An 18-year-old man has been stopped by police after he was allegedly detected driving at 177km/h in a 100km/h zone.
$3100 and 6months suspension
That doesn’t look like “more than 85km/h over the limit” to me.
Editing to add: reading the article helped… Being from the US I had no idea what P plates were or that they come with their own lower limit (90km/h)
or that they come with their own lower limit (90km/h
Fwiw that’s a state-dependent thing. NSW does it (and as this is !sydney@aussie.zone, NSW is the relevant state). But Queensland to the north and Victoria to the south both let P plate drivers drive up to the normal speed limit, and South Australia to the south-west allows up to 100 km/h.
Frankly, as a Queenslander I think NSW’s rule is ridiculous and dangerous. Merging onto a highway without being able to match the speed of traffic is an incredibly unsafe manoeuvre.
In general, P plates are a state between L plates (where you can drive only with a supervisor sitting in the passenger seat) and open licence. They come with some additional restrictions compared to open licence (the most common and obvious one being a strict 0 blood alcohol, rather than the normal .05), but allow you to drive without a supervisor.
Another thing worth noting is that speed limits in Australia are truly strict speed limits. I hear stories from all across America talking about how it’s normal to be going 10 or even 20 mph over the posted “limit”. In Australia you’ll get fined pretty quickly if you’re even going 5 km/h over.
Very interesting context.
In the US we do have “learner’s permits” which sort of sounds like are a lot like the L Plate you’re describing.
The thing about speed limits in the US is that it varies by major extremes depending on where you are in the US.
There are certainly places where you can and likely will get pulled over and ticketed (or worse) for going a couple miles over the speed limit.
There are absolutely also other places where you can easily and regularly get away with over 20mph over the limit.
Speed limits are typically set pretty arbitrarily based on what people feel like they should be though and the fact is that the safety of the road is what really dictates the actual speeds travelled more than anything else unless you’ve got an abundance of enforcement.
A mate once came up to Sydney from Melbourne and he thought it was hilarious how Sydney people tuck their L and P plates in places like behind windscreens and half behind license plates. He said in Melb they would be fined every day of the week.
it used to be the case in NSW too, i got a pretty stern warning once because my P plate was wedged behind the number plate, although easily visible
Is this this kind of thing actually news in Austrailia?
Yes. We don’t have mass shootings, religious nutjobs and insane politicians filling up our news cycles.
Well, we do have a few crazy politicians, but they’re not the norm.Sometimes.
