Doctors and Very Old Drivers

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Express

I'm aware if I am the reason for disrupting traffic flow it's a good idea to pull over and let the faster drivers go by,

Too bad 99% of the people I come across the road on a daily basis don't think like this - we've got roadworks on our highway into Melbourne at the moment, which ends up bunching up a lot of traffic.

So theres maybe 15-20 of us at the light at roadworks waiting on the light to go green, it finally goes green, we eventually pass through our road works area, then it opens up into a small section with an overtaking lane thats probably about a kilometer long.

Someone will ALWAYS attempt to overtake the person in front doing 85km/h, at 92km/h and takes up the entire overtaking lane and no one else can get by while the 15-20 cars behind all get ****ed off and then overtaking starts happening in dangerous spots.

Its literally like any motorsport when the safety car comes out and the whole field bunches up, except when the safety car goes away the guy at front is doing 85km/h and the guy behind overtakes at 92km/h and takes up the whole track.

Yesterday on the way to work I got stuck behind someone who merged onto the Tullamarine Freeway at 67km/h

Yesterday on the way home from work it was a little wet so someone in a D40 Navara decided to hold us all up doing 70km/h in a 100 zone, I got stuck behind them for about 10km before I could get past as well as the people behind me.

I don't mind people taking it easy and going slow - on the condition you will be courteous and not try to block faster moving traffic behind, but there's a lack of courtesy from these drivers who want to play pretend policeman and hold everyone else up and they're going slow so everyone else has to as well because they say so.

Then they do the angry flash lights when you get around them.

Also some speed limits are too low, to the point that people are just ignoring them, case in point is the Tullamarine Freeway upgrade, its 5-6 lanes wide, yet its had its speed limit reduced to 80km/h and people are doing 100km/h+ now anyway.

I wonder why its at epidemic levels of people using their phones while driving? Probably because everyones going so damn slow everyone starts finding ways to distract themselves.

Originally Posted by Express

The way I see it when you target an age group as being a poor driving demographic you are drawing a line in the sand because of what we think we see or want to see or because a particular statistic is worse for one age than another but none of it really touches on or solves the overall problem of poor drivers on the road.

Not everyone should be tarred with the same brush just because they fall into a particular age group.

Sounds exactly like what most states do to P platers with vehicle restrictions and some states like NSW are even worse with arbitrary speed limits for them?

[Express]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Sounds exactly like what most states do to P platers with vehicle restrictions and some states like NSW are even worse with arbitrary speed limits for them?

When I got my licence there were no restrictions on what you could drive.

I started to learn car control from about the age of 10 by driving old beat up pieces of junk in the cloverfields back home and my first car at 17 was a 1976 4 speed, 308 HX Ute.

I can't honestly say I really had control of it but I was lucky and survived that period but one thing I did learn from losing a few friends, it's not necessarily the power of the car that kills as low power vehicles can also get up enough of a head of stream to quickly distinguish a life.

Limiting power to novice drivers is a smart move but it still won't save them from themselves.





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[lra]

Originally Posted by Express

Limiting power to novice drivers is a smart move but it still won't save them from themselves. .

No, you can't save people from their own stupid actions.
But any of us who got their licence in country areas in the early '60s had older cars that were very limited in power, handling, braking and safety.
Think of FX Holdens, Vauxhalls, Ford Prefects, Austin A40s, and Morris Minors.
Motoring in slow motion for the impatient youth.