How is it that humans have evolved into this, when in the animal kingdom it's survival of the fittest. Just watching a movie and there it was, a three lane road and the driver in the middle lane was going the slowest. I thought these idiots only drove between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, but much to my dismay, it in looks like it's in other places as well. Maybe be it's the governments fault for building 3 lane roads.

I don't think we evolved directly from apes.
I think an alien spacecraft crashed into earth with a couple dozen aliens on it.
a few of those aliens were super intelligent about 3 of the dozen, they bred with apes out of necessity and may have had a few offspring.
The alien who was in charge of flying the intergalactic spacecraft and the mechanics and cleaners or the other 9 bred like rabbits with the other apes, so their genetics spread and multiplied many many many times more than the smarter ones.

After a few generations humans were made, the smarter ones were slower breeders, by now all the original aliens were dead.

Fast forward a few thousand years and the same genetic stock that crashed the spacecraft into earth, is the same genetic stock clogging lanes and driving with several forms of retardation on roads globally.

this is evolution

Becoming the apex predator of the planet, and becoming too smart for our own good.

Its allowed idiocy to thrive. We have defeated natural selection to our own detriment. and with the nanny state throwing more and more rules at everyone, it's just getting harder and harder for the idiots to kill themselves.

Perth. 95-98kph in the right lane of the freeway, all day every day.

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Mark _australia said..
Perth. 95-98kph in the right lane of the freeway, all day every day.

Well, life in the fast lane in WA isant really that fast after all, as expected from a state that is renowned on being a tad slower than the East

The left lane sucks, too many entry and exit points with vehicles arriving from the left or leaving in front of you. On a perfect 3 lane road, no entry or exits the left lane should be the slowest, but but in reality your constantly slowing down or changing lanes to allow others in if you travel there.

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Mark _australia said..
Perth. 95-98kph in the right lane of the freeway, all day every day.

And the left lane is reserved for the individuals who fail to grasp the concept of merging traffic thereby creating choke points every couple of k's or so, every day of the week.

Out of all the stupidity of the human race I wouldn't have thought that was the worst thing. Have you seen how councils operate these days.

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Mark _australia said..
Perth. 95-98kph in the right lane of the freeway, all day every day.

If you're lucky! More like 85-90km/h

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Mark _australia said..
Perth. 95-98kph in the right lane of the freeway, all day every day.

Isn't the speed limit the same in all 3 lanes? What do you recommend for the RH lane 99.95 - 99.98 kph? You'd need a speedo approved by GPSTC .

Well it looks like we've got a few centre lane drivers on the forum. I can understand using the centre lane when the traffic is chokers. But why, why, why stay in the centre lane when there are no cars in the left lane for K's ahead. Do the big signs that say "Keep left unless overtaking mean nothing" I remember years ago in Qld a trucking company had bikini clad girls on the side of the highway holding up signs saying just that. Unfortunately the constabulary were not amused. Christ it must be frustrating for truck drives having to share (yeah f@#king share, a concept a lot of people have no comprehension of) the road with a bunch of selfish drivers.

tomorrow I'm driving my farm truck from south of methandurah all the way to wangara and back. i will be doing 90kph at best
.once i hit the 3 lane section i will be in the middle lane because even after copious indicating cars will not let me move over to let the incoming lanes in . . just a heads up for the on the road from 7.30 t0 11.00.white 7 tonne mitsy with a white crane and harvey plates..give me a toot or a wave . i might even catch a glimpse of ya in my mirrors as you drive past me like I'm not even on the road. if you must cut in front of me to pull off the freeway i have the stopping distance of a 747

Yup, the MO seems to be, enter freeway, jump straight into the RH lane, often without indication, and remain there until careering wildly onto the required exit at the last second, with a finger raised out of the window.

There's a phd in this. The demerit point data base is readily accessible. They've already found a terrific correlation between the number of demerit points held and the probability of the driver having a crash in the next 12 months. That would be a negative for natural selection.

But is there a correlation between demerit points held and the number of offspring begat by the driver? Opposing forces! Which one wins out?

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landyacht said..
tomorrow I'm driving my farm truck from south of methandurah all the way to wangara and back. i will be doing 90kph at best
.once i hit the 3 lane section i will be in the middle lane because even after copious indicating cars will not let me move over to let the incoming lanes in . . just a heads up for the on the road from 7.30 t0 11.00.white 7 tonne mitsy with a white crane and harvey plates..give me a toot or a wave . i might even catch a glimpse of ya in my mirrors as you drive past me like I'm not even on the road. if you must cut in front of me to pull off the freeway i have the stopping distance of a 747

Id say the skill level Of drivers from the methandurah to Perth will increase in direct proportion to the distance from methandurah. This place has categorically the worst drivers in Australia. But yeh that freeway is a dogs breakfast.

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Ian K said..
There's a phd in this. The demerit point data base is readily accessible. They've already found a terrific correlation between the number of demerit points held and the probability of the driver having a crash in the next 12 months. That would be a negative for natural selection.

That sort of makes sense doesn't it? If someone is aware enough to avoid getting fined for speeding, maybe they are aware enough to not have an accident as well? The people that get caught speeding a lot clearly drive without too much care.

Does this mean that people that don't speed also don't have accidents? Surely not. Especially with the level of policing that we see where the only things that seems to get detected are speeding, so poor driving seems to be perfectly fine and therefore has no way to be correlated back to the number of accidents they have.

The problem with natural selection these days is that you can have as many kids as you want early enough and die out at an early age and still influence the population. Whether behavior is an intelligence thing or learned is a different argument again. I would wager that there are heaps of very intelligent people out there that have poor behaviors learned from their family.

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Crusoe said..
Well it looks like we've got a few centre lane drivers on the forum. I can understand using the centre lane when the traffic is chokers. But why, why, why stay in the centre lane when there are no cars in the left lane for K's ahead. Do the big signs that say "Keep left unless overtaking mean nothing" I remember years ago in Qld a trucking company had bikini clad girls on the side of the highway holding up signs saying just that. Unfortunately the constabulary were not amused. Christ it must be frustrating for truck drives having to share (yeah f@#king share, a concept a lot of people have no comprehension of) the road with a bunch of selfish drivers.

Please don't get people to change this behavior. Sometimes the far most left lane can be a great way to go past the people sitting in the far right at 95kph

What seems to happen though is that people see me driving in the far left and only then decide maybe they should have been in that lane all along and change.

I think the authorities could change the behavior of lots of drivers by ending and creating lanes more often. People like to sit back and not think, which is where the slower group in the centre lane and the 'almost fast' group in the right are coming from. They don't want to change lanes and will just vary their speed to avoid it.

what the hell are these 3 lane roads you talk about?
where I live we are getting excited as the giving are creating 3 different passing lane sections within 45K of town.
When fookin caravans arrive and thankyou Covid19 they have spread like flies. they get cranky as they are either tailgated by working grain carrying road trains or the likes my me who need to be there an hour ago.

these 3 lane roads sound like fun to create havoc with

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FormulaNova said..

Does this mean that people that don't speed also don't have accidents? Surely not.

Well if we assume that in years up to 1992 most demerit points were issued for speeding infringements, then yes. By a factor of 16 times more unlikely than for those carrying a lot of points

www.monash.edu/muarc/archive/our-publications/reports/muarc116

"Amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers, the "category of offence" and "demerit point level of offence" models were equally efficient in identifying the crash-involved drivers. For both these models, the proportion of drivers amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers who were subsequently involved in 1993-1994 crashes was 12.4%, ie. considerably greater than the 7.3% crash-involvement rate for the top 500 drivers identified by the base model which did not use prior offence data. The corresponding crash-involvement rate for all drivers in the database was 0.76%."

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kiterboy said..If you're lucky! More like 85-90km/h

which would mean the speedo's in these cars are within [or very close to] the Australian Design Rules specification of 10% + 4klicks!

our i-30 speedo would read 100kmh, while GPS said a bit under 90kph,

when I replaced the tyres I went up a size, and now the speedo is near as dammit to bang on.

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Ian K said..

Well if we assume that in years up to 1992 most demerit points were issued for speeding infringements, then yes. By a factor of 16 times more unlikely than for those carrying a lot of points

www.monash.edu/muarc/archive/our-publications/reports/muarc116

"Amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers, the "category of offence" and "demerit point level of offence" models were equally efficient in identifying the crash-involved drivers. For both these models, the proportion of drivers amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers who were subsequently involved in 1993-1994 crashes was 12.4%, ie. considerably greater than the 7.3% crash-involvement rate for the top 500 drivers identified by the base model which did not use prior offence data. The corresponding crash-involvement rate for all drivers in the database was 0.76%."

People who don't drive much are also less likely to accumulate demerit points or have accidents.

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AUS1111 said..

Ian K said..

Well if we assume that in years up to 1992 most demerit points were issued for speeding infringements, then yes. By a factor of 16 times more unlikely than for those carrying a lot of points

www.monash.edu/muarc/archive/our-publications/reports/muarc116

"Amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers, the "category of offence" and "demerit point level of offence" models were equally efficient in identifying the crash-involved drivers. For both these models, the proportion of drivers amongst the 500 highest scoring drivers who were subsequently involved in 1993-1994 crashes was 12.4%, ie. considerably greater than the 7.3% crash-involvement rate for the top 500 drivers identified by the base model which did not use prior offence data. The corresponding crash-involvement rate for all drivers in the database was 0.76%."

People who don't drive much are also less likely to accumulate demerit points or have accidents.

Wouldn't they also be less likely to know where the speed cameras are hidden? Either way a factor of 16 is a lot to take out by doing the probability against miles driven.

12.4 % just means that those sitting on a swag of demerit points are likely to have a prang that makes the data base every 8 years. 0.76% means most of us don't have a prang that would register on the data base in a lifetime of driving.

^^ Just pointing out that while there is a correlation between demerit points accrued and frequency of accidents, if there is a stronger correlation between km driven and frequency of accidents, then the demerit points could be a red herring. They could be completely irrevelant or there might even be an inverse relationship. I suspect there is.

You might say I'm being pedantic but I'd say it's likely that people who drive more kilometres may get more points but also be safer drivers (per kilometre driven) than those who drive infrequently. This is particularly so in the city.

If you ask the wrong question, you get the get the wrong answer.

I'd also add that driving in the right lane at less than the speed limit (conditions permitting) is selfish and dangerous.

While we're on correlations another one we could do is to ask drivers to rate themselves 1 to 12
1 .. I'm a bit hit and miss
2
3
4
5
6 I'm about average
7
8
9
10
11
12 I'm excellent.

and correlate that with the number of demerit points they just happen to hold.

I'm guessing both high numbers would line up.

I just did a 735km drive on the east coast yesterday.
Got on the highway, set cruise control to 110km/hr,
Only touched the brakes in a couple of spots where only 100km/hr limit.
Stayed in the left lane, only in right lane when overtaking trucks and pensioners.
Didnt have one single car slow me down when in the right lane the whole journey. Was actually thinking how well everyone acted on the highway......................then I saw this thread on WA drivers lol

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lotofwind said..
I just did a 735km drive on the east coast yesterday.
Got on the highway, set cruise control to 110km/hr,
Only touched the brakes in a couple of spots where only 100km/hr limit.
Stayed in the left lane, only in right lane when overtaking trucks and pensioners.
Didnt have one single car slow me down when in the right lane the whole journey. Was actually thinking how well everyone acted on the highway......................then I saw this thread on WA drivers lol

Freeways are new here, and still a novelty One day maybe a generation will drive on them correctly, but I doubt it. I really do think you need three lanes minimum anywhere. A middle lane for most people to drive in, a right lane for people to drive the speed limit +5%/-20%, and the far left lane for observant people to cruise past.

I remember driving the highway southbound from Lismore and finding it was a pain. Hopefully its been fixed up a bit since then but at the time it was single lane each way with the occasional overtaking lane where the idiots that were doing 90kph then decided they wanted to do 110kph, to then slow down to 90 when it went back to single lane. Sort of like here too.

Everyone here seems to know where the speed cameras are though, so its not like they are completely inattentive.

Yeh I'm first to admit right here and now the drivers over here are atrocious. I like driving in Sydney - assertive but generally courteous.

Over here omg it's a cluster F on the road. Only this afternoon I had to avoid not one but 4 seperate incidences over cars suddenly pulling into the lane I was in on the way home (only 17km) mind you). Then I got stuck behind some old cow going 50 in a 70 zone IN THE RIGHT LANE probably thinking how safe she was driving. Meanwhile chaos resigned around the stupid cow.

they say speed kills but so dip sh1t slow asses not going the damn speed limit.

I think the drivers are rude in WA due to vitamin D deficiency from not enough sun, because they dont have daylight savings yet

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landyacht said..
tomorrow I'm driving my farm truck from south of methandurah all the way to wangara and back.

experiment results are in .drive was a success because i delayed and hour to allow the towsies to clean up the 3 car bingle at thomas rd. a big thanks to the local radio station that has a traffic report and that doesn't play the same song in the same day but plays the same day of songs all week.
didn't have to change gears the whole trip both ways. north bound had 1 young lady content to cruise at 80 that i had to queue to overtake and got cut off by only 3 vehicles. scary thought is that 2 of the vehicles were RAC vans. something to think about. southbound fully loaded was a smooth drive sitting on 95 sitting in the 2nd lane on a 4 lane section cos i knew that the left lane would end shortly, very little traffic and a fully loaded brick truck with trailer decided it was a great time to pass on the left and cut in front before the exit. .I got the feeling that cars respected loaded truck but not an empty one and the trucks respected a shiny truck but not an old one