Motor Vehicles (Learner's Permits and Provisional Licences) Amendment Bill
House of Assembly - Tuesday, 24 September 2013, Page 7010
MOTOR VEHICLES (LEARNER'S PERMITS AND PROVISIONAL LICENCES) AMENDMENT BILL
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (17:07): Following on from the member for Mount Gambier, I know that everybody in the opposition respects the experience that he has had in this situation and the amendments that we will move in this house and the comments that we make are no reflection, one way or the other, on his personal situation or the skill or otherwise of his family member.
Let me say that as a person nearly 50 years old, well over 30 years old, I did a lot of stupid things in a car. I did a lot of very stupid things in a car, with and without a licence, on and off the road. So, I do not address this issue in any way as a wowser or in any way as a person who has not fully and seriously considered all of the risks. I was exceptionally fortunate, as a young man, as a boy becoming a young man, to have a very close family friend who taught me how to drive. He started out by putting me on a small old tractor in the middle of the scrub, surrounded by trees. I could not really hurt the trees, I could not really hurt the tractor and I could not really hurt myself.
I graduated from that to refuelling school buses in a yard, off the road, in his family business. It was my job to get behind the wheel of a bus (40-foot buses) and move it (slowly, to begin with) from one place to another, being absolutely and dreadfully afraid that I might damage something, least of all hit the fuel bowser, but over time you get better, you get a bit of practice and you move on. I do not brag about this at all, but I certainly did plenty of silly things with—as members who have already spoken have commented on—probably the bravado that a lot of young men have in assuming they are bullet-proof and not considering all the consequences. I was very lucky. I would like to say I had some skill but, of course, I was exceptionally lucky that I did not ever come to grief.
Most of my work through my adult life has included an enormous amount of driving. Working for BP Australia, starting out as a country rep, you are essentially driving all over the place. Working for myself, being privately employed, for quite a few years I drove between 100,000 and 120,000 kilometres a year, which is an enormous amount of driving in anybody's book, mostly on deserted outback roads and highways: dirt roads such as the Strzelecki Track, the Birdsville Track, the Oodnadatta Track, and on the Stuart Highway.
I can say that, certainly for the last couple of decades, I have never, ever taken driving for granted. I am not one of those people who just say, 'Yes, I can drive. I have been doing it all my life. Everything is fine. I have got through the danger period and now I am an expert.' I get the odd speeding ticket, which does happen, I think, to probably most of us here. I never, ever forget the risks and I never take it for granted.
Until I am home or until I am in Adelaide or until I am actually where I am going, I do my very best to really keep my concentration up because I know that, even today, I could come a gutser somehow, and I am dreadfully fearful of some damage that I might impose upon somebody else. So, that is where I come from when I address this issue. I am not an expert, but I do think I have got something to contribute.
Let me say at the outset that I think one of the things that is important to contribute is that P-platers and young drivers in general, at the moment, are actually under a great deal of scrutiny. I can tell you, from having spoken to people in the city and also constituents, particularly in Port Augusta, that young men and young women are certainly well and truly scrutinised by the police and, very often, pulled over for very questionable reasons. They are often pulled over for good reasons too, but they are very seriously scrutinised by the police. Whether that is a little bit of overexuberance on behalf of the police or whether they have perhaps saved somebody's life by doing that, we will never know.
The bottom line here is that I am sure every single member of this house considers road safety very seriously and particularly road safety as it applies to young people, because not only are the risks higher—we know that they are higher—but, also very importantly, we would all, as essentially middle-aged members here, be more concerned about loss of life to a young person than an older person. Nobody's life is more special, but we consider younger people to be a little bit more precious.
So, this is a very important issue but, as our deputy leader and lead speaker on this issue has articulated very well, some of the aspects of this bill are not actually addressing some of the core issues. As she and many of my colleagues have said, the fatalities of 16 to 19 year olds during that 12am to 5am period have actually been dropping significantly, and that is outstanding. Everybody should take some credit for that. The government should take some credit for that, families should take some credit for that and, probably more than anybody, young drivers should take some credit for that. So, to address that and try to stop them from driving is really just not supported at all by the facts as we understand them.
Just to touch on a couple of other key things, we certainly support bringing forward the hazard perception test to the L-P1 stage—we certainly support that, without any doubt. We have agreed that we are not going to move any amendments to the issues about the number of passengers in a vehicle. I can understand where that is coming from, but I guess I also have a query. As the member for Mount Gambier quite rightly mentioned, the combination of people who might be legally in the car under these new provisions does not necessarily make it a safer environment.
The idea is that a P1 driver could carry only one passenger except for family members and when a fully licensed driver is a passenger. It may well be an older brother or an older mate or it might be a young female driver's older partner/boyfriend, and they could be sloshed or could be significantly impaired. It does not say, as far as I am aware, that the passengers all have to be stone cold sober and making a positive contribution. The numbers in themselves will not necessarily make the difference, but we have decided as a group not to oppose that suggestion, because I think we do understand the issue that more young people together may create more distractions.
We certainly do oppose the suggested midnight to 5am curfew for a lot of good reasons, and we oppose the proposed increase in time spent on P-plates from two to three years. As the member for Hammond said, it is not actually the time on your Ps that is going to make the difference: it really is about your skill, your ability, your training, your learning and how seriously you take the issue. For me, about the most important part of this puzzle is how seriously the young driver takes their driving and the training that they have done up until becoming a young driver.
I am very supportive of the idea of having driving as a standard high school subject. It is an issue about whether the budget can afford that, and I understand and accept that. It certainly would not be something that was mandatory if people thought that there was a better way to do it. I think this is a topic that needs to be taken as seriously as that; it is one of the things that young people must have as part of their education.
I agree also with one of the comments that the member for Heysen made about the difference between city drivers and country drivers. It is not an age issue. You can see people who have been driving for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years in the country coming down to Adelaide and getting really frazzled by the traffic. I have friends in a range of ages who actually do not like to drive in the city. They do not do it. They say, 'Look, I'll drive to Gepps Cross or somewhere around there. We'll jump out and then we'll swap and I want somebody else to drive.' It is not an age issue: it is an experience issue, and it is about somebody assessing their own ability.
The exact same thing is true in reverse with regard to city drivers going to the country. As members here know, I spent a long time living on the Stuart Highway running RAA agencies at the businesses that we ran and doing the majority of the after-hours call-outs myself from Pimba. In a really remote area the RAA also does the accident pick-up service. It is not part of what the RAA does, but the person who is there, ready to go out and fix broken cars in the middle of the night is also the person who goes and helps pick up cars from accidents.
I can tell you that the vast majority of people who came to grief on the highway late at night were city drivers just falling asleep. It is not necessarily that the city driver is more prone to getting tired than the country driver: it is just about experience. It is just about recognising that you are at that stage. It is about recognising that you are tired and you need to get out.
The member for Kaurna was talking about a banana or a glass of water. The member for Schubert was talking about chocolate and Coca-Cola. It does not really matter. I have got trail mix in the car. I get it and have a walk around. You have got to do whatever you need to do. The reality is that it is about that experience, and that is not an age issue. That is not something that necessarily people are going to improve on by having to be on P-plates for three years instead of two or not being able to drive after hours.
In fact, you could make a pretty good argument to say that if you were driving after-hours responsibly you would start to pick up some of those skills. The skill is, I think, very often about recognising your own capacity—your own capacity to drive at what speed, your own capacity to stay awake and when you cannot, all of those sorts of things. Certainly, this is a very important issue to country people. The member for Hammond talked about distances. Sport, school, church, social events—we do not have the public transport. We do have the significant distances to drive. I recognise and acknowledge that the minister has included an exemption for people who need to travel in the midnight to 5am time for employment and I think that is very sensible but, really, that whole thing should be exempt.
The figures tell us that young people are not dying on the roads any longer in those hours and let us all keep our fingers crossed or pray or do whatever we need to do and hope that that continues. However, it will not be preventing them that stops it because then, all of a sudden, at whatever time in their life and in their development cycle they are allowed to go out on the road at midnight, it will be the first time they have done it. They are not necessarily going to be any better at it because that was delayed.
It really is about young drivers' attitudes, their training and their maturity. I would hate to set up a situation where people are pressing themselves to rush to get home before midnight because they have a certain category of licence and they have to be off the road at midnight. They are saying, 'Well, what do I do? Do I get caught being on the road after midnight or do I speed home?' It really is just a silly situation.
We all agree in opposition, and I am sure government members and the Independents agree, that road safety is absolutely vital, but these sorts of restrictions—telling people they cannot drive between midnight and 5am or telling people that they cannot enter a nightclub after 3am—are not the sorts of things that actually make people behave better. It has to be a person's ability and their attitude that is actually going to make them behave better.
Telling people that they can drive at 100 instead of 110 when the real problem is the quality of the road is not going to stop accidents. It is actually about the person's ability. Every single good, decent, capable driver can get out there and drive at 110 on certain roads. In fact, I think there is a very good argument to be made that on a very few roads in our state we could actually push up the speed limits.
I say quite openly in this house that I have canvassed this with police officers and with highway patrol police officers who share the same opinion, but as I said, that is on a very few roads. It is not about the speed limit and it is not about the time: it is about the driver. It is about the driver not being the really dumb, young bloke full of bravado and letting that get away from him. It is about the person not showing off to their colleagues. It is about the other people in the car not distracting them and skylarking and carrying on.
It is not about whether or not it is actually midnight or whether or not you have been on your Ps for a certain amount of time. The risks do not go away. Just telling somebody that they cannot engage with the risk does not take the risk away. The risk is still going to be there one day. The fact is still going to be true and I think that getting on and teaching people how to deal with the risks is a far more responsible and far more effective way of going about it.
Those are the reasons why I object particularly to those two suggestions from the government. The extension of the time on Ps would be a very unfair imposition on the people who are doing the right thing to try to capture the people who are doing the wrong thing when those people are probably going to run into grief regardless of whether they are on their Ps for two years or three years and they have their accident during the first year, the second year, the third year or the fifth year when they have not been on Ps for two years. That person is probably still going to run into grief.
It is not about how long they are on the Ps and it is not about whether they are allowed to drive between midnight and 5am. It is about how they and their friends, their family and their peers address the risks. I think addressing the risks and not trying to avoid them and just delay them or put them off is what is really going to help save lives. I support an enormous amount of what the government has in the bill, but I do not support those two aspects because I do not think they are actually going to address the issue that we all want to address.
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