One of Australia’s most successful racing drivers, Mark Skaife, recently put his reputation on the line to promote his views on improving driver behaviour. He aired his thoughts a couple of weekends ago on Channel 7’s quasi-tabloid television program Sunday Night.
Skaife’s three main steps to safer roads include accredited driver training, in a bid to prevent parents from teaching their kids bad habits; improved road infrastructure, as well as more consistent road signage; and government incentives to encourage the purchase of newer and safer cars for young drivers.
This is a massive issue and one that can’t be satisfactorily resolved on this humble blog. Some of Skaife’s views have genuine merit, while some are a little ill-considered. For example, while an increase in freeway speed limits might be worth considering if certain measures are in place first, Skaife should have known that mentioning anything with 140km/h in it would send self-righteous critics into an absolute tail spin.
After all, we live in a country where an international advertising campaign from BMW featuring a car sliding around at low speeds in a closed warehouse was banned for fears it would encourage hoon behaviour. At the same time, so long as you’re advertising flavoured milk, it’s deemed okay to speed down a country road in your ute while your girlie is hanging out of the window and your mate jumps on to a truck.
Anyway, you can watch Skaife’s original piece after the break. And, if you can bear the sight of Mike Munro, there is also a follow up interview featuring Skaife and current member of the National Road Safety Council, Wayne Gardner.
11 replies on “Skaifey says”
This is a really great initiative from Mark Skaife. Good on him.
I can’t believe Wayne Gardner is on the safety council. His performance in the debate was abysmal.
“I just wish people would use some common sense”
Thanks Wayne – a very convincing fact based arguement. Clown.
No one of any influence in this area will listen to him.
In Finland to get your licence you have to do a skid pan course consisting on oversteer, understeer, controlling a spin and hand brake initiated slides to understand the concept of counter steering to gain your licence which is covered over various days on the circuit. Yet in Oz you can forge how many road hours and conditions you have driven in then pass a test which cares about how well you can parallel park or complete a three point turn. It’s a complete joke.
Our systems in place is what creates unskilled drivers. Skaife is on the money 100% here but he definitely should of left increasing speed limits out of this one and bought them up on a later date
It’s about time we had a contrary opinion to the speed kills garbage we’ve been fed by our tax collectors. Training and education are the key to business why wouldn’t they also be the key to improving our road toll ?
Congratulations Mark, finally someone has spoken out against the labotomised norm. I am heavily involved in both Road Safety and Crash Investigation and yes speed has been demonised as the ‘Great Evil’ but what has missed by many is Mark’s statement that more driver training, improved road maintenance and better vehicles are needed. Then speed becomes far less of an issue because one reason people crash is because they do not have the training or experience in driving safely at speed, even 100 kph and the vehicles they are driving are potentially unsafe at that speed as well. Mark has not called for an all out, ill-considered increase in the open speed limit at all, it is qualified with the statements about training, road maintenance and vehicles.
NZ has similar issues with speed being considered evil but as speed equates to movement (momentum) it is possible to argue speed as a factor in every crash because the vehicles were moving at the time. This then allows Police, Government and many Road Safety people to cite speed as the cause of crashes when it clearly isn’t and yes it is very easy for statistics to be used in support especially when these stats are reported by the Police.
Invest in better driver training and invest in a reduction in crashes.
Well done Mark Skaife on bringing this up. Next time leave Wayne Gardener at home.
Good on him for saying that parents shouldn’t teach driver training. I was taught by a german and we spent some much time dissecting the road and how to use it before driving. It made a huge difference.
The other issues that make implementing this kind of setup for Australia are these.
We don’t have a car economy as good as Germany/Europe where cars with these safety features are as affordable.
We don’t have the population density for the tax revenue to create these roads.
Also, let’s be honest, the majority of us came from convicts and our “anti-authoritarian” attitude is why we don’t “kept left” or respect signs and other drivers
I took advanced driver training after driving for 10 years and it made me a better driver by far! But also I was able to afford a car with ABS/ESP/Better brakes/better construction etc.
I reckon he needs to find dirt on all of these road ministers, blackmail them and get this done. It seems to be the only way in this country.
Well said Skaifey.
It’s about time we had some reality injected into the debate. Governments don’t want to introduce higher mandatory training standards as they know it will cost more time and money and therefore will be politically unpopular.
Easier to say ‘speed kills’ and put up speed cameras.
Skaifey was right on the money with everything he said.
His only mistake was to suggest[correctly] that speed limits on some of the better Motorways were a bit low.
Unfortunately,that’s all people heard-he wanted to raise speed limits!
The speed camera proponents never mention[or know]that the actual number of fatalities occuring over the posted speed limits is around 5% of the road toll-but every “accident” gets the ” speed could have been a factor” crap trotted out.
If the cars weren’t exceeding the speed limit,you can’t blame speed.
So therefore accidents representing 95% of the road toll have virtually no government response to help cut the toll….
A cynic[me] might think that there wasn’t any money in it-after all,NSW collected $420 MILLION odd in fines for that 5% of the problem last year alone.
End of rant.
Cheers
Len
Do
A
Skid.
maybe if the media reported, after a fatal accident, “shit driving was a possible factor” the general public would start taking some responsibility.
Mark Skaife, great story greats points.
However Mike Munro, I wonder about his interviewing technique. I’m sure some will agree, it’s interesting to say the least.
Personally I think Mark Skaife needs to hold a summit, a highly publicised one at the to gather thoughts and get a plan of attack.
Skaifes points are good, but unstructured due to his passion.
Until this issue gets a lot of media and a lot of noise, it wont get further.
Surely these guys can muster everything they can on this can get noise. Nothing gets momentum in politics without being the loudest squeakiest wheel that they want to give oil to to shut it up.
I for one will fight along side Mark all the way. But I wouldn’t want to increase speed limits on highways until the majority of Australia’s drivers get a clue. If we start now, that’ll be 10 years.
Change them at the roots now to get a better future.