A Beautiful Thing

The Conversation is a beautiful thing because it seems to have started a trend of telling the "Truth" and exposing the "Facts" - something that Australian's are not used to with their media.

And "Baby, can you drive my car?" clearly demonstrates that we have been led up the garden path by our State Governments. Read it and you will discover how - I have quoted a few sentences below.

"Since 1950, more than 150,000 people have died in motor vehicle crashes in Australia. The worst year was 1970, when 3,798 people lost their lives – more than 10 deaths each day. Annual deaths are now below 1,400, despite the population almost doubling."

"The Enhanced Crash Investigation study conducted by the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) found that in the majority of crashes that resulted in serious injury, the driver was a contributing factor."

"Fatigue, distraction/inattention, inexperience, excessive speed and driver error were most often to blame."

So there you have it. I suppose a reasonable person would expect that our State Governments would focus on these things and use these data to design a modern and effective road safety programme?

Instead we end up with a "Fear and Penalty" based campaign emphasising "Speed Kills" and "Alcohol is evil" - when what we really need is something that is based on "Truth and Facts".