WA Road News · 3 August 2008
Every week I do three editorial cartoons on Perth-based news. For one of the papers I ring the editor to get the stories, but for the other two, I closely monitor the news in Perth online.
But since the boom, all the news stories I ever read are entirely roads related. If it’s not a crash, or a car-chase, or a traffic jam, or a buggered overpass, it’s a new road, or a new driving law, or more speed cameras, or more booze buses.
What the fuck? Is anything else happening in WA other than road-accidents? Why is it that every time I log on to thewest.com.au or perthnow or watoday I’m reading the same old story, with new characters every single day?
It’s not since I’ve moved East that I’ve noticed this change. I noticed it quite clearly while I was living in Perth. And whilst living on a main road in Tuart Hill, I noticed the very real effects of the boom on a young generation.
My generation, the Generation Y’s, have been cashing in on the boom in a big way. A lot of young guys like me (and girls too) have gone up North to Karratha or otherwise to work on the mines and earn 6-figure salaries in their early twenties. They come home on their week off, buy up big on property, plasma screens, boats and hotted up utes and V8 Commodores, and rip up the roads like there’s no tomorrow.
Driving in Perth became incredibly dangerous in the last five years after the “three week on, one week off”-ers would hoon around the streets, after having not even driven a car for three weeks, and crash their $40,000 high-powered vehicles into power poles, houses and each other -This even happened outside my own house!
A 22-year old driver was turning a corder at 80kph, was fiddling with his ipod and drove straight into a light pole, RIGHT outside my window. The power box on the pole exploded and he blacked out the entire street. He came running to below my balcony clutching his ribs asking me to call the ambulance, and they quickly came to take him away.
When I spoke to the police downstairs (whom were blocking everyone at my unit complex in) about what happened? He said it was the fourth one that night.
The fourth. And it was 7:40pm!!! What the fuck??
Perth isn’t THAT big, people! 4 crashes in one evening is a LOT.
Why is it so hard to ban young road-users from buying high-powered vehicles, or AT LEAST making it compulsory for them to undertake special driver training before having the purchase authorised. How thick are WA police that every time they buy a new speed camera, they’re pouring hundreds of thousands of tax-payers dollars into revenue-raising and nannying tactics that do NOTHING to deter road-users from speeding or driving recklessly.
Do you honestly think, for even a second, that a 23-year old mine worker on $140,000 a year gives a flying fuck about a $120 speeding fine? The demerit points count for marginal concern for these guys. The hoon laws that were introduced do nothing, and there are barely enough police out in the early hours to see what these guys are getting away with when nobody’s watching. Because nobody’s watching.
(And it’s because of these reckless bone-heads that me; a 23-year old male driver pays more in car insurance than ANY OTHER DEMOGRAPHIC. Thanks for that, fellers.)
I’ve not had the horrible drama of a friend or family-member be involved in a fatal car accident, but I worry every time I log on to WA news sites that I’ll read that same old story, with a character I know in the body of text.
Wise the fuck up, WA. The state’s road toll now stands at 182 – the highest number in over 5 years. If the government isn’t going to take road-safety seriously, and just continues to pour money into revenue-raising tactics, WA road-users will start taking matters into their own hands; and there’s no telling how much more dangerous that’ll be.
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