Originally Posted by
zeppinger
I believe a "zero tolerance policy" would be one in which a particular punishment was given out regardless of the seriousness of the offense. We already have "mandatory minimum penalties" which increase for every prior conviction. A zero tolerance policy would be one that gives out the same penalty to everyone for any road violation.
Nope, a zero-tolerance policy would mean that everytime you violate the law you get a ticket (or whatever the punishment is). The police officer doesn't have the discretion to let someone off just because they are drunk (something that happens all the time here in Australia). BTW, we don't have those penalties here in Australia (which is probably why my home city is the scene of "reality TV" shows documenting the world's worst drivers). The sort of set penalties I was referring to are things that cannot be overturned by a judge if the driver is found guilty.
Originally Posted by
zeppinger
I agree with you that it would be nice if there were harsher punishments for abusing the privilege of piloting a few tons of metal at high speeds. However, I dont think that paying for massive amounts of new police (also driving huge pieces of metal) is a very good way of doing that. Over here in South Korea there are simply speed cameras set-up on every few miles of roads, even rural roads. Korea also uses extensive amounts of closed circuit television cameras.
They have speed cameras here in Australia, too, but they're largely used for revenue raising (in fact, some road signs around here suggest that the Queensland government seems to wear that as a badge of honour), rather than safety. That means that they won't put enough of them in to actually stop people from speeding, but just enough to collect the occasional fine which can be spent on something else -- assuming some wannabe social worker calling himself a 'judge' doesn't overturn it because the driver was drunk.
Originally Posted by
zeppinger
There are lots of good ways to get people to drive better without necessitating a massive police force that would, ideally, have absolutely nothing to do all day long.
Yeah, but the trouble is that most of those ideas have been tried and shown to fail. I think it's time to realise that there will always be a certain percentage of drivers who simply have no idea, and the best option is simply to remove them. That also applies to the same certain percentage of cyclists, BTW. The massive police force won't be necessary once people get the message, but right now we've got governments all over the place trying to spend us into debt because we're in a recession. Let's see the money used for something that might have some benefit.