lardyl

so are you in NZ or a Kiwi ex-Pat sitting somewhere else in the world lecturing all us Brits on how we are spilling vitriol all over the place....??

or are you just deaf or blind? or don't go out on NZ streets/read the papers/ watch TV, etc.......???

Come on and back up those opinions with some facts......

sr71

I can't back them up with facts, although if you really wanted I could set up webcams at my various relatives places in Auckland and you can judge for yourself the boy racer problem.

In the vast majority of suburban streets in Auckland boy racers are just not a problem. Plenty of loud exhausts around sure, but if anything NZ drivers drive me to frustration because they drive so slowly and so incompetently.

Black Sheep

Errrrr, by 'slowly', you wouldn't mean they drive the speed limit, would you? That really seems to tick a few people off here, eh! I love how you can get tailgated here when you're doing the speed limit, then have 'the finger' waved at you as the tailgater passes you - funny thing is when it happens in your neighbourhood and the finger waver, now ahead of you, turns into the street you live on and pulls into a drive a few houses up from yours....

sr71

No, it's worse. You'll often get 3 lanes of the motorway blocked with 3 cars doing 80km/hr, or they'll sit on a country road doing 70/80, then get annoyed when you overtake them.

Don't get me started on lane discipline and undertaking.

janek

wots that then? a law or sommit?

they might need insurance but that doesn't mean they have any, hey just drive them illegally...... a huge number of drivers in the UK are without insurance.

sr71

Yes, I forgot about them, all the unlicensed Eastern Europeans (amongst others) that can get away with murder, literally too, in the case of some fatal accidents.

And what's the penalty for driving around in an unlicensed, uninsured, no MOT car? The police crush it and they go out and buy another £300 bomb.

Margaret Parkinson

Every insurance company here has to pay into the Motor Insurance Bureau so that if you are in an accident with an uninsured vehicle you claim off them. This adds approx £50 to every UK persons insurance so in a round about way they are insured its just that such as myself have paid for it.

My daughter was hit by an uninsured driver he was fined £100 and 100 hours community service. He also had no road tax.

June

lardyl

we have ACC to help with some of that and the courts to deal with the yawning gap that is the rest.......
TBH though simply spatting back by saying "well how better is it that you have a law that makes Third Party insurance compulsary - beacuse some people flout it" is the typical one-eyed approach and would not cut it with most Kiwis - well not the ones in the motor trade, police, fire service, ACC and insurance that I have talked to about the absence of compulsory insurance...several in the trade have suggested tagging this onto the rego like they do in Ozzie, doubt you pro-Kiwi zealots would like that though, can't have the Australians having "better ideas", at least you can't admit it on a public forum.
Margaret it is just a debating point that shows the poster just wants to take a pop at anything different and try to sidestep the real point - having no requirement for insurance means that kids driving big, dangerous, fast cars they cannot handle is more likely than were there to be a scale of insurance based on age, engine size, etc.......
as a matter of fact there are further measures other than crushing the car available for serial traffic criminals in the UK - I used to work with the lawyers that prosecuted and defended those cases so I know a little about the subject - "just" crushing the car is a pretty direct one, and one that NZ has taken on board for hoons and the like - but wait a minute, that can't be right must have been a Kiwi idea first........ yeah right.......

lardyl

yikes and I'm sure a large number of drivers in NZ disobey, ignore or flout the law - many of them certainly can't drive for toffee, if you are considering road position, lane discipline, common courtesy or taking road conditions into account as some of the key driving skills....but that is another debate and an old one.......

Browner_

Council wont do anything about noisey cars, its a police issue. Possibly the community constable may do something, but hes probably very busy, and the trouble is - is what they do ILLEGAL? Its bloody antisocial, but NZ laws on this are so wishy washy.

Anyway, lets not pretend this is confined to my street. Everywhere in NZ is plagued with these noise heaps.

There is even a political lobby group "trying" to do something about it:

http://www.noiseoff.org.nz/

I quote them:

"Almost every community in New Zealand now suffers the effects of excessive noise from deliberately modified vehicles.

The noise is harmful and completely unnecessary. It should be illegal.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are regularly disturbed by the noise epidemic.

The problem extends far beyond homeowners and road users – it now impacts on business and tourism.

Restaurants and Cafes are losing customers.
Angry tourists are checking out of hotels.

The clean green image of New Zealand is going up in smoke. And political parties are failing to act."

Browner_

Well, we can only go on what we observe.

And the parts of the UK Im from, Ive heard hardly any offensively loud vehicles, compared to anywhere in NZ where they are absolutely everywhere. Ive been back every year for the last 4 years, and travelled around a bit.

Im beginning to think that my UK root is obviously a much nicer area than NZ or parts of the UK. More reason to go back there.

Browner_

But thats the problem - noise!
And they are everywhere.

I dont care if they are tripping down to their local dairy and back at 60kph, they make far too much noise doing it and it is unnecessary.

BEVS

Yup . It doesn't just pay if the driver is uninsured and all that. It pays if you are the victim of what is a hit and run & no trace is able to be found or proven. I can personally vouch for this, having been in a severe RTA on a motorway in 1972. It took several years for it to finalise as the injuries & loss took time to settle , but 7 years later I received some compensation for that period of my life. Thank you MIB and thank you June.

eddie_nz

Manslaughter

Murder would require premeditation

lardyl

methinks that there is a little "cross purposes" going on here - some posters are equating "boy racers" to literal "Need for Speed"-type events and Browner is objecting to the general noise made by hoons in modded/clapped out cars, some of which are being driven at excessive speed. That is a problem throughout NZ and the standard of maintenance of the vehicles the absence of much obvious enforcement and the trend to get a bigger exhaust, be it to impress the ladies/make up for certain deficiencies, etc all contribute to this anti-social behaviour. Down with Hoons , up with nice quiet and safe streets . All power to Browner and his lobbying mates.