Page 1649 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 3 June 2014
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travelling, the hard it is for the driver to stop to avoid hitting pedestrians or other road users or people in the vicinity of the road; secondly, the faster a car is travelling when it hits an object, such as a pedestrian, the higher the likelihood of that impact causing significant injury or death.
For that reason, “excessive speeding” has been defined in a flexible manner that reflects the varying level or risk posed by speed. The aggravating factor is driving at a speed that exceeded the speed limit by more than 30 per cent. The 30 per cent rule would see the threshold applied at 52 kilometres an hour in a 40-kilometre-an-hour zone, above 78 kilometres an hour in a 60-kilometre-an-hour zone and above 104 kilometres an hour in an 80-kilometre-an-hour zone.
While some may consider that driving at above 52 kilometres an hour in a 40-kilometre-an-hour school zone does not pose a significant safety risk, the research tells us otherwise. Research has shown that if a pedestrian is hit by a car at 50 kilometres an hour, the pedestrian has less than a 40 per cent chance of being killed, but at 60 kilometres an hour the pedestrian has a 70 per cent chance of being killed. Even at relatively low speeds, every extra kilometre per hour that a car is travelling can literally be the difference between life and death for a pedestrian.
The risks posed by excessive speeding are, of course, exacerbated when combined with other furious, reckless or dangerous driving behaviours. Speeding drivers have less time to react to take evasive action, and any impact or collision causes significantly more damage than an impact at the legal driving speed.
The fourth aggravating factor is driving with a person younger than 17 years old in the vehicle. This factor recognises that children can be more vulnerable to injury than adults in a crash and so furious, reckless or dangerous driving has potential for more serious consequences for children in a motor vehicle in the event of an accident. In addition, the aggravating factor also reflects that, unlike adult passengers, a child cannot consent to involvement in dangerous or reckless driving.
While not the principal reason for including this aggravating factor, it must also be recognised that older children are potentially impressionable and may come to regard the offending driving behaviour as normal or acceptable and perpetuate this in their own behaviours.
The fifth aggravating factor is driving in a way that puts at risk the safety of a vulnerable road user. The heightened disadvantage that vulnerable road users face when interacting with much larger, heavier and faster motor vehicles has been widely accepted. This disadvantage is compounded when the motor vehicle is being driven furiously, recklessly or dangerously. A vulnerable road user is a road user other than the driver of or a passenger in an enclosed motor vehicle. The bill provides some non-exhaustive examples, such as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, riders of animals, users of motorised scooters and even users of Segways.
The final aggravating factor is if the driver is a repeat offender. This has been included to ensure that there is an appropriate sanction available when offenders repeatedly engage in dangerous driving. The bill provides that the maximum penalty
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