Page 3406 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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(c) an exemption process would be costly, bureaucratic, and confusing, and would place an unfair burden on responsible P-platers;
(d) the ACT Government advocates assigning a designated driver when heading out for an event or a night on the town. P-plater drivers are often relied upon as designated drivers right across Canberra;
(e) peer passenger restrictions would prevent P-platers from acting as designated drivers, and would place an unfair burden on many families;
(f) the “What We Heard” survey reported that 50 percent of respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed with restrictions on first year P platers from driving between midnight and 5 am; and
(g) accident statistics show that over 66 percent of P-plater deaths on ACT roads took place outside of the proposed curfew hours. In 2016, only 2 percent of all crashes, and 20 percent of fatal crashes occurred between the hours of midnight and 5 am; and
(2) calls on the Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety to categorically rule out:
(a) the implementation of a 12 am-5 am curfew for P-plater drivers, as this would significantly impact the ability of young Canberrans to participate in employment, and is not supported by accident statistics; and
(b) the implementation of passenger restrictions for P-plater drivers.
I think we can all agree that one fatality on our roads is one too many and every death on ACT roads is an absolute tragedy. However, the government’s proposed changes to P-plater laws would unfairly punish young Canberrans and restrict the freedoms of provisional drivers without significantly improving the safety of young drivers on our roads.
Minister Rattenbury announced earlier this year a raft of proposals to reform current L and P-plater licensing in the ACT. Some of these measures are very sensible, such as boosting minimum driving hours, which would bring the territory in line with other jurisdictions. However, some of these proposals go too far and would unfairly disadvantage young Canberrans.
The first of these unfair proposals is a curfew for provisional drivers from 12 am to 5 am. Under this proposal all P-platers would be prohibited from driving in the early hours of the morning unless an exemption has been obtained by the driver. While we do not have any details yet on what an exemption process would look like we do know that the proposed curfew is a radical change from current laws and would result in the ACT having the most restrictive laws in the country.
The second of these unfair proposals is a ban on driving with more than one peer-age passenger at any time of the day. Again, this is a dramatic shift from current ACT laws where we do not have any restrictions on peer passengers and is far stricter than any laws of other Australian jurisdictions.
Today I am calling upon Minister Rattenbury to rule out these harsh and unfair changes to Canberra’s P-plate licensing regulations. These two new proposals would
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