Tough hoon driver laws passed by Victorian Parliament

[Bobman]

HOON drivers' cars can now be impounded immediately for 14 days under tough new laws that could see other cars to be crushed or held for three months.

The new laws, passed through Victoria’s parliament this week, extend the time period police can impound or immobilise an offender's vehicle from 48 hours to 14 days on detection of a hoon offence.

Serial hoon offenders face having their vehicles crushed or sold, with the proceeds used to assist victims of crime, Roads Minister Tim Pallas said.

The courts will also be able to impose stronger vehicle impoundment sanctions. A first offence of extreme speeding - 70km/h or more over the speed limit - can now result in up to three months' impoundment or immobilisation of the offender's vehicle.

The changes come into effect next year and also allow police to immobilise cars by fitting a steering wheel lock.

The new laws are part of the government's Arrive Alive road safety strategy, which aims to cut the road toll and reduce serious injuries on Victorian roads by a further 30 per cent by 2017.

Yeah, I can really see a huge reduction of the road toll...

[Linkachu]

I thought hoon laws were tough now, whats gunna be after this one.

Fail to indicate or give way and we can impound your car for 30 days, have a nice day.

The way it will be Australia will be the new age China

[sleek7]

I wouldnt mind this such much if they had more leniency on the definition of a 'hoon'. If I make right/left turn onto a wet road and happen accidentally to spin the wheels a little (not hard to do at all in an I6T on wet roads), does that give them the right to label me as a hoon?

[Bobman]

Originally Posted by sleek7

I wouldnt mind this such much if they had more leniency on the definition of a 'hoon'. If I make right/left turn onto a wet road and happen accidentally to spin the wheels a little (not hard to do at all in an I6T on wet roads), does that give them the right to label me as a hoon?

Yeah, it's ridiculous. When they passed the new lowering rules in NSW last year, they were saying that anyone who lowered their cars were hoons. So, I guess NSW police are hoons too?

In New Zealand, they use the term "boy racer" to describe anyone with a modified vehicle.

[EDManual]

Immobilising the vehicle is a better way than impounding. Much easier and cheaper to do I would say.

Why dont they change the speed laws to be a percentage over the limit and not an amount of km over? That makes more sense to me. 70 over in a 50 zone down the centre of geelong is 1000 times more dangerous than 70 over on the highway to melbourne! Thats about 150% more than the speed in a 50 zone, but just 70% in a 100 zone. Makes more sense to say if you are doing 150% more than the speed limit blah blah...this will happen to you.

[Elks]

And yet it looks like we will vote them in again...

[tranquilized]

Originally Posted by Elks

And yet it looks like we will vote them in again...

Yep its a sad state of affairs here in Victoria. Such an incompetent and I'd say outright corrupt government who will retain power simply because the opposition are an even bigger joke!

[TheZHLANE]

I heard on the radio in w.a you can get up to 5 years jail time for street racing? lol

[Cooper69S]

This is becoming complete nonsense. If you're caught speeding in excess of 70kmh over the speed limit, how long do you lose your licence for in Victoria? I'd bet it's much longer than the 3 months they're going to impound the car for, so what have they achieved really? There are already laws and penalties for most of these offences and most of this new stuff is PR rubbish.

In response to a mostly media/partly community obsession with 'hoons' they're coming up with bigger and bigger penalties, but do they honestly think that more penalties will remove the problem? I made the same comment in another thread about this issue, that other crimes in some countries carry the death penalty, but that doesn't stop them from occurring - people are still murdering and drug trafficking even with the death risk. Essentially, people who are going to break the law, when there is already a fairly steep penalty for being caught doing so, are obviously NOT EXPECTING TO BE CAUGHT. so how does raising the penalty work when the person isn't expecting to be receiving any penalty at all, regardless what it is? It's not going to fix the problem. I highly doubt that anyone is commiting a driving offence with the expectation that they have a 50/50 chance of having their car impounded within the following 5 minutes. They think "it's not going to happen to me". so there's only 2 ways you can fix the problem.
1) make it much more likely that you're going to be caught - eg higher police presence on the roads. There's some alliance between the mining companies in our area and the police where the cops patrol the highway constantly with a couple of cars during the morning and afternoon peak times. I see police pretty much every drive to or from work, often more than once in the same trip, so I very rarely see anyone speeding. Too many drive at 90 or less in the 110 zone but that's a gripe for another day.
2) Change peoples attitudes so that they're more considerate of the potential consequences for other people if their actions should result in a serious crash. Probably easier said than done - consideration for others isn't big these days.

The way they're going with 'hoon' laws we're going to have fines that are massively disproportionate to the offence when compared with other offences that are arguably more dangerous eg compare the penalty of being caught doing a small low-speed burnout with something like driving while extremely fatigued or while having a full scale hostile argument with a passenger or someone on the phone, or sending sms's or other issues where people are paying next to no attention to the road - lack of attention being probably the biggest cause of accidents...

[Fev]

Good that they are targetting real nutso speeding with harsher penalties. +1 for them!

The point they are trying to make though isn't made through this sort of law structure unfortunantly and they're too beaurocratic to realise.

[ZA-289]

We've had these laws in SA for ages, now they're talking about making hooning a CRIMINAL offence not a traffic offence.

You'd get less time for mansluaghter these days no ********!

[Franco Cozzo]

Just like the "terrorism" laws....

What a load of crap, both the terrorism law and the hooning one, there is no definitive example of either, its up to what the cop says.

[Bobman]

Agreed ^

Especially in a country where there is no threat. The whole thing is just like Nineteen-Eighty-Four.

You'd have to be an absolute idiot though to vote for Labor or Greens in next month's state election. Libs might not have the best leader, but surely anyone is better than Dumby Brumby!

[ReVd_uP]

good old Brumby, I know for a fact that he/his wife have a G6ET with the turbo badges and spoiler removed, to make him look less of a "boy racer" I suppose, he's also investigating getting a Territory turbo, and getting the intercooler relocated so a standard bonnet can be fitted..... how bout ACA do a story on that!!

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by ReVd_uP

good old Brumby, I know for a fact that he/his wife have a G6ET with the turbo badges and spoiler removed, to make him look less of a "boy racer" I suppose, he's also investigating getting a Territory turbo, and getting the intercooler relocated so a standard bonnet can be fitted..... how bout ACA do a story on that!!

Find out where he lives, take photos of the intercoolers and then use them to blackmail him haha.

[glavas]

blame the stupid incompetent state labor goverment. the stupid welfare state that we live in is just stupid. why should people who earn big dollars have to pay for bums who dont work??? i dont want to slander a whole city but why on earth would the people of melbourne vote for a green?? the greens are so radical its not funny. this great country is going downhill big time. how good was it under howard when we had billions in the bank now we have billions in debt that our grankids will probbaly have to pay back. were paying 100 million a day and thats just intrist shows who how much debt this bloody labor has got us into. anyone who voted in labor/greens you get what you deserve but is it worth destroying our great country over? wait and see if this government lasts 3 years were all ********d big time mass caos and panic there will be little jobs and mass poverty!!!!!!

rant not even close to being over.

anyone else think gillard looks like a al paca?

[WMD351]

HOONS HOONS HOONS, anything to draw attention away from things like gangs ambos homeless myki water electricity, the list gos on, but its O.K. cause we got another sports stadium coming.
Heard someone recently say "you only get a government as good as its opposition", what a sad state of affairs.

[malazn mafia]

What is the actual process for passing laws in this country, and who is responsible for proposing them?

Just heard on the news this morning that the road toll is something like 15 to 20 above what it was a year ago, despite the large number of cars impounded and licenses lost, so something's definitely not right.

Why don't they just raise the legal age for driving to 25 and lower the maximum driving age to 55? What about raise the cost of applying a license to somewhere in the thousands (would keep their state budget happy or even pull in more than what fines are pulling in) and have mandatory re-testing every x number of years? And if a person loses a license for whatever reason, they should fork out the full price for a brand new one and have to sit their tests from L over again. And if they're serious about saving lives, why not have mandatory psychological/mental health checks and even require 3 referees for good character when applying for a license.

[munkky]

boys not going to work you need to work with them not agenst like drug addicts thay cant go cold turkey they need to be weend off of it

[JACK250]

Those who blame the current Government will be blaming the Liberals this time next term if they get in. The opposition spends time making the Government look bad which is why there is often a swing from one party to another, to think that any one party is to blame for the way Australia is now is a joke, in my opinion Australia would be less than 5% different labour to liberal.

[Cooper69S]

Originally Posted by malazn mafia

Just heard on the news this morning that the road toll is something like 15 to 20 above what it was a year ago, despite the large number of cars impounded and licenses lost, so something's definitely not right.

I'm not sure that the numbers really mean that much. 15 or 20 is a pretty small number compared to the number of crashes that occur every day many of which could easily be fatal if the circumstances had been only slightly different. Or even the number of near misses that a couple of seconds earlier or later could be fatal. I think relatively small movements up and down in the road toll have more to do with the random nature of crashes than any particular "trend" although statistics do tend to be strangely predictable so I could be wrong.

[SpoolMan]

Guys stick the topic, I am reading political statements reference to drugs and anything else that someone wants to vent, either stick the subject of the new tough hoon laws or the thread will be shut down..

[Bobman]

You can just imagine all the cars out there with steering locks, parked on the side of the road. This could be because the police officer didn't like the look of the person or for minor non-dangerous wheel chirps.

All the rules in the world won't change anything when the problem isn't as bad as has been exaggerated through media and police hierarchy.

[FPV+fteT3]

It only becomes a problem if you get caught. I would not be suprised to see some people doing a runner I mean if your going to lose your car for a period of time may as well make it worth while who knows you may get away.
Who knows what goes thru the head of some drivers. I live in a quiet suburb and street but just lately a lot of burnout marks are appearing on the local roads just this afternoon a commo bagged it up from the bottom of the hill to the top covering the entire street in tyre smoke seems to me the hoons just find somewhere else to play. The downside for locals is shortly we will have an increased police presence in our neighbourhood doing all sorts of random checks just a PITA there is a time and place for giving you car a blast and in the burbs is not the place.