Page 1644 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 3 June 2014
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One of the important aspects of this bill, which I will discuss further in a moment, is that it introduces to ACT road transport legislation for the first time the concept of vulnerable road users. Members will know of my interest in this issue. I was certainly very interested to see that the report from the TAMS committee, which I just learnt from Mr Hanson, even though he is not on the committee and it is not listed on the blue, is being tabled today. In light of recent discussions, I did appreciate the small irony in that Mr Hanson was able to enlighten us on that matter. I very much look forward to reading that report when it becomes available.
I note Mr Hanson’s comments about deciding to move amendments to the bill. The first I knew of these was when the email arrived this morning at 8.30. It was somewhat surprising to be notified of the amendments quite so late. I will not be supporting those amendments, and I will go into some of the details as to why, because I think it is actually detrimental to road safety to support those amendments. I think that the rationale for the legislation is, in fact, quite strong.
As the Attorney-General outlined when he tabled this bill, its main purpose is to introduce an aggravated version of the offence of furious, reckless or dangerous driving. The aggravated version of the offence attracts a maximum penalty of 200 penalty units, imprisonment for two years, or both. This is double the maximum penalty for the standard offence.
There are already serious charges available to punish dangerous driving conduct when the conduct causes death or grievous bodily harm. This is through the culpable driving offence in the ACT Crimes Act, with its maximum penalty of 14 years in jail. So the benefit of creating an aggravating offence for furious, reckless or dangerous driving is that it targets behaviour that endangers the community before an accident or injury has occurred. It focuses particularly on stopping highly risky driving behaviour and preventing death and injury, more than introducing new penalties for incidents where the injury or death has already occurred. The factors that will turn a dangerous, reckless or furious driving offence into an aggravated offence are laid out in the bill and are, in my opinion, behaviour that is worthy of a higher sanction.
One of these aggravating factors is where a person attempts to evade police. This is behaviour that could, of course, instigate a police pursuit. As we have discussed before, police pursuits can be the cause of considerable danger to the community. Another aggravating factor is driving while intoxicated by alcohol or drugs. The additional danger created by driving while intoxicated is obvious and evidenced by the tragic number of incidents on the road that still involve drugs or alcohol.
Similarly, excessive speed is a factor in a large number of road accidents. The bill also makes excessive speeding an aggravating factor. For this purpose, “excessive” is defined as more than 30 per cent over the speed limit. I agree that setting a percentage is an appropriate way to define excessive speeding rather than just setting a flat rate, such as 30 kilometres an hour above the speed limit. The percentage approach acknowledges that different speed zones are different environments with different risks. Driving recklessly through a 40-kilometre-an-hour high pedestrian zone at 60 kilometres, for example, potentially poses a higher risk than driving at 140 kilometres
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