Anti-hoon laws - your opinion?

[MLCrisis]

As many have already observed, this is bad law! The penalties for dangerous and reckless driving are already severe - as they should be! But to then add to that an additional "fine" of about $20k, plus several thousand dollars for storage costs is just gobsmacking. All of this can be based on the "reasonable suspicion" of a police officer that the vehicle in question had been used for an aggravated offence. The safeguard to the "reasonable suspicion" is that it must be given in good faith. That should prove taxing for the long arm of the law! Oh, and by the way, the nice policeman can then get a court order and use reasonable force to enter your home to get your car keys so he can impound the car. There are not too many laws that allow a cop to enter your home! So slide the back end a little on a wet road ("cause the wheels to lose traction with the road surface") and get woken up a little while later by the SWAT team!

I am not seeking to protect hoons, but this law provides penalties that are out of all proportion to any other offence (note that you can get hit by this for driving offences that are not even criminal offences!! There are plenty of criminal offences where you could not get penalties even in the same ball park as these!!! With criminal offences, no cop would dream of forcing entry into someone's house.).

The "reasonable suspicion" bit is just bad law. It leaves too much to the discretion of the officer. In the UK in the mid-80s, they repealed the so-called "sus" laws, because they were being used by police to target young people in general and young people from ethnic minorities in particular. The police and many of their supporters insisted this was not correct, but findings of "institutionalised racism" in recent years have proven the point. These laws, by the way, allowed cops to arrest someone, have then charged, convicted and fined on the grounds of reasonable suspicion that they were about to commit an offence. So they had not actually done anything. These laws were in place for many years and it took a campaign over nearly 10 years to get them repealed.

It is easy to put bad law in place. Very easy. Lazy, or plain ignorant politicians who have an eye to the populist view; an establishment that has a culture encouraging a negative view of certain groups (ethnic minorities, young people, people in modified cars); and popular sentiment whipped up by an un-imaginative and dumbed down press.

Sound familiar? You can see these conditions here and now. They even used the establishment groups to come up with the proposed law - "extensive consultation ...... with an interagency working group" - but not with the outside world!!!

The only way to prevent this becoming law, or to get it changed quickly if it happens, is to argue eloquently and incessantly against it as bad law. Don't go near the issue of the offenders and identifying yourself with them, just point out, loudly and clearly, that it is bad law. Write to your local papers, the West, your MP. Write to Colin Barnet. If we can keep him speaking out against it, he will change it if the Libs get back in. Keep the heat on Labor too. Politicians like the populist issue, but they don't like to be associated with something that is shown to be flawed. It is only by demonstrating where the flaws lie in this law that we can defeat it.

Get writing. Make a noise. Shout from the roof tops. Or whimper in your own little corners and watch as it becomes reality!

[thunda]

the scene as a whole needs to get well organised and put forward a well thought out and positive view that won`t be looked at as been an knee jerk reaction . also we as a whole need to make the idiots that think cutting up in a carpark full off people is cool to start to act like responsable drivers. it is a shame that a majority of these people drive hsv wanabes and can`t be made to understand that there actions impact on all owners of modifyed cars

[Driver]

The last 2 weeks ive seen 2 commodore one was a monaro the other was just a vx or something. One was doing burnouts off the lights and another driving like his life depends on it being stupid and cutting people off. But they were both aged in there 40's

[thunda]

i`m know what you are saying and been a 37yr old it makes me mad that there seems to be a view around that the worst offenders are the younger drivers. there is some younger guys who do make it bad for the rest but just watching who always cut you of on roundabouts and swap lanes without looking first it soon becomes obvious that alot of the 40plus age group in there falconsand commerdores are your worst offenders . as i said it makes me ashame to be in or near this age group who should by now know how to behave on the roads :kick:

[pstanbis]

I know this will sound biased, but i have to say, most of the hooning that goes on around my neck of the woods is by young guys in Commodores / falcons. There is one twit in an import down here, but aside form that, most of the guys who own decent cars are pretty sensible sorts.... lets face it, if you pay $$$ for a nice car, trick it up a bit, and love driving it, your not likely to do some crazy-ass burnout with the high posiblity of causing some major damage to your baby.:boinkcar:

all this aside, the law, in most cases, comes down to respect, alot of people say it, but don't seem to realise, it's gotta work both ways - If you'd just had a big night out, would you want some guy out front of your house trying to make his un-muffled, rice modified lancer break into the 10s ?:burnout: i doubt it.

so sure, the laws seem harsh, and i agree that by driving distinctive cars, we're gonna get an unfair amount of attention, but as quite a few of you guys already pointed out, if you think BEFORE pushing the pedal just a little bit more... we'll all be fine

and sorry to any mitsy guys out there, but ricey lancers

[MLCrisis]

:

so sure, the laws seem harsh, and i agree that by driving distinctive cars, we're gonna get an unfair amount of attention, but as quite a few of you guys already pointed out, if you think BEFORE pushing the pedal just a little bit more... we'll all be fine

and sorry to any mitsy guys out there, but ricey lancers

Guys,

You have got to move above the argument of whether people are hoons or not. Sure, some people are hoons, irrespective of what they drive. Falcadores or Rice or just a bit too exuberent, they deserve to get done. But they only deserve to get done in some kind of relationship between the crime and the punishment. They also only deserve to get done if they are truly guilty. The way this law is set up, unfortunately it leaves a lot of dicretion with the police officer. Most cops are fine and they can handle that discretion. Some are not fine (as the recent royal commission showed!). But this is bad law, without the safeguards and there is a strong suspicion of a culture that will lead to the worst potential aspects of that law becoming true.

Yeah, ban the hoons, let them get what they deserve. But they don't deserve penalties that are harsher than many criminal offences. And the worry is that none of us deserve what this law will enable a cop to do to any one of us if he is having a bad day!!

Raise the level of the discussion guys! Where are you going from here?

Cheers.