard. These same signs then become so prolific that they just turn into noise, and they ignore them because they assume they know what they say, yet they don’t get their risk cues from anywhere else.
Like Steane, I like your attitude. Its your acknowledgement that your skills aren’t perfect, coupled with a desire to improve them, that is sorely lacking on the road and leads me to want to get those people off them. No-one is born with driving skills. Those with a natural aptitude just pick it up faster, that’s all.
However, you said your public transport route takes 3 times as long as it should. That’s the flipside of what I’m saying. I am a “revhead with an overpowered car”, and I am quite happy to catch public transport. For commuting, I prefer it. I do shift work, so my commute times are variable. Last month it was taking me an hour and a half to get home. Today, it took me 40 mins to get to work. Its a 20min/15 min drive, respectively. There were plenty of times last month, sitting at the train station, where I thought about driving, but I find commuting with a car so inefficient and frustrating that I’d rather not.
My question to you is this: If public transport made your 20 minute drive a 30-40 minute public transport ride, would you still feel the need to drive?
Yes I would drive still. I couldn’t be arsed with getting two buses to work everyday costing me twice as much as the fuel in my car and taking 3 times as long. I would do if it were cheaper & more direct. Plus half the running around to the kids clubs would be impossible on public transport.
If governments ring-fenced a part of the tax on cars and vans, trucks etc then allocated it to subsidise travel on public transport then i’m sure folks would get out of their vehicles.
There’s a lot to dislike about public transport, that’s for sure.
Driving means sitting in traffic, putting up with idiots, putting up with petrol costs, putting up with poor road surfaces, so on and so forth.
On the flip side, public transport can mean putting up with just as many idiots, except these ones smell, or they’re loud, or they’re taking up too much space, or they spill their morning coffee on you when the train jolts, etc. Then you’ve got (for us Melbournites) the horrible cold and wet mornings while you wait for your train/bus/tram, the delayed trains, the extended waits 5 metres from the platform because some other train is late, the almost-as-much-as-fuel cost of train tickets (and buying a monthly or yearly ticket in one go is a big hit for those on lower incomes), etc.
I’m all for public transport, but I’ll ever be sympathetic to those who choose to put up with the headaches of the road over the headaches of PT.
On the head, CS. Government harp on about wanting us to get PT, but what do they really do to make it happen? Nothing. They build more freeways, enticing us to stay in our cars. And of course the profit they take from fuel taxes (sorry, excise) far outstrips what they take from the PT system.
Sounds like far too sensible an idea for any government to actually implement Cupid. As The Insider has pointed out previously, the bountiful tax harvest that Western governments are currently reaping on fuel sees them making a bigger profit than the folks who actually have the oil in their backyard.
So typical.
What is this mythical creature you all refer to as a bus?
I was wondering that as well. If its anything like a Tram then I won’t be liking it much.
it greatly saddens me to read opinions from small minded, self absorbed planet destroyers bemoaning the virtues of an excellent integrated public transport system such as the one millions of us enjoy here in victoria..how sad that these small appendaged ding bats find recourse and solace in the driving of large horsepowered motor vehicles, how utterly unfounded their panning of our excellent public transpoprt systems - here in beautiful victoria..i say get out of your planet killing super charged human slaying machines and get on board the way of the future, be it a bus, tram, train or bicycle built for two…deep inside your selfish small minds you know that the only way to move forward responsibly and sustainably into the future is with public transport.
i hope you get on board before it is too late
mind the gap and stay clear of the doors please
roger peak-williams
Your joking right Roger ?? Hang on hang on do you drive a prius??? Yeah you wrote that whole comment with your tongue planted in your cheek hey??
There’s also the fact that towns without signs have zero accidents.
Its a Catch 22. Public transport is unreliable, indirect and uncomfortable, which makes it undesirable.
Driving is bad for the environment and the economy, and socially irresponsible as a result.
What I want to see is public transport be more structured and work properly. I don’t mind changing PT once, and it being a little longer than driving, as long as I don’t have to wait for ages just to get squished in with others…assuming there’s enough room to get on it at all.
Actually, I’d prefer to telecommute (so work can pay for my Internet access and computer too) but that’s even less likely with our government and Telstra shafting us over broadband, but that’s another rant for a web site of a different orientation.
Well I can’t speak for everyone else Roger, but I think I’ve been pretty clear in my opinion that I’d be more than happy to use public transport if only the government made a stronger commitment to it. They’re *clearly* tied to the profit they get from big oil, so until they’re going to do something to make a train ride to work - or the wait for a late one - less dreadful (for all of the reasons I mentioned above and don’t need to reiterate), they’re not going to see me on a train.
It’s all well good to say I should get out of my world-destroying car, but at what point did it all land entirely on our shoulders? I’m willing to get a train, or a bus, or a tram. More than willing to. But if the government isn’t going to meet us halfway and improve the service so that a tram ride up St. Kilda ride every morning doesn’t turn me into a sardine, they. won’t. see. me. On PT.
We vote these people in to make the changes that we all give, frankly, pretty clear voice to. And they don’t, because the fuel excise profits are more compelling than the needs of the people.
i’m with ya there mike..though getting sardined into a tram with hot office babes each morning is about as close as i’ve got to a woman in a few years…i’m like harvey norman…no interest for 2years
looks like from your photo that you’ve been hit with the ugly stick a few times yourself mike…maybe you should try the tram as well
Come’on Stef get a pic up soon as i think Craigs knuckles can only drag on the ground for so long haaaaaa
Count me as one “small minded, self absorbed planet destroyer” and “small appendaged ding bat” who owns and drives a large horsepowered motor vehicle… and who also takes public transport to work 95% of the time. And I don’t get all high and mighty about it.
I’m lucky enough to be able to choose my own hours to avoid the sardine crush, but not everyone is so fortunate. And when the system fails, it really sucks bad. At least it’s not Sydney though.
Like I say I wouldn’t mind using public transport. We live 400kms form little old London. A return at peak times costs AU$538 for a 3 and 1/2 hour trip. Petrol for the same trip is about AU$200 plus other running costs.
COnversly on the same count my family of 4 took the train off-peak family ticket AU$180.
So it seems I would use public transport if it were cheaper. Point proven methinks.
Thats ridiculously expensive for a train trip CS! I’ve done the sums myself. My GF lives 20kms out of Melbourne and it is cheaper for her to run the car in each day (to the city) than catch public transport - even at today’s fuel prices - and its a damn site more convenient. Makes you wonder really…
One of my colleagues works in London, but doesn’t live in it. I think he said his monthly commute costs on public transport added up to about AUD$1000.
I hope he’s making phat bank.
I agree there are so many road signs around warning drivers of the bleeding obvious.. However; I think there are a couple of signs that are missing including “This is an [Advisory] Road Sign” “Warning Cars Infront of You” “Warning Cars Behind You” “You’re in A Traffic Jam” “The Roads are S–T”
I stand by my horse theory or even camels …. especially the racing version ..
For those that care, the British Department For Transport is reviewing its signage:
http://www.newspress.co.uk/DAILY_LINKS/arc_sep_2008/120908dft.htm