MartinLuther

This is the first I've heard of this but someone I know has been done for speeding so many times that he now has too many points. However the authorities gave him the choice that he could lose his licence for 3 months or he could keep his licence if he promised not to get done for 12 months with a higher penalty if he fails to meet his promise.

DadAgain

Standard procedure:

After receiving 12 demerit points you can:

a) Have 12 months probation with just 1 demerit point to lose (resulting in a 12 month ban)
-or-
b) Have a 3 months ban

In both cases after your penalty is served you 'level up' and have 12 full points to use again afterwards.

In my case, when I first arrived in Australia and hadnt yet adjusted to 'crawling' pace on main roads and picked up 12 points in my first year I decided that my chances of driving for a further 12 months without being pinged at all were so slim as to not be worth considering, so I chose to take the 3 month ban.

I did however, go on holiday for 6 weeks back to the UK so it was in effect only a 6 week period unlicenced. Any driving with anyone else was done by anyone else, and on the odd occassion I felt I needed to drive whilst alone (probably less than 3 trips totalling less than 30km) I drove *VERY VERY* carefully as gettting caught driving unlicenced (and therefore uninsured) was not part of my plan. Not something to be particularly proud of - but it worked for me.


(For the record this was a LONG time ago in a galaxy far far away and I've never gone beyond 3 penalty points since)

Broad Shoulders

Crawling Pace?????????????????? 60kmph standard speed limit is much faster than 30mph standard speed limit in the UK

Brisben

Same happened to me its called a good behaviour licence. I couldn't afford to be banned as work is two trains and 3 hours away.

I kept a clean licence for 12 months and now have a clean one back

I had same problem as guy above. !

MartinLuther

That always makes me wonder as well. The only limits that are higher in the UK are the dual carriageways.

DadAgain

but the standard 60kph speed limit on a non-residential thoroughfare road that would be a 50 or 60mph back home is quite a drop.

Residential roads would be 30mph at home they are 50kph here (almost identical).


What? You never drove on a 60mph single carriageway road? Here the only chance you get to reach the dizzy heights of 60mph(100kph)is on a multi-lane freeway that really should be at least 110kph - Even then they f**k you up every now and then by chopping and changing it down to 80, 70, 80, 60 in for no apparent reason.

Swerv-o

In country NSW, most of the A type roads are 100 km/h limited.

I would like to see them doing away with the 10 km/h change - It's only 6.25 mph difference, and I don't think it works to effectively slow the traffic.

Apparently, a while ago there was a movement to only have 40, 60, 80, 100 and 110 limits - This would make more sense to me, however, it wasn't popular so was abandoned.


S

Broad Shoulders

...and those roads are normally outside of the city, just like the ones here. You go outside of the Sth East QLD corridor and nearly all the roads are single lane 100km/h roads

MartinLuther

Yes I have. And the equivalent here would be a 100kph single carriageway road.

The main roads through towns here are 60 kph. The same road would be 30mph in the UK. The trunk road through our local town is 70 kph. The same road in the UK could possibly be 40mph but past the shops I reckon it would be down to 30mph again. A main road (e.g. Victoria St) in Melbourne with lights and roundabouts is 60kph. The equivalent in London (e.g. Euston Rd) is 30mph.

The single carriageway A roads out of town here are 100kph. The equivalent in the UK would be 60mph.

The only UK roads with higher speed limits are out of town dual carriageway highway and some freeways 100kph here 70mph UK and other freeways are 110kph here which would would be a dizzying one and a half mph faster in the UK at 70mph.

Maybe the limits are lower in Qld?

MartinLuther

I agree.

There are too many different speed limits. However there was a local road here that was reduced from 100 down to 90 and the number of road accidents (that required attendance by the fire brigade) has dropped from about 20 a year to about 2 a year. I'm actually quite surprised it made that much difference.