I think this is called a "rant"

After riding past yet another car smash on the Gold Coast yesterday, I'm now a little more cynical (if that's even possible) about the state of the roads, or perhaps more accurately the road users, in this part of the world. In case anyone didn't see the little rant early in yesterday's post, basically a couple of morons on a 4wd/SUV decided it would be fun to smash into the driver of another car and then speed off laughing about it.

Sadly, about the only thing surprising about incidents like this these days, is that there are still people who find them surprising. A little later in the day I turned to a friend and said "I will wager you anything you like that no charges will be laid as a result of this". Not surprisingly, he didn't take the bet. And yet, while incidents like this (which had plenty of witnesses, one of whom gave registration details to the police), and others similar continue to go unpunished, there are still people (most of them in government) who express surprise that the road toll continues to rise.

I've asked this question before, but it bears repeating -- what is so difficult about just enforcing the law? I've lost count of the number of different ways in which governments have tried to dance around the issue, most of them involving "public education campaigns" as they are laughably called. At different times we've even seen people trying to bring in new laws, which are a complete waste of time in a culture of blatant disregard for the law, which seems to be a fact of public roadways these days.

All that's really needed here is to start applying some penalties to those who break the law, including those who kill with cars, that might actually make people sit up and think twice about doing it. It's a well-known fact that in most hit and run incidents, the reason the perpetrator leaves the scene is because they have something to hide -- either culpability, or drugs or alcohol in their system. Surely it's time to introduce a law that automatically assumes culpability if someone runs away from one of these crashes. After all, running away from something like this pretty much goes against every grain of human decency, and the assumption would probably be correct in 99% of cases.

While we're at it, it might also be worth increasing penalties for those who are caught driving drunk. After all, nobody ties them up and pours alcohol down their throat, and nobody then makes them drive afterward. It's therefore not unreasonable to start fining people thousands of dollars for this, and issuing immediate on the spot licence cancellations (and car confiscations if necessary) for the more extreme offenders. If people think it's unfair, perhaps they stop and think about the victims of these crimes for a minute. The same thing applies to people speeding through or hooning around residential areas (which seems to be happening more and more often).

Of course, people would just whine that the above is just "revenue raising", but is that really such a bad thing? Personally I can't think of a better source from which the government could draw revenue than these idiots. After all, anyone who has a problem subsidising the government in this way still has the option of just following the law.

Most importantly, those who kill with cars need to start being treated the same as those who kill with guns and knives. After all, the end result is the same for the victim, and the victims are the ones laws are supposedly in place to protect. As things stand now, I could get in a car, deliberately run down someone I dislike, claim it was an accident and just walk away. This may be a little more difficult to change, given the number of weak-willed judges who seem to have been employed to deal with these matters, but I would think setting these people some guidelines as I alluded to above, and actually holding them accountable might make a difference.

Better yet, make me transport minister for a year. Admittedly, any government who did that would probably lose the next election (as road safety doesn't seem to be a vote winner these days), but I can guarantee that within 12 months, I would halve the road toll.