It is almost depressing that the ACT Labor Party should hark back to the picket fence in road transport policy. Opposition transport spokesman John Hargreaves wants to go back to the system of regular vehicle roadworthy checks.
Checking cars every two years is a flawed policy on several grounds.
First, mechanical defects have proven to be a very minor factor in causation of road death and injury. Nearly all road death and injury is caused by bad driving: alcohol, speed and fatigue. A small amount is caused by bad roads, though most of that can be put down to drivers failing to change driving speed to conditions. And then there are some very rare accidents caused by poor breaks and other mechanical difficulties. Even then, a lot of these are made worse by high speed.
The statistics are so comprehensively conclusive that mechanical fault has such a minor bearing on road injury and death that respectable government and industry research bodies have stopped studying it. The real issues in reducing road trauma remain driver behaviour and to a lesser extent road conditions.
Labor proposes having a mechanical test of every vehicle over five years old every two years. It is a silly, expensive, cost-ineffective idea. No evidence supports it. It is a John Howardesque call to the 1950s. It is just plain dumb.
In the old days everyone queued up and (invariably) a man in a white coat came out and inspected every car every year for tyres, brakes, suspension, lights and so on. That may have had some impact on road trauma in the days when vehicle construction was not very good. But in these days or air bags, anti-locking brakes, power steering and power brakes and a host of other safety features, the inspection has little merit. Also, the construction of cars has improved so that safety features and general mechanical well-being last for a longer time. It means that mechanical matters are of decreasing importance.
One of the worse elements of the scheme is that motorists would have to pay for the inspection themselves. And worse still there would be a separation between inspector and repairer. It sounds like a commendable separation of interest that the person doing the inspection of vehicle cannot do the repairs, but as a practical matter Labor’s plan top separate inspection from repair will amount to a massive inconvenience. If the Act is to have this absurd white-coat regime of inspection every two years, it should be made as painless as possible. It should be possible to hand the car to one person to take the process through to registration.
The present regime of having random inspections is superior. Bad tyres are perhaps one of the most significant element in mechanically caused crash and they are most efficiently dealt with by random inspections and the fear of random inspections, There is little point in forcing people to have their vehicle ship shape every two years at inspection time. It is better to encourage them to have their vehicle ship shape all the time through random checks.
The other difficulty with Labor’s plan is that it imposes the cost burden on ordinary motorists. It is just not cost effective. The money would be better spent directed at the main cause of road trauma – driver conduct. Whether the money is directed a more enforcement or education hardly matters. It will be more effective than having mechanics in white coats looking under every ACT car every two years.
Australia is doing better than most on the road-trauma front, having been among the worst n the industrialised world 30 years ago. Nearly all the improvement can be put down to driver enforcement measures, improved roads and cars that are better built and designed in the first place. Virtually nothing can be put down to enforcement of mechanical conditions of cars.
Labor’s plan to re-introduce vehicle inspections every two years is an utter waste of community time and money.
A rethink, Mr Hargreaves, please. Or even just a think.