Revenue gathering doesn’t save lives better roads do

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Brad Heap

The road toll in NZ this labour weekend is already five. This is despite, for the second long weekend in a row, the Police dropping the tolerance level for speeding from 10km/h over limit to 5km/h.

Last long weekend the Police claimed that their lowering of the tolerance level saved lives, however, with the road toll in NZ being so volatile due to weather factors, and the size of the country being small it was more than likely just a statistic anomaly then any effect the Police had.

This long weekend has just shown that the effect of lowering tolerance does nothing to the limit and instead just trivialises fines and is nothing more than a revenue gathering exercise for police.

In NSW police do the same thing with double demerit points on long weekends. This does not save lives or encourages people to drive safer. Instead people who do take note spend more time looking at their dashboards instead of the road ahead.

A few weeks back former V8 Supercar Champion, Mark Skaife, was on a current affairs show on TV arguing that money should be spent on improving roads, increasing the speed limit, driver education and better cars than super strict enforcement of the driving rules.

I doubt any change will happen though when police and government policy continues to be driven on ticket quotas, revenue raising, and persecution of young drivers.

Speed Cameras in NSW

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Brad Heap

Living in a new country brings with it a lot of cultural changes, and while the difference in most things between NZ and Australia are mild and minor some of the laws, particularly around roads, are quite absurd from the view of a Kiwi.

Yesterday the NSW Government announced that it was reintroducing mobile speed cameras – you know those white/green/black vans always parked on the sides of the roads in NZ with the dark tinted windows.

What is absurd in NSW though is instead of the anywhere, anytime, no signage speed cameras they have in NZ, the NSW Government is going to give everyone one warning sign before a camera (currently the fixed cameras have 3!), and maintain a public list of locations.

I don’t see the rational for warning people about speed cameras (let alone 3 warnings). If you are serious about bringing the road toll down then stick cameras at the black spots, at the points where people are acting stupidly and fine them, take their cars off them, take their license off them. The only thing fixed speed cameras are is white elephants on the side of the road and those who manage to get fines from them certainly shouldn’t be driving.

By having anytime, anywhere speed cameras it means drivers are more alert to the speed they are travelling at all times not just when a road sign tells you to slow down. And don’t get me started on people calling them revenue gathering tools, they only gather revenue because you are dumb enough to break the law.

The ongoing Toll Road Website Saga

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Brad Heap

And today’s other top story.

NZTA was told in mid December they had security issues but did nothing.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10550914

Does the NZTA even know what HTTPS is?

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Brad Heap

I have been laughing over the last few days as the New Zealand Transport Authority has become more red faced over the massive security hole in their toll road payment system.

On January 25 the Silverdale to Puhoi motorway extension will open, however to drive on it you will need to pay tolls, and for the last two months or so the NZTA have been advertising the www.tollroad.govt.nz website heavily so regulary uses of the new road can set up accounts.

On Monday a computer user realised that the website was not encrypting credit card information which means that anyone who knows anything about packet snifting or the like could intercept peoples credit card details as they used the website.

Now first and foremost this should never happen. Not on any ecommerce site, let alone a government website. Ecommerce programing 101 would surely teach you that first you must always encrypt data through using SSL and HTTPS not plain HTTP.

But what was more funny is that the red faced NZTA denied that there was anything wrong with the site! Refusing to take it offline or stop processing accounts.

That was until today when with egg on their face they took down the site for maintenance and admitted they stuffed up. Time to get new programmers one thinks.