Driving and road safety in Australia

Australia is one of the safest and easiest places in the world to drive, despite the authorities' efforts to pretend that just slipping behind the wheel is a prelude to death or dismemberment

Australian road safety advertisements, brought to you courtesy of bodies like Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (TAC), have become famous around the world for their graphic and hard-hitting nature.  Every night, Australians can sit in front of their televisions and see rag doll motorcyclists bouncing off the fronts of trucks, children's heads hitting car windscreens like ripe coconuts, and small villages of grieving friends and relatives.

TAC ads:  these are the healthy-looking ones

Deaths on the road feature prominently on news broadcasts.  After the audience has been given the gruesome details, they are treated to the updated annual road toll for the state, with the new numbers chalked up.  Holiday periods have their own mortality statistics, in which the performances of the various parts of the country are compared.

This media blitz certainly seem to work, at least if the aim is to persuade the country that its roads are a place of perpetual menace.  You don't have to look far to find an Aussie who is willing to discuss the country's apparently appalling road death toll.  It's sometimes difficult not to leave these conversations convinced that a fair proportion of their compatriots are inherently lethal drivers, born to maim and kill as if to original sin.

Yet for anyone from overseas who has actually driven here, much of this is baffling.  Australian roads are wide, with ample parking, and generally well-maintained compared to other countries.  They certainly don't look like death traps.  Australian motorists are generally far more observant of speed limits than most of their foreign counterparts.  In my experience they're also more likely to behave courteously, waiting patiently for their turn to drive through narrow spaces, or for the person in front of them to finish a parking manoeuvre.  Most of the cars don't look to be in particularly bad condition either.  

Despite this, and armed with myriad statistics, the TAC and others seem to believe that they are falling behind other developed nations in the battle to make the roads safer.  However, as is the way with statistics, other factors point the other way.  By any objective analysis, Australia's road safety record is in fact very good.  It has massively reduced its annual traffic mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 of the population) since the 1970s, from a high of 30.4 to 6.9 in 2008.  On the downside, the rate has, in relative terms, plateaued over the past few years, but this has also been the case in most other countries that have made similar strides.  

The list of large-population developed countries above it is small, though, consisting of such nations as Germany, Japan, the UK and Scandinavia.  Critically, as of 2007 Australia's road safety was better (when measured in this way) than Canada, and streets ahead of New Zealand (a rate of 10.1) and the USA (13.9).

It's hard to deny that the distressing scenes in the advertisements portray a truth about road accidents and the damage they cause.  Campaigners would doubtless argue that if they deter anyone from dangerous driving, and a life is thereby saved, then they're justified.  

However, they do also appear to instil a false consciousness about road safety, more reminiscent of the bad old days of the 1970s than today's reality.  Which is that Australia is one of the very safest places in the world to be on the roads.  Of course, any road transport involves some risk - but just be grateful that you're driving here, where that risk is minimal, rather than in most of the other 193 member states of the United Nations.

Books

Whether you're coming to Australia on holiday or for good, don't plan on buying your books here

This was really brought home to me during my first Christmas living here.  As I browsed the shelves at Borders, it became clear that what I had thought of as stocking fillers at home were in danger of becoming the main gift, such was their cost.

It varies from book to book, but it is not uncommon to find them priced at a third higher or even more than you would expect in the UK, for example.  A study by the Productivity Commission has found that, on average, books in the US and UK are 35% and 18% cheaper respectively.  If this comparison is between bookshop prices in the three countries, then once online prices are taken into account, the differences probably become even starker.   

Strictly for the wealthy

The ludicrously high cost of a good read has been the product of Australia's Copyright Act.  In a nutshell, if an Australian publisher wishes, and is able, to publish a book within a certain period of it being published in another country, then retailers are banned from importing copies for sale here.  What that means in practice is that Australian publishers have hitherto existed in a protected market, in which they can more or less charge what they like without fear of being undercut by cheaper imports.

Australian publishers argue that this has enabled them to protect and nurture Australian writers.  The extent to which this is actually true is debated.  In any event it's hard to admire a piece of protectionism that helps propel books into the class of luxury items and disincentivises poorer people from buying them.

Perhaps even more pertinently, it appears to be in the process of causing an apocalypse in the Australian book retailing market.  Booksellers the world over are facing troubling times, as competition from online sales and e-readers undercut them.  In Australia they have been hit harder than most.  Not only are the shops here expensive in the first place, providing a major incentive for shopping around, but customers ordering from overseas don't have to pay the locally applied 10% Goods and Services Tax, either.    

The results so far have been messy.  Earlier this year, two of the largest chains of bookshops - Borders and Angus & Robertson - collapsed into insolvency.  This has simply added to the woes of those who love the opportunity to browse before buying.  Not only are you paying through the nose for the privilege, but it's become harder to find a bookshop to do it in.

The Productivity Commission has recommended the scrapping the protections - but not for some time yet.  Even when this comes it may be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.  With increasing numbers of Australians getting their reading online direct from offshore sellers it's increasingly difficult to see that it does anything but damage the local book industry at multiple levels.

This year I will have to remember to order my family's Christmas reading online, well in advance.  Even if I were prepared to pay Borders' prices, they're not there any more.

Whilst writing this post, I found this informative and entertaining piece from a writer who's a bit more sympathetic to the stated aims of the Australian publishing industry than perhaps I am:  MissAdventure: Parallel Importation (Or: Why Are Books in Australia So Expensive?) 

Beer

Australian beer carries a number of traps for the visitor, not all of them related to excess consumption

The international profile of Australian beers is still stuck resolutely in the world of Paul Hogan-style adverts, in which rugged men put away Olympic-sized swimming pools of rugged beer.  To their credit, discerning Aussie drinkers have increasingly realised that the cheap beers they've sold to the world deliver commensurate levels of rugged bad taste, and hangovers to match.  One of the features of watching Australia for the past twenty years has been seeing the expansion of craft breweries selling higher quality beers and allowing people to educate their palates with a wider range of tastes.

Once, the only thing that mattered about beer was that it should be cold.  And to be truthful, that still matters to Australians.  A lot.  But they've increasingly come to recognise that icy coldness can mask a load of nasty flavours, and smaller scale operations like Little Creatures, Fat Yak and James Squire and others have been able to exploit this with a range of new beers which they can sell for premium prices.

So, if the unwary foreigner finds himself in a bar or bottleshop, what are the basic rules?  Well, first of all, ask the staff.  That way you're more likely to find something interesting.  Second, and most importantly, don't buy any Australian beer that you've heard of before.  Since most overseas visitors are aware of Fosters, XXXX and VB, following this rule gives a decent chance of avoiding any additive-induced nasties later on.  Finally, if in doubt, buy Tasmanian.  The two leading breweries from that state are Boags and Cascade, and though both are substantial operations they are renowned throughout the country for producing good, clean-tasting beers.

If you're in a pub, having selected your beer, you're going to have to decide how much of it you want, which is not as straightforward as it sounds.  In order to confuse outsiders, and delight students of linguistics, the locals have adopted a variety of terms for different-sized glasses, which vary depending on which state you happen to be in.  Depending on where you are, a 285 ml glass will generally be referred to as a middy or a pot, and a 425 ml one as a schooner.  However, you will certainly find local variants and, to complicate things further, in South Australia the smaller glass may also be referred to as a schooner.

Sick of being sneered at by the British for the smallness of their measures, and intrigued by large measures of alcohol, Australians have increasingly taken to drinking their beer in imperial pints.  Finally, in most establishments you can buy it in two pint jugs.  Whilst this is generally associated with a convivial, sharing atmosphere, I am advised that in less salubrious places the patrons are known to sit around a table, with each drinking directly from their own jug.  If this is so, then the Aussies have found a way of taking the challenge back to the Brits. 

Taking on the Brits (photo www.australiablog.com)

Fortunately, in a bottle shop, things are likely to be easier.  The bottles and cans are all clearly labelled with their sizes, and for the beer lover the main decision to make on quantity is when to complete your Australian experience by walking out with a slab (a case of 24).

For the English beer lover there will be the usual regret that Aussies haven't chosen to taste all these new beers they've got at any temperature higher than icy cold, the better to appreciate their flavour.  However, on a hot summer's day this will please most - as will the fact that in decent establishments the glass will also be chilled.




Follow this link to read about the adventures of some Queenslanders who're now fully exploring the wonderful world of beer, after years of drinking rotgut XXXX and similar fighting brews

Hook turns

On your first day of driving in central Melbourne, try not to go anywhere that involves turning right...

Unfortunately, if you're going to take to the roads here, at some point you're going to have to do it.  And I hope it will be less fraught for you than it was for me.  The first time I indicated to turn right, it was followed swiftly by a terrified yelp of "left!" from my wife, a crescendo of car horns and a swift rummage through my vocabulary for my choicest expletives.

I was aware, vaguely, that Melbourne is the world capital of the obscure traffic manoeuvre known as the hook turn.  I had gawped at it, slack-jawed, as a tourist.  I had subsequently mentioned it at dinner parties in London, holding my audience rapt (so I thought) in the manner of an explorer recounting the details of a year spent amongst cannibals.  And damn it, I'd even married a Melbourne girl.  But despite all this it was about five years after my first visit to the city before I ventured into its centre in a hire car, and somehow so counter-intuitive a move had slipped my mind.

Counter-intuitive, that is, except in a city that uses the tram as one of its major forms of public transport.  Melbourne was blessed, shortly after its inception, with a plan which involved a grid of exceptionally broad streets.  This later enabled tram tracks to be run down the centre of many of them, whilst still leaving plenty of room for other vehicles.  The only problem with this arises when drivers want to turn across the oncoming traffic (which, as Australia drives on the left, means a right turn).  Under normal traffic rules - even the ones that apply in the rest of Melbourne - this means moving to the right, stopping, and waiting to complete the turn.  However, this would mean stopping on the tram tracks, thus blocking them, which would cause bigger problems in the busy centre than elsewhere.

Which brings us to the hook turn, which involves nothing more than turning right from the left hand lane.  If you want to see an animated example of how this works in an ideal world, click here.  In my case it tends to include violent jerking of my head as I attempt both to check the traffic lights (in front of me) and the traffic coming from behind, followed by a Starsky and Hutch-style squeal of tyres as I turn 90 degrees at speed in the nanosecond between the lights turning red and a taxi hitting me in the side.

The hook turn broadly divides Melburnians into two groups.  On the one hand there are those who see that it is a sensible and necessary compromise to enable public transport to run smoothly in their city.  On the other there are those who simply avoid driving in its centre at all costs.

The city elders could probably help the hook turn virgin a little more.  Australians have a mania for public signage, much of it confusing owing to its sheer profusion and small size (you can fit more signs in that way, see?).  The signs indicating Melbourne's most confusing traffic rule certainly suffer from these issues.  Apart from that, it's difficult to see any other way of doing things, apart from getting rid of either trams or cars, neither of which is about to happen.

On the other hand, if you happen to be in Melbourne seeing the sights, you should certainly take a minute or two out to see some drivers attempting one.  After all, people shouting at each other are so much more entertaining when you're not involved.

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