Ryan Bridge: Driven to distraction – are speed limits the issue or lazy Kiwi drivers?

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THREE KEY FACTS
Ryan Bridge is Newstalk ZB’s Early Edition host.
OPINION
There’s a wee button on the dashboard of my car that I didn’t know existed.

Not one to pay much attention to anything other than what I’m listening to on the radio and where I need to
be next, I’d never really looked at the bit above the auto gear stick thingy to see a P with an echo of circular lines to the right of it.

The other day I arrived at work to park my car, sipping away on keep-cup instant coffee with the radio blaring, and nudged my bumper into the concrete wall in front of me.
Yes, I was driving very slowly but yes, I essentially drove straight into a concrete wall. Not enough to do any damage but enough to jolt me out of 3am auto-pilot mode.
It took me a few seconds to figure out how I’d managed this insignificant but unusual feat.
That’s when I discovered the P button. It’s a parking sensor. The one that beeps when you’re parking. My old car didn’t have one but now that I’m used to the new one, it seems to have faded into background noise. A subconscious warning sound. Like a fridge beeping when left open or a washing machine singing when finishing a load.
It’s quite scary to think how much we take for granted while driving.
Something beeps to tell you how far away a wall or car is while parking. Bumpy paint shudders your undercarriage indicating you’re crossing a line and leaving the road. Big red signs and orange traffic bollards litter streets outside schools reminding us kids are nearby.
We have traffic lights, give way signs, stop signs and speed cameras. Inside our cars we have seatbelts, ABS brakes, airbags, lane assist, adaptive headlights and in some late-model vehicles there’s even a beeping sound when you exceed 100km/h.
These are all great inventions and advancements in road safety. But do they also give us drivers a false sense of security?
Do we think enough about the fact we’re charging around the country at breakneck speeds behind the wheel of what is essentially a made-for-road missile?
Simeon Brown is copping heat from experts and academics for wanting to reverse Labour’s blanket speed reductions.
They’re saying more of us will die on the roads if so-called safety measures are reduced.
The answer, they reckon, is lower speed limits, more safety barriers, more pedestrian crossings, more speed bumps, more speed humps, judder bars, bike lanes, median barriers and raised crossings.
Is it possible that the more we wrap ourselves up in safety features and safety measures, the shittier we become at actually driving? We’re all a bit bubble-wrapped and not paying much attention.
Who needs to focus when something will beep before disaster? Why not text on your phone when you’re crawling at 20km/h through the city? Why watch the road carefully when the bumpy paint will guide your way?
We’re not paying attention to who and what might be around us. We’re just blissfully drifting through red, green, red, green. Orange means speed up or miss the light and never escape the city.
At some point don’t we have to just let people drive and allow accidents to be the lesson?
You’ll never have a 100% accident-free road, no matter how many bells and whistles you might deploy.
Most accidents are caused by people doing dumb stuff. Why are people doing dumb stuff? Could it be, in part, because we’re dumbing them down? We’re saying: don’t worry about thinking about what you’re doing, somebody has already done that for you. So just grab a latte and your iPhone, crank up your favourite song and see what happens next. What an adventure!
Ever driven when the traffic lights are out? Everybody is alert and focused. We’re eyeballing other drivers to predict their next move. We’re courteous and careful (mostly).
I’m not suggesting we ditch the road rules or traffic lights, but is there not a point where we must take responsibility for our own driver behaviour – rather than relying on somebody else to lower the speed limit or whack in another judder bar?
Probably more useful would be more rigorous driver training and bigger, better, straighter state highways.
In the meantime, I’ll be doing my bit. That P button on my dashboard is staying off in the hope I may relearn how to park a car all by myself.
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