While Australia has been a leader in some ways with regard to safety, there have been a few hiccups along the way. Just after seat belts were made compulsory, but before Australia went metric, Porsche cars were being imported from Germany with belts that were 50mm wide. The ADRs required belts to be two inches wide. Two inches is a poofteenth wider than 50mm, so the no doubt high quality German belts had to be removed and replaced with Britax Australian belts that complied with the letter of the law. One might think that German 50mm belts might be at least as good as Australian two inch belts.
On a different subject but related to safety, I recently had this experience.
I was riding a BMW motorcycle through Peru in 2012. Many of the (very poor) small towns had traffic lights that had an extra feature. A third light that counted down the time remaining to the next change. So as you approached a red, you could see at a glance if it was about to change or not. And if it was green and you were a few hundred metres away, you knew if you would have to stop or not well ahead of time. The effect was very smooth flow with no mad acceleration to beat the lights. When I got home I wrote to the Transport Minister with this brilliant idea. It was quickly dismissed as I expected....but..
..only yesterday a story here mentioned new technology that will allow truck drivers in particular to see around corners and over hills. It then said that timing lights like I mentioned above would be included and would be a major advance blah blah....
Blind freddy could see that it is a brilliant idea, but not unless it came from a person with letters after their name and on the public teat. We would never learn something from a poverty stricken place like Peru.
