Did you know one quarter of Australians will be 65 or more by 2044-45? While more and more older people are on the road, young people are becoming less interested in driving. So today’s seniors over 80 are more likely to drive than 18-24 year olds.
A recent provocative article in Car Advice describes the frustration of sitting behind drivers who hog the fast lane, even at slow speeds. According to the police, lane hogging is one of the main gripes of motorists. Nobody likes it.
It’s official – people hate commuting. Commuting is linked with a higher risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and insomnia. It also makes us eat more junk food and exercise less. For people who have long commutes – more than 45 minutes one way – it is even worse.
CTP green slips have been in the news because of proposed reforms by the NSW government. But what will happen to the idea of CTP when cars can drive themselves? The current NSW CTP scheme is partially fault based. If there is no driver in an accident with a driverless car, whose fault will it be?
Our last blog, Australians love their motorbikes, failed to mention they love their cars too. 2016 has been a boom year so far for new car sales, up 3.4% higher than last year. This is the best half-year result ever for the new car industry in Australia.
If you’re thinking of buying a motorbike to get around, you’re not the only one. The fastest growth in any kind of vehicle registration was for motorbikes, up 22% between 2010 and 2015. As of 2015, there were 800,000 motor cycles in Australia and 28% of those were registered in NSW.
Taxi drivers are used to paying around $7,800 for a green slip, compared to private motorists, who pay around $700. Since Uber and GoCatch entered the “point-to-point” market, private motorists pay the lower price while using their cars for ridesharing. Now there will be a new price for frequent drivers.
Your car spends about 95% of the time sitting in a garage – yours or somebody else’s – and only 5% of time doing the work it’s designed for. It’s surprising that we so readily accept paying so much for something that just sits around. What if there was no such thing as car ownership?
Extreme weather is a fact of life in Australia and recent East Coast storms hammered people and property. A few unlucky ones have tried to drive through a dangerous flash flood and lost their lives.
If you thought there were more caravans on the roads these days, you were right. The fastest growing registration type – 5% per annum for 6 consecutive years – is caravans and campervans.