Are Drivers Too Protected?

The government has announced plans to increase fines for minor crimes, and use the difference to compensate victims. Predictably, the tabloids have immediately focused on the increase in fines for speeding motorists. Isn't it funny how papers that are so hot on punishing offenders in any other case, suddenly become so defensive as soon as drivers are targeted?

Why are drivers who break the law seen as such a special case? Drivers who misbehave kill or injure thousands of people every year, not to mention all the time and money wasted on repairing the damage they cause. There seems little doubt that if this much trouble was caused by asylum seekers, the unemployed, or pretty much any minority group, the tabloids would be screaming for blood. So why the double standard?

The answer comes down to empathy. The average tabloid reader or columnist cannot imagine themselves being an asylum seeker, unemployed or part of an ethnic minority. The punishments they call for don't apply to them - just to the other people who make their lives less pleasant. Equally, they can't imagine their own criminal behaviour causing misery for others. The idea that "I can handle the car at this speed" or "this road is really safe at this speed" is an essential part of the mindset. Daily experience reinforces that belief. My house lies near the corner of two residential roads, both thirty limits, both regularly driven along at speeds nearer fifty. In the four years I've lived here, there's been one fatal accident. Everyone else gets away with it. Everyone else can look back and say "I've always driven this road at fifty, and no harm has ever happened". The accident didn't change anyone's attitude. It doesn't apply to them - they're good drivers.

In truth, many people are accidents waiting to happen. Living in the country is terrifying. People flying round blind corners on the wrong side of the road. Speeding over one track bridges instead of giving way to the oncoming traffic that has priority. Overtaking on blind corners or summits. For anyone driving like that, it is only luck that keeps them in one piece. Worse, it's only luck that prevents their idiocy harming others. And anyone driving through a built up area over the speed limit is in the same category.

How did we end up here? Partly, because our traffic laws are a joke. We make motorways and cars designed for high speeds, then have a national limit of seventy. That makes little sense. Enforcement concentrates entirely on speeding offences. In a built up area that makes sense, but when was the last time you heard of someone fined for driving too close on the motorway? The police don't even set an example. Police cars driving too close are a frequent sight, and last time I drove to the shops, I had to manoeuvre round a police car parked in the middle of a junction, for no obvious reason. The logic goes something along the lines of "why should I be fined for speeding when people who overtake dangerously, drive too close, cut me up, change lanes without warning, push into traffic queues, etc. get away with it?"

The answer is, despite what tabloids and tories would have you believe, to extend the punishment of those who break these other rules. Enforcing only speeding, parking, and traffic light offences has brought the law into disrepute. Instead of speed cameras, we need major trouble spots observed for all offences. Police need to become more sensitive to those reporting dangerous drivers, with records kept so that a single case can be brought against drivers on the basis of a series of similar complaints. The speeding problem can, as I've discussed before, be solved by adding limiters to cars.

The biggest problem is that all the enforcement in the world cannot solve the basic problem - people feel too safe in their cars. Not only are most people rarely involved in an accident, let alone a serious one, but their car is a big, safe box. We're sold cars on their safety. How stable they are, how crash proof they are. Airbags and crumple zones, roll bars and big, big bumpers. Cars are designed to make us feel bullet proof.

That's a problem that's much harder to solve. Education hasn't worked so far. We can force people to learn numbers, look at pictures, hear slogans. But getting people to feel a connection between these statistics and themselves is difficult. We all think we're better drivers than other people, that those accidents we are involved in are somehow not our fault. Education can have an effect - drunk driving is far less socially acceptable than it used to be - but needs to be more effective. At present, there is an apparently widespread belief that "I wasn't speeding" is equivalent to "I wasn't driving dangerously". People have lost respect for the lethal machines they drive, and instead worry only about speed traps and red light cameras.

If we are to make our roads safer, there are two paths we can take. Either we all become more responsible in our driving, and less accepting of other people's risk taking, or we take cars off the road. The latter option might be environmentally preferable, but for our society it will be a disaster. Our public transport system would need massive and continuous investment to raise it to the standard where most people could get rid of their car without severely lowering their standard of living. In the long term, that's something to aim for. In the short term, we all need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and drive that little bit more responsibly.

Graham Robinson. 14th January 2004.

archives :: links :: faq :: feedback

Find out how you can support Online Opinion

Online Opinion is a trademark owned by Graham Robinson. All rights reserved. The copyright on all articles, columns, and letters on this site is owned by the original author. The copyright on all other material is owned by Graham Robinson. Permission is granted to download and store these pages for personal or research purposes only, and only as is consistent with normal viewing of web pages. All other rights reserved. Permission is granted to freely link to any page within this site, as long as ownership of the material linked to is clear. No advertisements may be associated with this site, whether explicitly or implicitly, without prior written permission.