Road-Rules-You-Did-Not-Know

petengail · Guru

Road-Rules-You-Did-Not-Know

Gerty Dancer · Guru

Very interesting Pete. I was starting to believe that stop signs only meant slow down, since I copped an earful for stopping at such a sign in a city recently.

Fried Rice · Guru

B....Y hell! If you have all these rules in Vic and NSW, I'll just stay in Queensland!!

Fried Rice

Seriously, we have lots of these in bananaland as well .. main thing is to drive carefully to the conditions at all times!! smile

Fried Rice

D and D · Guru

And that article was a year ago - god only knows what new rules have been introduced since then

milo · Guru

i have my phone docked all the time , but if some one rings I let it go to voice mail
but do use it for gps when docked..

TowBall · Veteran Member

Hi . Very soon in the Central Business District of Melbourne it will be an offence to drive a motor vehicle of any kind without a man walking in front of your car with a red flag. The push bike lobby want the speed limit in there changed from 40kph to 30kph. If anybody can even do 30 kph in the city on any day, they have a right to be nominated for the Guinness book of records or would need to have a red & blue light on their car roof. Going down Collins Street it might as well be 30 feet per hour. The 40 kph in the city now is the 24/7 limit...... Maybe I'm getting too OLD to be delivering stuff in the city, every time I unlock my car to go somewhere, I feel like I've committed some sort of offence.

Keith19837 · Senior Member

TowBall wrote:
Hi . Very soon in the Central Business District of Melbourne it will be an offence to drive a motor vehicle of any kind without a man walking in front of your car with a red flag. The push bike lobby want the speed limit in there changed from 40kph to 30kph. If anybody can even do 30 kph in the city on any day, they have a right to be nominated for the Guinness book of records or would need to have a red & blue light on their car roof. Going down Collins Street it might as well be 30 feet per hour. The 40 kph in the city now is the 24/7 limit...... Maybe I'm getting too OLD to be delivering stuff in the city, every time I unlock my car to go somewhere, I feel like I've committed some sort of offence.

Funny you should mention the man with the flag. There is an old Scottish Case Law which requires a man walking ahead of a motor carriage waving a flag and either shouting or ringing a warning. Did I hear you ask "What has this to do with Australia?" Yes, I thought I heard you ask that most salient of questions. Well here in Victoria, this Case Law was never DIRECTLY repealed and theoretically is still a lawful requirement. Now should some over zealous 'Plod' try to take this to Court he would obviously be, (yes a dickhead): but apart from that he would be jumped on by any number of the checks and balances within his station. If for some inconceivable reason it managed to get through to Court then it would be summarily dismissed and if a High Court challenge was mounted by said idiot 'Plod' then a new Case Law would repeal the Scottish one. But here's some Vic legislation that might (and has already done so) catch some people out.

A Round a Bout is defined as having a compliant Round a Bout sign at EACH approach to said Round a Bout. So Far, so good. However, if ANY of those signs is no longer compliant (missing, defaced, turned sideways) then the Round a Bout reverts to an uncontrolled intersection i.e. Give Way to the Right. Now here's the rub. If said Round a Bout had only three approaches (quite common here in back streets) then the TERMINATING road must give way Now if you don't see that one of the signs is missing etc then you could find yourself in 'shtook'.

Stop Signs must STOP then give way to all vehicles travelling on or turning from the intersecting carriageway. This is O.K. until you get to a dual carriageway where; when crossing to the centre, one must again STOP and then give way.

Marked cross walks, we see these in shopping centre car parks and on 'raised footpaths' on carriageways. If there is no Compliant pedestrian crossing signs (black walking legs on yellow background) then it mean you must travel at a speed to enable you to avoid a collision with a ped. (School crossings are marked cross walks when no flags displayed.

School crossings remain so outside school times when some 'bozo' forgets to take the flags in. On pupil free days, you must drive at the school speed limit because a pupil free day is not recognised as a non school day.

Pedestrians may NOT cross a road within 18 metres of a crossing unless they use said crossing (includes any school crossing whether you are a student or not).

Pedestrian must keep to the left on a footpath and in Melbourne must use the same footpath as the traffic flow. (i.e. each footpath only carries pedestrian travelling in the same direction.

Due to the difficulty of policing many of these and other 'off beat' regulations. 'Plods' show a degree of leniency. Unfortunately Insurance Investigators with pull out these regs and heaps of other case Laws from around the British Commonwealth if it helps them negate a claim.

For what it's worth.

Wombat 280 · Guru

Pity they choose not to enforce them unless the coopers are sitting in the car bored stiff then they seem to drag out all the obscure rules.

The NSW Govt spends more on making sure we all know that we can get colour co-ordinate number plates than educating the driving public of the road rules, especially those regarding round a bouts and Stop -V- Give way signs . Clarify those and high potential road accidents would be halved

Keith19837 · Senior Member

Wombat 280 wrote:
Pity they choose not to enforce them unless the coopers are sitting in the car bored stiff then they seem to drag out all the obscure rules.

The NSW Govt spends more on making sure we all know that we can get colour co-ordinate number plates than educating the driving public of the road rules, especially those regarding round a bouts and Stop -V- Give way signs . Clarify those and high potential road accidents would be halved

Tell me about it! In Victoria the driver's tests have become all 'warm and fuzzy'. About 5 or 6 years ago my kids all went to for licences (I was a late starter with having kids), anyhow; I saw that there was very little in the way of road rules in their Learner's books and that the written test was way less difficult than a Boat Licence test. I went out on one of each of the kid's lessons as part of the 'parent ride along scheme'. VicRoads have a 'new way' of testing and have changed their protocols to fit in with what VicRoads believe to be the way to learn. Many of their requirements are actually in contradiction of current road rules. The practical test no longer requires a three point turn and a handbrake start and a reverse park but picks one only of the three (sometimes none of the three). On the second ride along, I took my law books with me and compared notes with the instructor. As he said..."VicRoads is the only shop in town" meaning that we're stuck with what they want to pass a test. However, I am in favour of the 150 hours of documented practice that is required.

Re coppers not enforcing; there's always going to be a few 'slackers' in any field. But generally they use a degree of tact and discretion rather than zero tolerance. However in today's P.C. climate, current affairs shows are ready to pounce for so called 'Police State' practices when booking some yahoo who cut the corner when crossing at a set of lights or ped Xing. I have a theory that if all street signs were made a little bigger and kept maintained; and all advertising/non traffic related signs were removed, then we might see a better class of driving. Victoria's road signs are such that you can tell where you've been but not where you're going. LOL