I think a few people may be slightly taking my point the wrong way. I don't condone speeding. I'm not a lead foot, and I certainly never drive dangerously. When I'm driving, the road has my full attention. I am constantly looking in my mirrors and scan the road ahead from the car in front of me, right up to a few hundred metres ahead. I have never had an accident, but avoided quite a few - and I believe this is due to me focusing on the task and giving it my full attention, as well as driving to the conditions and my ability. I think that everybody should take the same approach when driving and the advertising campaigns should be focusing on making people aware of this. At present, all they do is tell us not to speed and shows mangled car wrecks, which makes people think that as long as they are driving under the speed limit, they are driving "safely". This could not be further from the truth, and in my opinion is actually increasing the danger because it's lulling people into a false sense of security.
Tony, you mention my "99 vs 109" comment. You're 100% spot on about the reaction time, which actually helps to make my point that speeding is only one aspect of safe driving. A driver doing 109kmh but focusing his full attention on driving will have an amazingly faster reaction time than someone who's in a dream sitting on 99 thinking about what to cook for dinner or whatever. If you're scanning the road ahead, you'll probably not have to react in a hurry at all - you will most likely be able to slow down or change lanes. I'm sure you know all of this so I actually feel a little patronising bringing it up - but just trying to make my point clear - that's all.
Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear summed it up pretty well in a recent episode. "If you drive a rubbish car, you don't really care about cars. If you don't really care about cars, then you don't really care about driving. If you don't care about something, then you're probably not going to be any good at it." I don't totally agree with the first half of that statement, but definately agree with the second half. If someone doesn't really care about driving or has no interest in it, then they're probably not going to be any good at it.
Cars are a potentially lethal weapon. Whether you're exceeding the speed limit or whether you're otherwise innocently driving along doing the speed limit, but not paying attention to what you're doing - the danger is the same. Currently the government is doing very little to try and change that way of thinking. That in itself is very, very dangerous. I'm not saying that speed limits shouldn't be enforced, that would be ridiculous, but I think the focus needs to be spread evenly around all of the road rules, and I think that by primarily targetting speeding, the government is doing a gross injustice to road users by not having a thorough road safety campaign.
They need to thoroughly and continually educate people on driving etiquette, merging, changing lanes, not driving in the right hand lane unless overtaking (not sure about other states but it's a fine + demerit points here in QLD), scanning ahead, overtaking on single carriageways, driving on country roads, not tailgating etc etc. I'll say it again - speeding is only one part of a multi-pronged, thorough, fair dinkum road safety campaign. The government's weak-as-piss effort at the moment is nothing more than a pathetic attempt at making people think they are doing something. I feel sorry for the men and women of our police forces who have to be a part of it, I'm sure if they had their way then we would be seeing more patrol cars booking people for various breaches of the rules, and more advertising and education on the road rules and safe driving so that they don't have to book as many people, and so they don't have to scrape so many people off the bitumen.