No mobile phones involved here but just about everything else was.
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See also ID and Privacy Risks when Selling on Line about how criminals use car ads to match registration plates to make/model.
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Which Australian state or territory has the worst drivers?
Qld of course.
A slightly belated Happy New Year for idiots who use mobile phones whilst driving or riding in Qld.
Now all we need are the fixed cameras.
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Click Bait? - itâs one private survey that makes itâs own judgements. It does not collate to the commonly recognised high risk behaviors or causes. And being from âNine Nowâ totally unbiased and free of political influence in itâs presentation. Possibly not?
Read on.
Contrary to the assertion on which state has the worst drivers Queensland improved in 2019 with 9% fewer road fatalities (absolute numbers) than the year before. Something must be working in Qld. Speed Cameras strategically located?
WA has a much higher fatality rate per population. Also a small increase in fatalities for the year. NSW with supposedly the safest drivers also saw a slight increase in fatalities. Not a decrease like Qld, although the report raced to protect the reputation of the State of NSW by saying it has a higher population and the number of cars per capita needed to be considered. The NSW vs Qld comparison is hopefully not a reflection on the difference between the politics in each state. Hopefully NSW politicians are trying just as hard to reduce the road toll as those in Qld.
As a report - Pure rubbish. Why post it here other than to call it out for what it is. Another sad reflection of the loss of our press to vested interests.
For the real facts look here.
Vic data might challenge that explanation. We have our fair share of speed cameras, and possibly more than that. We would be happy to send some more to Qld to see if year upon year Qld continues to reduce and Vic continues to climb.
In contrast I see more and more yahoos driving dangerously between speed camera locations - speeding but usually not dangerously so, but more salient not indicating, zig zagging through traffic, and myriad other bad practices speed cameras have yet to be trained (and located?) to snap and send fines for. Mobile phone catching cameras being rolled out notwithstanding.
edit: Maybe Qld floods kept some at home while the bush fires caused panic with everyone going to safety, place dependent, season to season?
Itâs a great discussion to have. What actually makes a difference? Even if we agree to disagree, or simply agree on any, the factors are open to further discussion. The drivers grumbling most about any type of concealed cameras are those getting caught. Does it make a real difference. We will probably never know at an individual level.
When one looks at what the Nine article uses as a basis for determining what makes the most dangerous drivers. Neither of us appear to be even close to hitting the mark.
Iâll happily concede there are numerous influences and accept differing views on relevance. But is eating food and driving in thongs what makes the most dangerous drivers? It would seem speeding or driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs must be relatively low risk as they donât even get a mention. Far from one reality.
Enough said.
The assertion that any one stateâs drivers are worse than another is not proven. Nor is there any evidence to support a connection between driving behaviours in each state and the road toll. It is much more complex.
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But what about Smart Watches?
My iPhone is set with the âdo not disturb while drivingâ option, but this doesnât extend to my Apple watch. I get notifications on my watch whilst driving, and it takes a lot of willpower to resist the urge to look at and respond to them.
Cameras would have a hard time picking that up, as all I have to do is bring my hands together on the steering wheel to touch the watch on my wrist discreetly with one finger. Police officers are going to have a hard time picking it up as well - I donât have to visibly look down if my left hand is in the 10 oâclock position, and the watch is on my hand at all times so there would be no discernible moment of picking it up. I think any technology to register smart phone use while driving is going to be rapidly made obsolete by the changes in how smart phones and wearables are being used and multiple methods of definitely distracting interaction with them.
Of course, neither smart phone nor smart watch are as potentially as distracting as a yammering five year old in the back who wants to know the answers to the mysteries of the universe on the way to school. If I crash in the next few years as a result of distraction, that will be the cause. Ban preschoolers in vehicles.
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Surely that is appropriate? It would silly to say that NT is safest because it has fewest accidents when it has fewer people / fewer cars.
However some studies will look at passenger kilometres i.e. taking into account not just how many people or cars but also how much driving they do. A bigger state may rack up more kilometres because thatâs what people need to do, but, in any case, passenger kilometres is an additional consideration. (In fact passenger kilometres may also take into account the subtleties that arise from the number of people in a car i.e. X people safely conveyed Y kilometres each, whether in one car or many.)
Likewise looking only at âchange on previous 12 monthsâ gets only half the picture. If you want to know whether some particular measure, introduced in a state, had an effect, you might look at that change. If you want to know which place is safest then âchange on previous 12 monthsâ is not the right thing to look at.
There are usually enough statistics available for you to prove whatever you want to prove. 
If that was the data that Nine was basing itâs assessment on. Nine is not relating that outcome to their assault on Queensland drivers. Reading the report Nine sets out to connect two separate reports.
One is a private survey which does not assess road accidents statistics. This assesses the opinions of a set of respondents who volunteered answers which may or may not be reliable. There is no evidence of correlation of the response to actual accidents. Iâll leave it to the statistically more knowledgeable to pull that apart further.
The second data points were chosen selectively from the Australian National Road Safety Statistics database.
The data relating to total fatalities in each state was not used by Nine to assess which state had the worst drivers. It was simply used to make selected comments. Whether Nine intended a particular inference only Nine knows. How that data was reported leaves it open to the reader to consider the motivation of Nineâs report.
Nine had the ability to present from the National Statistical data base a more accurate comparison of road fatalities per population, number of registered motor vehicles, or better still road fatalities per million passenger vehicle kilometres each year. It chose not to.
I chose not to do the hard work Nine could have done and answer your points more reliably. The work has also already been done by our Public Service.
Iâm not specifically intent on proving one outcome or another. A significant improvement for the year compared to the prior year is a significant improvement. Road safety is a national concern as many of us drive often enough in more than one Australian State to care about all.
Nineâs report is another example of poor quality journalism. I would prefer that such low standard news items were ignored, they add little value to informed debate. The real data is in the link I previously provided.
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WA upps the ante for using mobile phones whilst driving.
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Dubious use of the expression âopposite effectâ. I donât think anyone would claim that increasing the fines had the effect of causing more people to use a mobile phone while driving. Most likely the fines had no effect (other than to swell government coffers) and increased use of phones occurred for other reasons and would have occurred anyway e.g. increased ownership of phones, increased number of reasons to use the phone, âŠ
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853 idiots have contributed $853,000 to the state coffers so far.
You just canât help stupid.
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It appears that the new $1,000 fine in Qld must be working as I have not seen anyone using a mobile whilst driving since it commenced on 01.02.2020.
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I donât see them because I donât go out too often 
My very good friend who is a interstate truck driver is still seeing a lot of use of them by drivers. He likes the new NSW cameras.
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A fantastic article regarding the NSW mobile phone detecting cameras having an absolute field day.
And some idiots want to forewarn the idiots driving with warning signs.
âThe explosion in fines has reignited calls for warning signs to be installed before motorists approach the mobile phone detection cameras, as they are with speed cameras.â
Why? So they can simply momentarily put the phones down until they are past the cameras? That is if they even see the signs whilst busy on their phones.
Now all NSW neeeds to do is increase the fines to $1,000 a hit as per Qld.
Great stuff.
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And now the idiots want to contest the fines for their stupidity.
The only thing that needs to be done is to increase the fines to $1,000 per offence as per Qld.
The Government wants the onus of proof to be reversed, making it up to drivers themselves to prove the object they were photographed holding is not a mobile phone.
Criminal lawyer Michael Mantaj is vehemently opposed to the law change.
âIt presumes that any object you hold is a mobile phone. Itâs almost as if by magic the law is turning a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee that you might be holding in your hand into a mobile phone,â Mr Mantaj told 9News.
It seems troubling when a law finds someone guilty by default and one has to prove innocence, especially in a scenario when government stands to profit financially and âwinningâ by making a âguiltyâ call.
I suggest it ranks with retrospective laws, the province of scoundrels at the expense of the rule of law. To me this reflects a breach of natural law where there is a presumption of innocence, especially when the evidence can be as misleading as a photo taken through a windscreen.
Those endorsing fines need to show that a photo is of a mobile. If in doubt, donât send the fine.
If one agrees this would be OK, it opens the door for every law and fine about everything to take the same form, making most of us into [minor or major] criminals by default?
Those who do the right thing are not the problem, it is the rest. A $1,000 fine will only encourage them to defend a fine and potentially clog the courts, as well meaning as it might be.
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An assumption here is itâs NSW law he is referring to.
The reversal of onus is already in place when driving in NSW. As of March this year!
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Frightening. When one receives the fine in the post a few weeks later, was it a Snickers bar? A nut bar? or ? and what is the standard of proof on the âbalance of probabilitiesâ?
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