The Age - Jim Schembri: Death Race 2006: let’s ride it out - 29 September, 2006

If one more commentator, police official, talkback radio host, op-ed writer, politician or concerned citizen comes out and laments how the slaughter on our roads is due to “not getting the message through to drivers”, I’m going to throw up. Victorian roads have been host to an unprecedented degree of carnage in recent days. There’s no need to go into the details because they’re too appalling.

But the confluence of killing has drawn the usual round of earnest commentary about the need for better driver education, for public awareness campaigns, for the redesign of troublesome intersections, and for the urgent need to insert a partridge in a pear tree. These sentiments do not come as part of any sustained opposition to the road carnage, but instead reflect the general public’s lackadaisical Death Race 2000 attitude to the road toll, which is to merely accept it as a normal part of modern life.

The big proviso, of course, is that the carnage must tick over at a nice, steady pace. A few deaths a week is just fine, preferably in singles rather than in groups, and in unspectacular crashes. That way the body count can rise quietly and remain under everybody’s radar.

It’s only when the road slaughter hits an arbitrary critical mass - a concentration of horrific incidents within a few days - that the death rate draws focus. And each time the toll hits the news, the same nauseating ritual of aimless, impotent agonising kicks in. What can we do? How can we get the safety message through to drivers? Should there be road education in schools? How can we make drivers think more? Where, oh where, has my little dog gone?

Everybody is very serious for a bit - then the issue vanishes as quickly as it was picked up. We cut to an ad break and come back to talk about footy scores and the weather. It takes another spike in fatalities to get the toll back on the agenda.

Too much time has been wasted debating. The problems are screamingly obvious. The elephant in the room has now grown so big that there’s barely space left for yet another soul to ponder the eternal mystery of “how do we get the message through to drivers?”.

People act stupidly on the roads for one simple reason: they’re encouraged to. For although driver stupidity is responsible for so much of the maiming and killing, the lenient penalties incurred by the stupid do not provide sufficient discouragement.

The roads are clogged with drivers who clearly shouldn’t be there. Ask any plod on booze bus detail. And why? Because it’s way too easy to get a licence. It’s way too hard to lose it. The penalties for culpable driving would be a joke if there was anything funny about them. Speed and alcohol are our biggest killers, yet the disincentives are too weak to keep people from speeding and drinking.

Here’s a great movie idea. A guy wants another guy dead. But rather than plot an elaborate murder, he runs his victim over with a car. He makes sure he’s drunk at the time, is speeding, and that he does it while running a stop sign. His penalty? Six-month licence suspension, a $130 fi ne and a disapproving look from the judge. The title we’re going with is: What Do You Have To Do To Lose Your Licence In This Town?. The one crucial element always missing from anti-toll campaigns is fear. Every time a driver gets pulled over, the threat of lifelong, irreversible licence cancellation should be front of mind. If you speed, drink, run a red, fail to stop, there it goes - for good.But we know that’s never going to happen, and we know perfectly well why. The hundreds killed and maimed each year on our roads are the sacrifice the community willingly makes in exchange for the convenience of driving. Introduce tougher laws and never mind the toll - you’ll impinge on people’s freedom to drive drunk, veer over to the wrong side of the road and wipe out a family.

There has been celebration over the fact that Victoria’s road toll has been “improving”. That is, fewer people are dying needlessly now than were dying needlessly before. This is obscene. To paraphrase Howard Beale from the 1976 movie Network, the implication underlying such a boast is that the annual harvest of corpses from our roads is somehow part of the natural order of things, as though that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

And it is, because driving is considered a right rather than a privilege. It ought to be the other way around. Drivers should sweat to keep their licences. Re-test them every two years. At their expense. Got a problem with that? Good. It’s the very lack of that type of measure that keeps idiots on the road, secure in the knowledge that nobody will care enough to make them suffer when their stupidity claims and ruins innocent lives.