Just Me

What with my recent nowhere-near-fatal-accident and “that” pile up not so long ago, it’s fair to say that road safety has taken a more prominant place in my thoughts. I have a 110+ mile commute to and from the office so I drive a bit, it’s fair to say and the standard of driving I encounter on a regular basis is appalling. I’m not talking about speeding either.

Let’s start with the basics, Mirrors, they let you see whats coming behind you. It’s handy to check before you switch lanes or pullout in to traffic. Next up, indicators, they give other road users an “indication” of when we are about to change direction, you know like when your about to turn at a junction, switch lanes or even when your pulling out of a parking space.

I mean, the only thing’s that you ever hear of causing accidents in the news is speeding and drunk driving and if there really was a will to sort it out it could be quite simple and without resorting to draconian measures that grandad proposes, funny and all as they are. Although there is some sense in the drivers license that starts the car idea.

A more cost-effective solution would be to require all road vehicles to carry a GPS tracking chip, heck you can have these fitted to your car so it can be found easily if it’s stolen, simply use the technology to record only the times that a driver is exceeding the speed limit. The costs could be easily offset with the savings in paying the Gardai to sit in the hedgerows with there hairdryers. The government would still have the cash cow for speeding tickets, cause lets face it there will always be people who speed.

I remember hearing about an insurance company on the radio who offer discounted premiums to younger drivers once they have just the type of system I propose installed. The digital maps with the relevant speed zones indicated already exist so why can’t this be implemented? All it would need would be some politician to pick up on the idea, hell we can Eliminate smoking in public buildings why can’t we do this?

So, that’s speeding taken care of, simple as that, maybe an extra few quid on the price of your car but so what in the name of eliminating all those crashes caused by speeding.

So what about drunk drivers? How do we rid the roads of them… I think I might have an idea…

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 7:11 am and is filed under Features, News, Road Manners, Road Safety, improved. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.