Are your lights dimmed?

Yes speed kills.

But what is the Queensland Government doing about “slow kills”.
Well road safety’s other phrase, “Have you got a nut loose at the wheel?” doesn’t simply apply to teenage speedsters who drag race along Brisbane street, but rather includes the those who creep along Coronation Drive at the pace of a three-legged turtle and break suddenly when someone six cars ahead slows ever so slightly. Maybe the slogan could be, “Hey have you got your lights on…brain lights?” Or “Are your lights dimmed?”

The opinion of numerous people (myself included) is that on highways, slow drivers can cause just as many accidents as the fast drivers. Why?

Well humans are an impatient species; we do not like to be kept waiting. Traffic jams annoy us, Centrelink and Queensland Transport lines that rarely end at the doors make us unusually abrupt to staff. Then there are the deli waiting lists – the ones where you take a number from the machine, then have to endure a marathon wait in the “express” line. We don’t like to be kept hanging around. We have lives to live didn’t you know?

So those who have a problem with waiting do not like to be stuck behind an 80-year-old driver going 80km along the Bruce highway. Therefore, they take risks; overtake when they shouldn’t and if they crash then that’s their fault but please, stick to the speed everyone.

Okay so it’s the recommended speed… but seriously, going 40km along the normal 60km/hr Coronation Drive is incredibly agitating. Driving in Brisbane is already annoying but its nothing compared to Coronation, where breaking non-stop is the norm, and sitting behind the green light because the car at the front hadn’t noticed the red had gone happens every time.

Switch on the brain people. Don’t complain that everything is rush-rush-rush – if you don’t like it, don’t drive or move somewhere else, we don’t enjoy the traffic more than the next person but sitting behind a lame horse on any highway is no fun at all.