Driving the Recovery?
on 09/29/2011 at 01:00 PM
Talk about wacko driving laws:
JUST OVER A third of the 1,354 drivers disqualified from driving after accumulating 12 penalty points have surrendered their driving licences.
Figures released by the Road Safety Authority show 531 of the drivers with 12 points handed over a licence to the District Court.
The issue arises because the garda (Irish police)do not have the power to seize the licence of a disqualified motorist.
The Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar, told The Irish Times he plans to close this loophole and make it an offence for a motorist reaching 12 penalty points to fail to hand over their licence.
“It needs to become compulsory to hand over your licence when you get to 12 points. It will need to become an offence. There will be an offence of not presenting your licence,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said he will close another loophole, which has allowed more than 85,000 holders of an Irish driving licence to avoid having the points put on their licence because they failed to bring their licence to court.
A provision to make it a requirement for a driver before the courts is contained in the Road Traffic Act 2010, and Mr Varadkar said he hopes this legislation, which also makes it compulsory to hand over a licence after accruing 12 points, will be enacted in time for the October bank holiday weekend.
Mr Varadkar said he was also considering an increase in the penalty points allocated for two key offences; speeding, and using a mobile phone while driving.
“I am considering adjusting the points allocated for speeding and using a mobile phone,” he said. “I am weighing up the pros and cons of such a move.”
Both offences currently attract two penalty points and the Road Safety Authority has recommended that the points for speeding and failing to wear a seatbelt should be increased to three.
Mr Varadkar said he plans to expand the penalty points system and activate a number of new offences including driving with faulty lights, and failing to wear a motorcycle helmet.
Mr Varadkar said his road safety priority this year was to get road deaths below 200 (last year saw 211 deaths – the lowest on record) and then focus more on the level of serious injuries.
“The focus up to now has been on deaths. But injuries are really important and huge numbers of people are damaged in crashes,” he added.
Mr Varadkar was also generous in his praise of the previous government and former minister for transport, Noel Dempsey.
“The last government gets a lot of criticism but on road safety I think they did a really good job,” he said. “Road deaths would not have gone down by the amount they have had it not been made a priority.”
Yeah that goes on here - just had another killer accident where (gasp, surprise, surprise) the guy was driving on a suspended license. That little trick also forced our local State Rep out of office - not a killer accident a DUI which boggled me (yeah amazing that the msm did not list his offenses past and present until after the court hearing - as he was GOP) - I think the lying (at the scene and in an attempt to get a new OH license) went toward the end of his political career (oh, damn did I mention the woman not his wife - just for grins)!
They don’t wear burkas in Saudi - it is the Abaya
http://saudigirlslife.com/saudi-arabian-women-clothing-traditional-dress/
But they still treat women and children like crap. Even if they don’t make them dress in potato sacks w/eye slits.
“In Iran the abaya is referred to as a chador and in South Asia a burqa.
The abaya covers the whole body except the face, feet, and hands. It can be worn with the niqab, a face veil covering all but the eyes.”
Shades of difference Wardmama, though even with the nigab you can probably still see better than with the whole body sack.
Here in Texas and in other Western states there are posted speed limits of 75 or even 80 mph. Most of these are on controlled access highways outside cities. Most drivers routinely tack on an extra 5 mph or so, although the traffic police tolerance for overages shrinks as the posted speed limit increases. There are very few accidents, probably because of the uncongested nature of the roads.
In my experience the biggest drawback is adjusting to slower speed limits after a couple of hours driving at 80. I have to really watch my speed when re-entering civilization.
Seems like a sensible idea to me. Though I would like to see overtaking sorted out. In the UK you are only supposed to overtake on the right hand side. Once you overtake you should then pull in to the next lane as soon as practical. What happens on three lane highways is some idle half-wit cant be bothered to pull over so they sit in the middle lane and slow everyone up. That or trucks where one muppet has a 0.0005mph speed advantage over another truck so they decide to overtake and a week later they get past. Trucks here seem to be greatly limited in horsepower compared to the US and Canadian rigs so overtaking is painful.
09/30/2011 at 01:07 AM
10/01/2011 at 06:25 AM
