A road safety journey: 25 years of the TAC
Civics and Citizenship, Communication, Personal Learning
Part A: Motor vehicles and public policy: a study of government in action
Historical background
Motor vehicles were first seen on Victorian roads soon after Federation, in the early years of the twentieth century. Victorians quickly fell in love with this new mode of transport and Australia’s first official motor car race was held at Sandown Park in March 1904. In February 1905, there was even a ‘reliability trial’ for cars on a route from Ballarat to Melbourne and return.
Initially, Australia followed the trend seen in the USA and Europe, where motor vehicles were generally owned only by the wealthy. This was soon to change with the mass production of vehicles by Ford in the USA. By 1908, Victorian roads had an increasing number of motor vehicles that were competing for space with traditional modes of transport such as horse and carriage, as well as pedestrians and cyclists. Quite naturally, there were serious concerns for public safety. According to Senior Sergeant Martin Boorman of Victoria Police (The Evolution of Impaired Driver Law – Victoria), the laws at that time were very general and any person who “furiously or negligently drives through any public place” was guilty of an offence and liable to a penalty of a fine up to five pounds. It has been a long journey of continual law reform over the past 100 years.
The development of statute law
According to the Australian Constitution, the state parliaments have the sole right to create laws regarding road usage and motor vehicles. The Commonwealth Parliament has no authority in this area. This is why laws relating to areas such as the age at which a young person can obtain a drivers’ licence varies from state to state.
The first statute law in Victoria to regulate the use of motor vehicles was the Motor Car Act 1909 and it recognised the rights and responsibilities of all road users. The Victorian Parliament recognised immediately that there was a fine balancing act between preserving the freedom of people to use public roads and imposing on them responsibilities to limit the potential harm to others. This legislation covered areas that we see in force today, such as the registration of motor vehicles, licencing of drivers and the requirement for safety equipment such as lights.
Speed restrictions were also created in 1909 and Victoria was the first state to introduce a specific offence to prohibit driving while under the influence of alcohol (also known as ‘DUI’). Indeed, DUI laws were not introduced in England until the 1920s, showing how much the Victorian Parliament broke new ground with the passing of the Motor Car Act in 1909. Severe penalties, including heavy fines and imprisonment, were also introduced as a deterrent to motorists and courts were allowed to cancel a licence of a driver for a period that was deemed appropriate.
Creating legal limits on alcohol consumption for users of motor vehicles has been one of the more urgent social and political issues of the past 100 years. The first jurisdiction in the USA to adopt laws against drunken driving was New York in 1910. These early laws simply prohibited driving while intoxicated, requiring proof of a state of intoxication with no specific definition of what level of inebriation was necessary for the person to be guilty of an offence. In the USA, once measurements were introduced for blood alcohol concentration, the first generally accepted legal BAC limit was 0.15, which is three times higher than what is allowed today in Victoria.
Between 1914 and 1930, the Victorian law was amended numerous times to give police the authority to arrest a person they believed on reasonable grounds to have committed a DUI offence. Penalties were increased and courts no longer had discretion in whether to cancel a licence. As the road toll mounted, the emphasis of law-makers was on deterrence. In this way, parliament was fulfilling its duty of providing representative government, where the views and values of the majority of the population, who were concerned over risk-taking on our roads, were contained in legislation.
Research questions
Visit the following websites to find the answers to the questions below. Your answers to all questions in this unit will be submitted for assessment at the conclusion of this study:
- http://www.aph.gov.au
- www.parliament.vic.gov.au
- www.peo.gov.au
1. In what year was the Victorian Parliament established?
2. In what year was the Commonwealth Parliament established?
3. Define the following terms:
a) legislation
b) Premier
c) Prime Minister
d) Cabinet
e) responsible government
4. In table form, explain the structure of the Victorian Parliament.
5. In point form, outline the stages in the passage of a bill through the Victorian Parliament.
6. In your own words, explain the meaning of the term, ‘separation of powers’.
How the motor vehicle changed the shape of Victorian life
Driving a car in Melbourne in the early to middle 20th Century was very different to today. Initially, drivers were required to follow the roads that had been laid down for horse and cart. The steam train had priority over motor vehicles, so drivers had to wait for railway gates to be opened manually by the keeper. At this time, there were no parking meters and travelling from Port Melbourne to Williamstown was best done by catching the car ferry across the Yarra River. For this journey today, we have the Westgate Bridge, as well as a complex network of freeways that use electronic tolls.
As an increasing number of people were able to afford motor vehicles, cars were soon to dominate political debate. Proposals to build freeways caused conflict between motorists and environmentalists, who wanted open spaces preserved rather than being given over to cars. With cars, there was a clash between personal safety and individual freedom. During the years of World War II more Australians were killed and injured on Australian roads than in armed conflict.
The motor vehicle also changed our social lives. In 1954, the first drive-in picture theatre in Australia was opened at Burwood, and Melbourne's first motel, situated in Oakleigh, was completed in 1957. The original plans were for the motel to be opened in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and stood close to where the competitors in the marathon turned to begin their return run to the MCG. Near the Oakleigh Motel, Melbourne’s first major shopping centre was opened at Chadstone with a sizeable car park to cater for many customers who represented this new, motorised generation.
Research questions
7. These questions require students to interview a person who was driving a motor vehicle in the 1950s/1960s. In detail, note their responses to the following questions:
a) What was your first motor vehicle and when did you buy it?
b) How was your life changed (for example, were you able to take holidays that were otherwise impossible)? What other social impacts arose as a result of the increased use of the motor vehicle?
c) What changes have you seen in road laws in your time as a driver?
d) Are roads more or less safe now than they were when you started driving?
The relationship between the parliament and courts in developing legal principles
In any democracy where we find the principle of the separation of powers (the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary), there will always be cases where the Judiciary (the courts) is asked to read and interpret laws made by the Legislature (the Parliament). This is often a complex process and, of course, the parliament is not allowed to excessively influence the courts when a judge is making a decision. Sometimes, the courts hand down rulings that are not necessarily consistent with the policies of the Executive (the government).
This was seen in the case of Doyle v Harvey 1923 VLR 271. In that case, a person who was believed by police to be under the influence of alcohol was observed by police entering and starting a motor vehicle. The police apprehended and charged the person with the offence of driving under the influence of alcohol. In its judgment, however, the court found that the person was not actually ‘driving’ at the time, so therefore no offence was committed. There was clearly the need for more work to be done by parliament to ensure that intoxicated people were discouraged from ever being in the driver’s seat of a motor vehicle. The other concern was the increasing awareness of the links between drug use by drivers and road accidents.
Under the Motor Car (Amendment) Act 1949, being under the influence of a drug other than alcohol was included in the category of a DUI offence. To ensure consistency when cases came before the courts, the terms “drug” and “in charge” of a motor vehicle were also explained clearly by parliament in the legislation. This was designed to address some of the uncertainty that arose from the 1923 judgement in the case of Doyle v Harvey.
With the passage of the Crimes (Driver Offences) Act 1955, the Victorian Parliament continued to address public concerns over road safety. This legislation established that the most serious driving offences would now come under the Crimes Act and be considered indictable offences in nature. This meant that people charged under these new laws would have their cases heard before a judge and jury in the County or Supreme courts rather than being heard in the Magistrates Court where juries are not present. Previously, many driving offences were only considered to be summary offences, which meant that they were regarded as less serious. Also, the penalties that could be given to offending drivers by a magistrate were not as severe as those that could be given by a judge in a higher court. When we watch the news today and see stories of drivers appearing before the County and Supreme courts over driving offences, we can trace this process back to the 1950s when the Victorian Parliament elevated driving offences to be equally as significant in severity as other offences such as manslaughter, serious assault and kidnapping.
Research questions
8. Define the terms summary offence and indictable offence.
9. Give two reasons why the Victorian Parliament, when passing the Crimes (Driver Offences) Act 1955, included driving offences as indictable offences.
Science and the prosecution of road traffic offences
In spite of ongoing law reform, the road toll continued to mount in the 1950s and the government needed to act to reduce the level of trauma. The answer lay partly in science and technology. The 1950s saw the ready availability of scientific evidence relating to the quantity of alcohol in the blood of a person who was in control of a motor vehicle. In response, the Victorian Parliament introduced laws to allow for the admissibility of evidence in court relating to a blood sample taken from a driver. This blood sample was taken by a medical practitioner within eight hours of the offence being committed. Where the court accepted that the BAC was greater than .05 at the time of the offence, then the accused was found to be ‘driving under the influence’.
In 1961 the parliament took the next step of enacting the Crimes (Breath Test Evidence) Act 1961, which allowed evidence of a BAC determined by the analysis of a breath sample for alcohol. Today, we take scientific testing at ‘booze buses’ and ‘drug buses’ for granted, but this was not always the case. The need for this new power to detect drink driving was explained in the second reading speech in the parliament by Mr Lindsay Thompson, who said: “I suggest that if we can save just one life or one person from being maimed the legislation is justified. Furthermore, I believe that the legislation will provide the court with something nearer the whole story, and in so doing it will enable the innocent to be acquitted and the guilty to be treated with due desert. Indeed, it will not only help to ensure that justice is carried out but also that it appears to be carried out."
Victoria was the first State in Australia to introduce law that made it an offence to have a blood alcohol concentration exceeding a certain level, which was set at .05. With the passage of the Motor Car (Driving Offences) Act 1971, breath analysis tests were allowed in hospitals and it was made an offence to refuse to supply a breath sample. This had the affect of making the supply of a breath sample compulsory and many people argued at the time that this was an invasion of civil rights. It was also made a requirement to arrange the taking of a blood sample after the conduct of a breath test when requested and once again some thought that the taking of a blood test was an extreme measure. Police were also given authority for to arrest persons committing .05 offences.
The question as to whether breath and blood tests would interfere with the liberty of the individual driver was hotly debated in the 1970s. On balance, the government argued that the wellbeing of the Victorian public was the main priority and drivers must be willing to submit to breath and blood testing as a means of ensuring that our roads are safe for everyone. It was accepted that law enforcement often involves some level of responsibility on the part of drivers to provide evidence to police that could be used in court if an offence is alleged to have been committed. Of course, we have now advanced to roadside drug testing, where saliva samples are taken from drivers, which can detect the presence of drugs in the person’s body.