Many new vehicles are now fitted with bright fog lights. Unfortunately, many of the drivers of these vehicles seem to be fitted for not much at all, and particularly not for holding a driving licence. They make a practice of driving on clear nights with both their fogs and main beam switched on, dazzling other drivers. This is dangerous!
Someone should take these people in hand and explain the difference between thick fog and a clear night, and teach them that, in thick fog the fog lights should be switched on and the main beam switched off, while on a clear night the main beam should be switched on and the fog lights switched off. Maybe organisations like the police, the RTA and the NRMA could do something worthwhile and take on this education and enforcement role. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting because it seems that when it comes to road safety, the police are only interested in speeding, the RTA in putting up stupid signs, and the NRMA in skimming a take from affinity promotions, which has nothing whatever to do with road safety.
On another driving matter, I would be interested to know what substantive efforts the police, RTA and the NRMA are making to improve the safety of our roads, particularly the major heavy truck routes such as the Pacific Highway. I travel this highway frequently between Sydney and the Northern Rivers region of NSW and am continuously monstered by heavy trucks traveling at 5 to 10 kph over the speed limit. More than a few times I have had to brake strongly to avoid being run off the road by a truck overtaking at the very end of a two lane passing section of the highway. I suspect Australian Road Rule No 148 applies in this situation, rather than No 149, but it shouldn’t – as in all other overtaking situations, the overtaking vehicle should be required to carry out the manoeuvre without requiring any other vehicle to brake suddenly or otherwise modify their speed. In any event, much of the problem would be eliminated if the heavy vehicle speed limit was limited to 10 kph below the general speed limit - a system that seems to work well in Europe as far as I've seen.
However, our local State MP, Geoff Provest, is a National and some would say could therefore be fairly described as a tool of the trucking and transport industry, so there will be no joy in limiting heavy vehicles speeds from that direction.
And now for a dig at my northern neighbours. I’m sure that southern Queensland is rather empty at the moment, given the number of Queensland registered vehicles we saw heading south while driving down the coast to Sydney recently from my home in the northern rivers region of NSW, and returning a few weeks later.
Another observation during the drive that I thought was worth noting is that every over-the-top muscle car, serious speedster or general nutter who didn’t seem to get the idea of driving with consideration, courtesy and consistency, more often than not displayed a Queensland number plate.
Although these number plates try to persuade us that Queensland is the smart state, to me the empirical evidence suggests that it’s the boofhead state.
