Title : The politics of traffic offences
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The politics of traffic offences
OK, disclaimer over. What this post is about is the system of demerit points for driving offences in my home state of Victoria. Basically, when you commit a driving offence in Victoria, as well as receiving a fine you will also be given a certain number of demerit points. Accumulate 12 or more points within any rolling five year period, you have your license automatically suspended for a period of six months. So far, so good; people shouldn't just be able to pay their way out of trouble when it comes to dangerous driving. What I find interesting, though, is the relative severity with which different offences are treated. You can see the various deductions here. Here's a selection:
Driving at night without headlights and tail lights on: 1 point
Disobeying traffic lights, signs or police or authorised person directing traffic: 3 points
Driving on the wrong side of double lines or divided highway or painted island: 3 points
Driver subject to .05% BAC with a BAC between .05% and .07%: 10 points
I've picked this selection because the first four offences are really bloody dangerous behaviours. You can be caught hurtling invisibly through the night 11 times in three years without losing your license. Similarly, you can run three red lights and remain on the road. After being caught driving ON THE WRONG SIDE OF A DIVIDED HIGHWAY three times, you would still be deemed safe enough to be allowed to keep driving. Driving. But get caught marginally over the permitted blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.04% more than once, and you're through.
This doesn't even account for the difference in the level of police in enforcement. Huge amounts of effort are expended by the police in catching drunk drivers, but very little in policing the appropriate use of driving lights.
There are a couple of things that bother me about this. The first is the extreme nonlinearity of the situation:
BAC of 0.04%: Carry on, sir or madam.
BAC of 0.05%: Teeter on the edge of license suspension, you monster!
Contrast this with the similarly dangerous practice of speeding, for which there are no fewer than five gradations (1, 3, 4, 6, 8 point penalties) depending on the degree to which the driver has exceeded the speed limit. And the typical car is equipped with the means of knowing whether you are over the speed limit, but possesses no such mechanism for testing your BAC. Now of course, one may argue that one shouldn't drink anything prior to driving, and there's merit to that argument. But the fact remains that moderate drinking prior to driving is legal. And anyway, the same argument applies to speeding... so why the difference in how the two offences are treated?
The other thing is that drink driving is far more heavily penalised than any other risk factor. For example, driving while fatigued is not penalised at all for drivers of private passenger vehicles, and with a maximum of 4 demerit points for commercial vehicles. Yet these papers show that driving without having slept for 24 hours prior is at least as bad as having a BAC of 0.10%. "Careless driving", which no doubt covers a multitude of driving behaviours that demonstrate a complete absence of giving a shit attracts 3 points... as long as the driver is sober.
I'm not sure why things are the way they are. My feeling is that the process is quite politicised, and that the connection between the severity of the offence and the severity of the penalty has been attenuated. It would be nice to see a more evidence-based approach to penalties, but it is obviously very tempting politically to raise the penalties for a particular class of offence as evidence that something is being done, rather than taking a more comprehensive (and expensive) approach to road safety.
Edit: Just to be clear, I do not favour an easing of drunk driving laws. However, I would like to see more gradation applied as is the case for speeding; being just a little bit over the legal limit shouldn't have such serious consequences. I also think that egregiously dangerous behaviours such as running red lights are just as bad as driving while intoxicated. These behaviours must be stamped out and should therefore be penalised much more harshly, along with an improved enforcement effort for such offences.
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