Page 1642 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 3 June 2014
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appropriate for the government to wait to receive that committee inquiry report and to respond to it, so that we get it right. It is very difficult to make assessments—I have not been involved in that committee; I have not seen the report—and to make a determination on whether the government is going down the right track here.
Secondly, I believe that, along with the other areas of aggravated offences, it is about the behaviour and not the consequence. The test of whether you are speeding or not is pretty clear. The test of whether you are drunk or on drugs is clear. The test of whether you are a repeat offender is clear. But the issue of putting a vulnerable road user at risk in many ways might be the consequence of someone’s dangerous driving rather than the actual behaviour itself. So until we have more information and until the government responds to the inquiry’s report, I think that element of the legislation is pre-emptive.
The other element that we have a concern about is that of exceeding the speed limit by more than 30 per cent. I do not have a problem per se with exceeding the speed limit being an aggravated offence, but I do have a concern with the way it is being measured. This is a new paradigm; this is a new way of doing business—this 30 per cent rule. I do not make a judgement as to whether it is a good way of assessing whether or not someone’s speed limit is too high, but it is new.
At the moment we have certain fixed levels: exceeding the speed limit by certain kilometres an hour—for example, 45 kilometres an hour. Thirty per cent means that if you are driving in a 40 zone, 52 kilometres an hour becomes an aggravated offence. I would say there would be many people who would drive perhaps through a traffic area, a maintenance area or a school zone, and, as you are slowing down for that zone, many people would enter, say, that school zone at 52 kilometres an hour. People will be unaware of this, because there is a completely new way of looking at speeding being introduced in this bill.
What the amendment will seek to do, and what I would say, is, “Let’s be consistent with other jurisdictions.” Where other jurisdictions have gone down this route, they have applied a fixed amount, and that is 45 kilometres an hour. Everybody knows that it is dangerous driving if you are going 45 kilometres an hour over the speed limit. It is very clear what we are doing.
What the government will be doing by using this particular methodology is creating an inconsistency in our traffic laws so that, if you speed, it is by a fixed number of kilometres an hour—10 kilometres over the speed limit, 20 kilometres over the speed limit and so on—but if it is an aggravating offence, it is a percentage over the speed limit.
I think we need to have that debate before we can then start applying it to our road laws. If this is the way to go, if a percentage over the speed limit is the way to go, we should be applying that across our laws and we should also make sure that we are consistent with other jurisdictions. Indeed, what is happening here is that we are becoming inconsistent with not only our own laws but those of other jurisdictions.
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