ratemydriving.ie
I wonder are there any legal issues with setting up a website to publish the registration numbers on the license plates of cars that you observe driving dangerously? I could give you a list as long as my arm.
Today was a typical morning and I observed the following: overtaking into oncoming traffic (very close call with an oncoming van overtaking a long vehicle - helpfully the van had its business phone and address plastered all over it); overtaking on a blind bend; overtaking over a hill; driving while talking on the mobile; overtaking while talking on the mobile; as well as the usual tail-gating and lack of use of indicators that are so commonplace that I barely notice them anymore.
And it seems the bigger the car the bigger the idiot behind the wheel. BMWs and SUVs always set off alarm bells and rarely disappoint when it comes to spills and thrills and near misses. I’m guessing that there is a big inferiority complex at play here. If other aspects of your life are beyond your control you can get some compensation by being boss of the road.
And of course policing is practically non existent. You can scaremonger all you like about penalty points but when the chances of getting caught are virtually nil it doesn’t have much effect. As with so many other aspects of law enforcement in this country we need more policing resources not more laws.
Mark Waters marked time at 8:22 am on August 22nd, 2005 .
Technically, there’s already a report scheme in place called TrafficWatch which I am pretty sure is gone national - you see bad driving, you phone the lo-call number and report it. Theoretically, it should result in a few cautions or the occasional court case. In reality, it’s not resulting in a huge number of cases. So I’m wondering whether your name and shame website would be more to vent annoyance or to force driver behaviour change.
If it’s the latter, how do you think it might work? I’m not sure name and shame would have an impact when the currently minimal amount of policing isn’t really having an impact. The problems I see with road traffic policing at the moment is we seem to aim for the easy targets such as the speeding and the tax and insurance - I’ve been checked for tax and insurance more than ten times as often as I’ve been checked for anything like a) valid drivers licence b) whether I’ve been drinking and c) whether I’ve been speeding. I’ve seen nothing else being enforced. Not only that, we have largely sympathetic judges who are happy enough to listen to sob stories about needing licences for jobs and not impose driving bans on drivers convicted of dangerous driving.
The problem is where I live, speeding is not necessarily the biggest issue, it’s outright selfishness. Parking on roundabout approaches. Parking on junctions. No indicators. Stopping on roundabouts. Turning right on a roundabout when you’ve used the left most lane to get onto the roundabout. Drivers equipped with provisional licences on the motorway. Driving all over traffic islands. I’m sure I don’t need to go on with this.