Rage of a bush road warrior

Rivers of gold still flow for state governments in the form of speeding tickets.

While I’m impressed with what Elon Musk has done for motoring, there will be no electric car for me. Commuting between Sydney and the bush – 300km and at least four hours each way – I’d suffer range anxiety. To add to frequent attacks of road rage. (Whilst opposed to capital punishment, I reckon tailgaters deserve the death penalty). Other problems for rural drivers? Broken windshields on gravel roads, kamikaze kangaroos – and, worst of all, the unfair impact of the points system.

They may have dried for up for newspapers given the death of classified ads, but “rivers of gold” still flow for state governments in the form of speeding tickets. There’s no drought in revenue-raising thanks to speed traps with cameras and cops on the prowl. Countless millions flood the coffers.

Motoring fines are intrinsically unfair. Whether for a parking infringement or going 15km/h over the limit, their impact differs depending on income. The struggling breadwinner can be crushed by a fine that means bugger-all to the bloke in a posh car. So perhaps the points system – which leads, ultimately, to the loss of your licence – is an attempt to find a slightly more democratic form of punishment for miscreant motorists.

Once again, however, there are ethical issues. This time the scales of justice tip in favour of the city driver. Take the hypothetical case of an old bloke in the bush who loses his licence. He’d probably prefer to lose his testicles. My imaginary driver, an ageing farmer/broadcaster, has no access to public transport. As well as no phone signal or NBN, he’s got no trams, no trains, no buses, no Uber. It’s more than a kilometre from the homestead to his front gate. He’d be breaking the law if he drove to his letterbox. And the cost of a taxi to the nearest town, should he manage to persuade one to collect him? Hundreds of dollars.

Given that a bush driver must cover vastly longer distances than one in the city, he’s statistically more likely to get booked for an offence than someone sitting in an urban traffic jam. And given that the bush driver is more likely to be on long stretches of empty road, his “10km/h over” hardly represents as great a risk as hooning around the suburbs. But the points system isn’t “smart”. It doesn’t take the rural/urban differences into account. One size fits all.

To lose a licence in town is, in truth, a mild inconvenience. Public transport waits, or the chauffer-driven luxury of taxi or Uber. Or for that previously mentioned bloke in the posh car, an actual chauffeur. In the bush? The only public transport is the ambulance – and they take a lot longer to arrive. For the likes of me, the points system is double demerits 24/7.

Autonomous driving will, in due course, eliminate most accidents and speeding tickets. But it will take forever before the technology can be applied to our rough and rutted country roads. Add another decade until a Tesla can deal with kamikaze kangaroos. The odds are stacked against us. It’s not fair. And the bloody National Party – and local member Barnaby Joyce in particular – does nought to help.

(I suddenly recall a joke Hawkie told me 30 years ago. “There are two bodies on the Hume Highway. One’s a dead kangaroo, the other’s a dead politician. What’s the difference?” “I dunno, Bob.” “There are skid marks before the ’roo.” He was Prime Minister at the time.)

I realise you don’t need an electric car to have range anxiety. Or road rage.