AU_NSX said:
… country with seemingly no road rules and if they do in fact have them, there is no-one interested in enforcing them!!! The result is carnage! …
Oh no, AU_NSX, oh noooooooo. I beg to differ. No no no. Here in most of Europe (Holland excluded, and also I’d say Denmark and Sweden…) there is almost NO enforcement. Practically none. (even Holland, Denmark and Sweden have nothing compared to what you guys have in the USA and sort of like in Oz). Very few cops and anyway they don’t cruise. Shear driving heaven. Drive fast, drive slow (slow; as long as you are in the right hand lane…), do whatever you want. And there is no carnage! None at all.
I have seen people go very skilfully through a red light. And it was safe to do so (I’m sure all you guys living in a Driving Gulag Land are shocked, but really, it was safe), the guys coming the other way (it was the middle of Brussels for Christ’s sake, not in the sticks. With heavy traffic) didn’t panic, no, they just got on with it and didn’t even blink. And a cop saw it (on one of the very rare occasions that there actually WAS a cop around). I then did the same. Also very skilfully. NO carnage to be seen anywhere! Quite the opposite, it’s a pleasure driving with competent drivers, even when some are driving at 160kph and others are driving at 120kph. And they are driving at 120kph because they WANT to drive slow, not because they are afraid. And they are AWAKE because they know someone might be coming up behind them that is really moving.
Oh, it hurts me to read all your posts about tickets and being afraid all the time and pissed off and frustrated.
Do you know that the red light cameras here in Belgium (all of them are in the north of the country, near Holland) don’t go off if your speed is under 35kph? And here in the south, we have NO red light cameras or any cameras! Once in a while in the villages that have a major road going right through or on the motorways you see a camera on the front bumper of a car. But you have to be really hauling to get flashed. And there are no points on your licence here, and the insurance never knows about any flashes you might have. And they are rare anyway.
Still NO carnage. What are the accident statistics for Europe? I’ll bet they are lower than in the States or other countries with “Enforcement”. But I’ll bet the police in your Enforcement Countries have a real lot of cool cop equipment that they just need to use. Comes from all the money. All it does is piss off their fellow citizens and make everybody hate the cops.
You don’t see anybody hating the cops here. That’s because the cops don’t pester anybody here. There aren’t even a lot of cops, period.
And there still is no carnage.
Don’t fall for the Nanny State line, and don’t fall for the “enforcement” argument. Skilled driving is the answer. “Enforcement” is for police states and to raise revenue. And to give cops a sense of power. Which they always end up abusing anyway. Cops should not be doing traffic duty at all, even if they do see someone “offending”. hah. Turning right through a red light? Let the driver make up his mind if it’s safe. He’s not blind. You don’t have to hold everybody’s hand. Teach people how to drive. Police should be solving crimes, not pestering everybody like some East German Stasi police. And if you say they solve crimes by randomly stopping “traffic offenders”, then you may as well just put checkpoints up all around the place and make your country like a real police state.
Ok, flame me, but it’s you guys who made your bed, you have to sleep in it.
peter
