HOLIDAY ROAD TOLL BRINGS ROAD SAFETY NAZIS OUT IN FORCE

At last count 66 Australians have died in road crashes over the holiday period. Opportunistic road safety Nazis are trying to use the death toll to maximum advantage even though the overall road toll has steadily declined for years.

David Healy, general manager of Victoria's Transport Accident Commission, wants alcohol interlock devices to be standard equipment in all cars. He does make some valid points about the overall age of Australia's car fleet and risk taking by young male drivers.

Professor Raphael Grzebieta of the Australasian College of Road Safety uses the 66 deaths as an excuse to go nuts, goaded by the ABC's Maxine McKew. Here are but two examples of the insanity:

MAXINE McKEW: Tell me, do you think we're stalled on this issue because we're almost numbed, if you like, by the figures or we take no notice of them? Historically, I know the road toll figures are lower, I mean New South Wales averages I think around 540 road deaths a year, Victoria about 340. But they're still huge numbers, aren't they?

PROF RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA: It's enormous. When you think about it, it's five deaths a day in Australia. If you were to present those sorts of numbers in terms of a war or in terms of some sort of - like, aircraft crashing or trains crashing or something like that, then you would have an inquiry, there'd be demand that we withdraw from that war.


MAXINE McKEW: Is your bottom line that you want to see those safety features mandated?

PROF RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA: Absolutely.

MAXINE McKEW: In the way that seatbelts were 30 years ago?

PROF RAPHAEL GRZEBIETA: Well, you think about it. In 1970 when we introduced seatbelts, it was quite a radical decision. If we introduce electronic stability control tomorrow, if we legislated for that, made it compulsory for every single vehicle that we now manufacture today, then we would start to save probably about 30, 40, 50 per cent. That's the sort of numbers of fatalities that they're seeing overseas in USA and in Europe being reduced.

So we shouldn't shy away from some of this legislation. We're not doing it in other areas like occupational health and safety or in the area of anti-terrorism laws. We should be introducing laws into our legislation so that it safeguards people on roads, and in vehicles.

Only a lefty academic could work war and anti-terror laws into a road safety discussion. Read the whole interview and contemplate how much the ultra-safe car of the future is going to cost.

Update: The professor has been pitching idiotic safety features since at least last March. Why is no-one listening?