Quote Originally Posted by Chernoby1 View Post
My method of reducing the risk by simply not allowing those who are not ready ofr the responsibilities of driving ANY lisence. Im not saying they shouldnt be restricted, im saying they shouldnt be permitted to drive. IE, the car is never the problem it is always the driver so restrict the drivers not the cars.


The idea of the certification is to enable me to gain said 'experience'. My problem is that there is nothing stopping some old fart who has never driven a high power vehcle from getting behind the wheels of one.
My argument here is that yes experience is necessary but it also has to be the RIGHT sort of experience. Putting around in a hyundai getz for 20 years will not mean you are safe to drive a air-cooled porsche (unstable as all funk). They should also be forced to undergo training for high power vehicles.


When a license is easy to get and maintain, people will abuse it. The problem with these morons is that licensed or not they will do what they do. Restricting the people who do follow the laws makes no sense at all.


im saying Learning on public roads should be forbidden. You should get all the expirience you need in controlled environments where things cant go incredibly wrong.

Again im not saying that a learner driver should be permitted to drive a high power car on the road, im saying a learner driver shouldn't be permitted to drive ANY car on the road.


http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/r...countries.html

Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Switzerland had no Graduate licensing systems pre EU.

Norway and sweden had a system whre it is easier to loose (not suspend but you have to go back to the beginning) within the first two years of getting your license.

As far as i know, none of the european/american countries restrict the use of 'certain' cars. Each category of vehicle has a related license and that license enables you to drive ALL vehicles in that category (probationary or not).


Hence my reason to introduce a new category for high power vehicles so the rest of people dont need to make any changes. This also helps prevent the general public getting behind the wheel of a powerful car and wrapping it around a pole. Dont see how someone who has been driving an econbox for the last 20 years will be safer and in more control of a vehicle than someone else who has 5 months of experience driving a high power vehicle and being forced to actually experience many of the possible things that can happen due to the higher power... And to make sure you understand what im saying, i mean 5 months of on track/motorkhana/other non public road environment and absolutely no driving of a high power vehicle on the road until you have got that license.


Why should i, a member of the public be put at ANY risk at all so that other can be assessed on their safety and adherence to the law? I took my test in a vehicle that didnt have double controls and i cant see how there is any safety in another 'qualified' person being in that vehicle with me. IF i panicked and stomped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake, there is nothing that person can do that reduces the risk of injury to the public or myself.

By my argument a mock setup of streets and roads should be made to simulate the road, but not be part of the public road network (japan does exactly this). This also means that the person needs to do all their training in this environment to make sure the REST of the publics safety is not compromised by this learner being on the road.
Is this expensive? Yes. Is this going to make getting a license expensive and difficult? Yes.

If the reason you are not increasing safety is cost, then you/the politicians are effectively putting a monetary value on a persons life. That is a very slippery path to go down.


Not really hard to enforce. A powerful vehicle would need a different registration from a 'non-high-power' vehicle. You said it yourself, the majority of the public wouldnt drive/own these sorts of vehicles, so it would be easy for the police to pick the high power cars out (especially with new rego plate scanners) and check if the operator has a high power vehicle license.



I dislike the fact i cannot purchase a vehicle without electronic safety ads, im baised as all hell so please bear that in mind. I simply wanted to make a point that a "non-standard car" needs to have its own certification. This is already in practice in industry environments (Verification of Competency) which as the name implies, is a test that verifies you are competent to operate the equipment. This MAY mean that i special cases, a VOC test may have to be created for that specific vehicle.

If you ever get a chance to drive most pre WW2 vehicle, lets just says its very different (some dont have the accelerator as a pedal but rather a knob on the dash handle on the door)... yet anybody is permitted to drive the thing without any special certification. Sure due to the lack of occurrences it hasnt been a big issue but F*ck me.... Safety > Practicality.
Okay, as these posts are getting a bit long I will try and lay them out in point form.

1. The car that someone drives does affect the way they behave, since these restrictions have been placed, there has been a decline in road fatalities. Placing a 18 year old in a hyundai getz is very different to a nissan skyline.

2. This is when my argument of the "maturing of the driver" steps in, if you've been putting around in a hyundai getz for the last 20 years and get into a high powered sports car, you will know (and for gods sakes i hope you know) not to give it a flogging until such point as you can control the car. The mindset of someone who's 40 compares to someone who's 18 is very different, do you honestly think someone with a wife children and mortgage would want to put his life or their lives at risk.

3. The law is put in place, you're the one who's disagreeing with it, statistically speaking it works.

4 + 5, these countries have different rules as they are fundamentally different to Australia, Australia is a large country with lots of roads and the car is necessity. Alot of those countries have their citizens predominately using public transport. Whereas in Australia due to inadequacies, geographical spread etc has a reliance on cars.

Whether they have restrictions on high performance cars or not is a different issue, Australia has one of the lowest road tolls (comparing population/road users/amount of roads) in the world due to these restrictions, this is for the benefit of the community why do we have a need to change it.

6. Have you ever considered the economical cost of 5 months of driver training, revenue wise the government makes about a 33% cut from the luxury car tax alone. Also would you think anyone who can actually afford these cars would bother to go through all this training, they are driving the car A to B, not flogging it around thinking the road is a race track. Most high performance cars with the demographic you're speaking of have their cars driving in CBD traffic during peak. Go down to King/Collins street at 8.30 in the morning to see the plethora of lawyers and bankers driving their cars around bumper to bumper. Most of these gents are probably executive level managers or partners of their firms, you're talking incomes of excess of $500k a year, do you really believe they would endanger their lives by driving like an idiot.

7. It is impractical to not allow people to learn on the public roads, if there is a "pre-leaners" course in an controlled environment, then I would agree. Again this is up to the driving instructor putting you in a safe place, in my first lesson I was in a car with dual controls and he took me to an area which did not have any traffic. If you choose to learn in a car with no dual controls and without a driving instructor, YOU are putting the public to risk. A more practical solution would be to have a minimum of mandatory lessons with a driving instructor, say 10 hours, general expectations would be that you have acquired enough knowledge to drive in a safe enough manner to practice on the open road. Please refer to below diagram (source: betterdrivers.com.au, I think it's part of AAMI). Having an accompany instructor (even if it's mum, dad or sibling) does decrease the chances of an accident.



8 + 9. I'm not sure how many times I've driven a vehicle which isn't rego'd under my own name, friends, family, fleet cars, company cars etc. You're just allowing people to rort the system or alternative cause more congestion from the police, current system works people there are only a finite amount of possibilities when checking a high performance car.

i) full license driver - okay
ii) P plater displaying Ps - 3 point demerit for over powered vehicle
iii) P plater not displaying Ps - 6 point demerit, loss of license

As you know how fkd up the laws are with car modifications, do you want to give these clowns the opportunity to interrogate you on the vehicle you are driving under your proposed changes.

Monetary values are places on peoples lives. I'm sure if you have a superannuation it would come with life insurance which will place a value of the payout on event of your death. Same with insurance policies etc. There is always a risk calculation on the premium and excess of all claims (house/cars/people), these services are to make money, welcome to the world of capitalism.

10. Why are you upset that you cannot purchase a vehicle without electronic aids, these are proven to assist people in situations where they would have been in a serious accident without them. Again, these are people driving from A to B, it may be one day in the 50 years they drive that they rely on these aids, is it practical to make them go through 5 months of training so they can control a power slide? no, is it economical? no. Your WW2 vehicle argument has no validity as it's almost statistically irrelevant in a test example, you would more likely be hit by a bus crossing the road than for a serious accident to occur in one of those vehicles, I can't imagine a museum lending you one to flog around anyway.

From reading your replies I can understand your point of view, but in essence what I get is that you think that there are alot of idiots on the road (yes there is) and once they obtain their full licensed they can drive whatever they want in a manner which they cannot control the vehicle or deemed unsafe to the public (yes they do). However there are always people out there who break the law, people get stabbed all the time, do we ban knives? No, because the majority of people don't do that, it's only a very small statistic who does. Currently the system works (although there are a few flaws). Yes there are probably improvements which can be made, say DECA training or a compulsory track day/skid pan day or compulsory minimum driving lessons, however fundamentally there isn't a need to overhaul the licensing arrangements as you have suggested.