a sensible letter to the editor

Last year we commented on a stupid letter to the editor of the Dominion Post about the railways by someone called Waller. So as a contrast, here below is a sensible one, comments that we have made ourselves to bureaucrats in the past, naturally without much success.

What is important is that police focus on speed that is unsafe for the conditions.

Unlike on the railways, speed limits on the roads are quite arbitrary affairs, often determined by some local authority bureaucrat, and just as there are plenty of situations when they are unnecessarily low, there are also plenty of situations when travelling at the legal limit is too fast.



Police should focus on bad driving, rather than speed
Do police seriously think they'll improve the road toll by giving only a 5 km/h tolerance on speed limits over the holiday period?

Study statistics and we see that most victims are drunk drivers - or pedestrians - people in head-on collisions caused by inexcusably stupid driving, or at intersections.

Focusing on people just over a limit is, in most cases, pointless.

Germany's autobahns, with no speed limit and regular traffic flows at 200 km/h-plus, are among the safest roads in the world. Well, they are when Germans drive on them.

I hate to imagine the carnage if New Zealanders were given free rein. We're not a nation of good drivers. Too many seem unaware of basic driving techniques and are stupidly aggressive.

We need to lift standards and attitudes if we're to seriously lower the road toll. Patrolling officers, especially in mufti cars, see countless examples of driving that mightn't be illegal, but that demonstrate low skill or lack of consideration.

Why aren't officers encouraged to pull such people over and have a quiet, positive word with them? That would do far more to improve driving standards than unthinking, totalitarian speed limit enforcement.


MARTIN HARRIS
Havelock North