Page 1760 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 18 August 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.32), in reply: It is pleasing to note that members generally are supportive of this package of four significant road safety measures. A common theme that emerged in the remarks of Mr Westende, on behalf of the Opposition, Ms Szuty, Mr Moore and Mr Lamont was that we can do so much with road rules but we can do a lot more through education campaigns.
Mr Westende suggested that we might look at better signage at some of the slip lane points. Mr Westende was looking at the three examples that were given. It is hardly breaching Cabinet or Caucus solidarity to indicate that some of us were puzzling over some of these examples, when we saw the diagrams. Generally, the community is probably not as aware as it might be of what slip lanes are and what their obligations are. Additional education, either by way of signs, as Mr Westende suggests, or by way of a better education campaign, as Ms Szuty suggests, is something we will look at very seriously. I suspect that the people who best know about slip lanes are our 17-year-olds who have just gone through their written examinations for driving licences. The rest of us who got our licences many years ago probably would have difficulty sitting that written test if it were put in front of us today. So we can do more about education on that.
Mr Lamont's point is well taken that you can often reduce speeds through signage, white lines and other engineering mechanisms. There has been some controversy in this place and in the community about how we reduce speeds around schools; it is particularly controversial around the Calwell school. The Government has been coming up with a range of engineering solutions by way of better signage, greater visibility of the school crossing, and the use of fluorescent bins. It is trialling at Erindale College, with a view to later use outside Calwell and other schools, not quite a speed hump, because of the dangers a speed hump presents to a car travelling at speed, but a lower form of wooden rumble bar. The car driving along the street gets a minor vibration, not sufficient to cause a safety problem or to affect braking or steering performance but sufficient to alert the driver that something is going on and to be additionally careful near a school. Essentially, it is the feature Mr Lamont was referring to at the big roundabout on the Barton Highway. It achieves that effect through a substance on the road that gives you a slight vibration and rumble and alerts you to the fact that a hazard is coming up by way of a roundabout. So we take those general remarks of members that we need to address road safety issues by way of better education and information, as well as changing the legislation.
I foreshadow an amendment in the detail stage of this Bill to the child restraint provision. Members may have seen a media report a couple of weeks ago that suggested that there may be some problems with this legislation. As we looked very carefully at the drafting, we did think there were some potential problems with the form of the child restraint provision in the original Bill. We have come up with an amendment, which has been circulated today, although I did provide that to Mr Westende, as opposition spokesperson, some little time earlier. It is essentially a tidying up and closing of loopholes provision. One of the significant things is that we open up a "not unreasonable circumstances" exception to the requirement that a child restraint be used. Mr Moore put some circumstances when he thought it might be okay for a child to travel in the front seat or absent the restraint, and he instanced taking kids to and from school sports. I think we would not see that as falling on the exception side of the not unreasonable line.
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