Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Driving technology

New Zealand is about to revamp its driver licensing rules in an attempt to reduce the number of road crashes involving younger people.

Right now, anyone who's 15 or over can sit their learner's licence and, within a few short months, be driving on the road with only a few restrictions.

After a probationary period they can then sit their full licence, after which those restrictions are lifted.

The proposed changes involve raising the starting age to 16 and extending the probationary period to include at least 120 hours of "supervised" on the road driving.

So how do you ensure that the learner has indeed undergone 120 hours of supervised driving before they're able to migrate to their full licence?

Well in Australia, learners have to keep a log book in which they notarise every moment they spend behind the wheel -- writing down odometer readings, origins and destinations plus other details.

This "honesty-based" system is apparently difficult to authenticate and poses a major problem to licensing authorities so some bright spark here in NZ has suggested that technology come to the rescue.

They suggested fitting GPS systems to a learner's vehicle.

This, they claim, would track the learner's movements and thus authenticate their 120 hours of "learning".

Honestly, where do these people come from?

Is it just me or do a growing percentage of the public have a somewhat optimistic view of just what modern technology can do?

A GPS system such as the one mooted would not only be expensive but also so easy to circumvent that it's not funny.

Firstly, such a system only tracks vehicle movement and unless you also add some pretty robust biometric ID verification, there's no guarantee that the trips logged are those being driven by the learner-driver.

Secondly, what's to stop the more tech-savvy learner from simply whipping the GPS module out and throwing it in a backpack as they catch the bus to and from school?

Technology is not a silver bullet, especially when the issue of honesty is involved.

If those concerned with road safety really want to introduce technology to help our learner drivers then how about they put some driving simulators into our schools and focus on teaching defensive driving strategies through these simulators?

In fact, when it comes to vehicles, I'd have thought that the recent tsunami of vehicle recalls for hi-tech problems might have alerted people to the fact that hi-tech doesn't always mean "best solution" when it comes to driving.

Just today, Nissan has joined Honda and Toyota in recalling vehicles due to brake faults and errant fuel-gauges.

Perhaps, as I've mooted before, the best way to save young people's lives is to simply whack a governor on their vehicles so as to restrict the maximum rate of acceleration and maximum speed.

Remember, according to police there is absolutely *NO* situation where exceeding 100kph on the open road is legal or safe -- not even if you're trying to overtake another vehicle that's doing 95kph and want to reduce the time you spend on the wrong side of the road.

Not even if you're in a passing lane with 20 other vehicles behind you and you're trying to get past a convoy of slow trucks that have been impeding the flow of traffic for many Kms.

No, you may *NEVER* exceed 100kph on the open road -- so why are so many people allowed to drive vehicles capable of more than twice that speed?

The whole problem of speed-related deaths on the open road could be eliminated overnight if speed governors became mandatory -- so, if the government is truly serious about bringing the road toll down (and we're told "speed kills") then why is this truly simple solution being overlooked.

It's nothing to do with the huge revenues that come from allowing people to speed and then ticketing them with stiff fines is it?

Or is it that nobody in power is about to allow the pragmatism which says "overtaking safely may require drivers to exceed 100Kph for short periods" violate the dogmatic ideology that says "speed kills"?

So technology *could* help lower the road toll -- but only when used sensibly.

Once again however, we find we live in a world ruled by ideology rather than pragmatism.

For this reason, those learner drivers may well find themselves paying several hundred dollars more because they're forced to buy a GPS-based data-logger just to prove that their vehicle (or maybe just the logger itself) was moving for 120 hours.

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say on this...

PERMALINK to this column

Oh, and don't forget today's sci/tech news headlines

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font