this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Where I live (Australia) it's $962 (€586) and a 12 month licence suspension. $2,212 if you do it in a truck.
What's interesting is that if you turn your head to look at a phone in your passenger's hand while stationary at a red light, it's a $545 fine and 4 points off your 12-point licence.
based shitting on trucks
Honestly can’t get enough of that, I am so tired of people driving around vehicles optimized for murdering children for no reason.
Oh, their definition of "truck" is 4500kg+ and operated on a heavy vehicle licence.
We call those comically large security blankets on wheels "utes" these days. They're getting out of hand in Australia. For every car I see under 1000kg, I would see 100 cars that weigh over 2000kg.
Update: I checked last month's sales stats in Australia. 105,023 vehicles sold, 306 of which weigh under 1000kg. That's 0.3%.
It is disgusting because people want trucks with super high hoods because they look like cowboy belt buckles and it's masculine.... but the reason cars haven't been built to look like that in the past is because it is a pathologically murderous way to design a vehicle that will inevitably get in accidents with other cars and pedestrians at some point. I can't walk around wielding a giant machete in broad daylight and have people treat me like that is acceptable behavior, why do we treat driving around a vehicle optimized to hurt other people in accidents as acceptable behavior? Especially when the reason is "idk, it looks cool, especially once I lift it".
I think the design of pickups really pretty precisely tracks the retreat of conservatism from pretending to honor basic social contracts in favor of outright embracing violence against The Other whoever that might be defined as. Giant pickups are just a physical manifestation of marketing department's best guess at what the interior psyche of conservative masculinity desires, and that desire has clearly gravitated more and more towards embracing violence and lack of caring for the consequences of ones actions on others and that is a scary thought.
So you're not allowed to look in the passenger's general vicinity at all then?
Drives me up the wall when people talking "oh it's all just revenue rasing!" No, it's no where near harsh enough.
I'm not a fan of cameras popping up in 40 zones that were once 60 zones... but at least the speeding fines can scale by severity.
Things like phones and running red lights, are absolute. You can inadvertently crawl forward at 1km/h, trip the red light camera, and stop again without actually obstucting oncoming traffic. The offence (and punishment) is no different to blasting through at full-speed 10 seconds after it has turned red.
While using a phone while stopped at a red light is bad, it is nowhere near as bad as sending a text at highway speed. The fine will also apply if the phone is turned off, or you're just taking it out of your pocket and passing it to a passenger. Absolutely no chill with it.
In Germany red light cameras take two pictures shortly apart to determine whether you just stopped too late or ran the light.
They do that here too. One to show the light red before crossing, and another to show the car has moved over the line. People have been fined for moving forward a car length.
Oh apologies, I'm with you on small offences like you mentioned.
It's mostly when people seem to get mad at the existence of speed cameras at all.
We're not as car-brained as the US, but heck, I think people forget we're piloting something quite heavy at speed, and it should be respected accordingly.
If what you mentioned is true, then that's nuts. Surely there should be jail time and permanent bans for wreckless driving, even if it's a first offence, right?