I wrote a few weeks ago about the road toll and an idea to reduce it.
I suspect that most traffic-related charges these days result from cameras and ray guns. When was the last time you heard of someone charged with overtaking on double lines, failing to indicate when turning or failing to stop at a stop sign?
And how many times have you seen someone fail to indicate? I see it almost every day on the road.
That’s my rant over with.
The current penalty system involves fines and the accrual of demerit points. A person loses their licence if they collect too many points. That’s the stick, but there is no carrot.
I’d like to see good drivers acknowledged and rewarded.
A simple reward would be to significantly reduce the licence fees and vehicle registration costs for motorists who have zero demerits. The government could make this cost neutral to Treasury by increasing the charges for naughty drivers to offset the bonus for good ones.
A more complicated reward system could involve allowing good motorists to drive faster on open roads. Perhaps every car should carry a plate in the windscreen showing the driver’s status, eg learner, probationary, occasional speeder, menace to society, super wheelman.
The “super wheelman” should be allowed to drive at 120kmh on major highways (currently 110 in Western Australia) while the “occasional speeder” should be restricted to 100kmh and the “menace” to 90.
Of course, many people would cheat with their plates, so police would have to make random checks like they do for drink drivers already.
Maybe the second part of this proposal is too radical to gain widespread support and I can personally see difficulties with it, but I struggle to see any argument against rewarding good drivers with lower state charges.
