Riding in London, you see countless drivers whose cars/vans etc only have one actual working headlight. This got me thinking. If I had the influence, which traffic laws would I change and why? It would be very easy to aim my crosshairs at the devolution of the 60mph speed limit on country roads and the somewhat un-enforced 70mph limit on the motorway, but apart from that, I think the laws on speeding are about right. If I had to add a new traffic law, I think it would have to be directed at these drivers whose lights don't work properly. If/when they get stopped and they don't have the appropriate replacement bulb in the car, they get a single point on their licence and a £40 fine. Seems fair to me. The one I want to upgrade is drivers using mobile phones/ipods when driving. The government is always harping on about how dangerous they are when driving, so lets make the punishment tougher, lets say just for argument sake, just below the drink driving law. So if your caught driving using your phone you get slapped with a 3 month ban from driving and maybe a little fine of £100 to help with the paperwork. After thinking long and hard about it, i'm not sure which law I'd like to downgrade...I think for me the only one that may fall under this category is driving a car without a seatbelt. This is one of those laws designed to stop the stupid from seriously injuring themselves, so instead of a fine and points as is currently the law, just a fine, you know, to cover the paper work.
There is a huge cost associated with those injuries that are minimised by the current seatbelt laws. We would lose a few seatbelt-less idiots but we would also lose a few doctors, nurses, hospital beds, ambulances, police, fire brigade, road clean up crews, man hours lost to traffic jams for the duration of the incident and treatment. Plus each factor has a monetary value attached. So devolving the seatbelt laws would cause a lot more damage than initially apparent.
particularly in winter, i reckon on some journeys, i see an average of 1 in 8 with a faulty front light array. I always wonder, if you can't be arsed to fix a broken headlight, can you be arsed to get an MOT/Road tax/Insurance/Tyres with tread on em/unpaid parking fines/other unpaid debts to society...... i would be really interested in statistics if ... say ( i know it will never happen) ... the police or some other suitably authorised body were to do a random one week a quarter road block type monitoring and stop everything with a dodgy set of lights, and see how 'healthy' the rest of the car/driver was. Might only improve the lights in the short term, to prevent future 'stops' but would be interesting i reckon, nevertheless. it would always help to have a nearby wall/firing squad to aid the dispensation of justice ( unjustified rant this bit- bring on the revolution of standards in society....)
There was a time when, partly because it was the classic trigger for the police to pull you in ("Did you realise one of your bulbs had failed, Sir?"), and partly because lights were so dim, that people used to maintain them a bit better. But now: - Lights are brighter, so I guess some are happy to drive with one headlight - The manufacturers have made it more and more difficult for drivers to change bulbs (impossible for the super bright Xenon ones I guess) - Lots of cars have computer systems to warn of failed bulbs (but not all, so some people probably get confused as to whether they will be warned - and how many people check these things these days?). - The public do seem to be getting more stupid, speaking as grumpy old man... - There are very few police out on the roads - ANPR is good for Tax/Insurance/MoT, no good for lights/tyres I'm not sure I agree about making phone use more of a serious offence - it's already quite severly punished and there'd come a point where you had to ask how it can be considered safe to use one "hands free" . It's not that hard to drive for short distances with one hand, but the distraction of using a phone, in the wrong circumstances, may be at least as important as the lack of a hand.
