Anti-4WD Pressure

I've discovered that there might be something in the water supply in various parts of Australia. Before you view the news item, remind yourself that it's the tip of the iceberg, and make sure you read a good few samples of the comments that people have made as well.

In short, people are asking for the government to ban the use of 4WD vehicles in school zones and shopping areas.

Read the article here: Call for ban on four-wheel drives in school zones, shopping areas - news.com.au

Don't forget to read the comments. Some days, I just feel sick - and I haven't even gotten my hands on my 4WD yet!

Cheers
Tony

There the same idiots that want to ban trucks driving during the day or on the road at all and theyll be the same idiots complaining all the prices of everything has gone up because of it. Some people have absolutely no common sense. Unfortunately they seem to be in the majority.

The ignorance of some people is staggering. Here in Ballarat we recently had a B-Double log truck fail to negotiate a roundabout and crash into the barrier on exiting it. A picture was on page 3 of the local rag. Some tool wrote into the paper demanding to know why a 'road train' was driving through Ballarat.

These are the same people who complain about 'dangerous' four wheel drives with their 'deadly' bull bars and whinge about cyclists taking over the roads. They can all get fcuked, as far as I'm concerned. I drop my son off every morning at school and will continue to do so.

I don't think it will happen, this type of hype comes up all the time. It's just scare-mongering and the media is happy to assist with all this sensationalist crap you see these days.

"I support this move 100%. Over sized, heavy, compromised handling, blind spot causing, pollution increasing, resource wasteful, children crushing death traps (accidents involving 4WD's are 26 times more likely to result in a fatality). I say get rid of them (the 4WD's) as soon as possible, 4WD's are the new sports car, driven by people that are compensating for other areas in their life that are lacking or by people who lack the ability to safely drive a normal car so feel they need a big tank to keep them safe."

has anybody yet stated what a 4x4 is? 4wd? awd? what about some of those big 2wd f2/350 trucks you can buy? they're monsters but 2wd!

i laugh when people say they increase pollution. so all those 2.5L navara's and 2.5L disco's are worse than a v/i6 or a v8 commodore, falcon, lexus, etc?

these people are morons...enough said

they should ban moron drivers !

like this ****...

What a tool, getting a nice collection together tweak'e, what camera setup do you have? Particularly recording, car pc?

nah mobile DVR. got a new one at the mo which does better video but still sorting out the bugs. uses miniature CCD cameras. only cheapish ones at the mo. getting lens/focas length etc sorted is not easy. they have very limited range.
the vid is done with a pinhole camera. (thats only one of the cameras)

hope to get it sorted to record off roading might get one of the high quality cameras in for that.
but it works well enough for accident purposes and hopefully help the police at the same time.

What really aggreviates me about this topic is the lack of support for 4wd.
I work in melb city as a tradesman so i need my ute, and i own land close to ballarat (gordon) so i need bullbars, a lot of roos, and i love to get out on the weekends in bush where i can and spend my hard earned supporting the small country towns where no one would go in a new crummydoor or fraud.

If anything rego should be dirt cheap on a 4wd as then i would buy and drive a standard ute to work and use my navara for bush playing and going to my property.

So true about the fuel issue too, i bet i can get as far as 2 large sedans would on one tank of fuel each in some cases probably 3 tanks. This is going by basing it on my misses 6cyl petrol car.

i think people recognize thats its not a 4wd issue, its a idiot driver issue. if they all drove falcons they would be calling for a ban on falcons.
its just SUV's are a popular (4x4 or not) vehicle for people to drive, even if they are not a sensible vehicle to drive.

what a fcking load of bullshit, i saw this on channel nine yesterday morning and htis lawyer was a legend he lived in sydney or melbourne and drive' to work in his 100 series with a arb bull bar, and he had the guts to go on the show standing beside his 4wd.
im so sick of these good gooden dickheads, like higher registration fee's for what?? we wear the bitumen down more? no i design roads and there is no difference between 4wd's and cars. maybe they should put higher registration on v8's and 6 turbo and 4cyclinder turbo's cause they spin the wheels on the bitumen all the time and that does create extra wear on the bitumen. more pollution i wish i could drive in front of these people. the smell of my car with the gas and chip up high with my foot flat to board then they will have something fucking whinge about.
and the bullbar issue, if there stupid enough to walk out infront of a 4wd with a bullbar thats there own fault, ill try everything i can do avoid hitting them but if i hit them and have the choice between having a bull bar or not ill have one, cause it does less damage to my 4wd. and when a person walks out in front of you and you hit them. your insurance pays for the damage so fuck them,if there dumb enough to pick fight with a steel bullbar good luck to them.

i live in hervey bay a smallish city with 50k people in it, so when i go to brisbane for the weekend i should take my bullbar off or park 10 street's away from the shopping center cause so whinging dick is whinging that when there stuck in a traffic jam i can drive over the traffic island and get out of it. so a 4wd is a danger to everyone,
maddogrc has a good point, so are rav 4's going to be baned off the road? or wrx's?

A lot of their complaints are about the size of the vehicle. Fact: my Commodore was 5040mm long, my Navara will be 5200mm long. My Commodore was 1847mm wide, my Navara will be 1850mm wide. Ok, there's a height difference, but the Navara still doesn't tower over, say, the delivery truck or the ignorant bus driver or the moron in their Hiace that's been lowered so its tail end drags along the ground and its low beam shines on the ducks flying overhead.

I'd almost bet that your average people mover won't stop as well as a car that's built to take punishment like even a modest 4WD. How's your nanna feel now, splattered all over the front of a Chrysler Voyager, or a Volkswagen Kombi (admittedly, only on downhill runs)?

I was monstered this morning on my way to Sydney by an expert fisherman (a real master baiter) driving his Toyota Landcruiser GXL - with Army plates - I'd pulled out well clear of the guy to climb up a hill (Moonee Moonee bridge) at the speed limit and while I was passing the car, he tailgated me and flashed his lights. I should have stopped and asked me if he wanted to shoot me so he could get past. Sadly, these idiots give people a bad impression of 4WDs and you *remember* it because there's fear involved.

I wish there were some way to combat that.

Old.Tony said:

Fact: my Commodore was 5040mm long, my Navara will be 5200mm long. My Commodore was 1847mm wide, my Navara will be 1850mm wide. .

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On that note I'm fairly sure that if they did measurements they will also find the Gen I crewman ute is in fact longer than a Navara. I know my old man can fit longer timber in his crewwie than I can fit in the Nav.

The thing I find funny is just how many inner city soccer mums are going to be effected by such a ruling. Even if there was a chance of it being brought into law all those pollies will soon realise there's a problem when their wives can't drop the kiddies off at school in their 4wd Beemers and Mercs.

Why do things by halves anyway, lets go all the way and while we are making silly rules lets ban school buses from school zones too because even in my Nav I can't see around them some of the time.

In Perth, through one of the main streets they've introduced a variable speed limit 40km's from 8till 8. WTF? Because people don't look both ways before crossing the road.. They were talking about doing the same for the city.

Also on the way in this morning, driving down a dual lane road, had a bmw 2 car lengths behind in the other lane, as soon as i put my indicator on he floored it to get past then went mad flailing his hands etc when i kept on merging since i was already half way across. To top it off when i pulled up next to him at the lights he didn't want to discuss how his method of merging lanes could be improved. It's not 4wd's, it's how people drive around 4wd's that's the concern.

If they want to raise revenue or reduce accidents/law breaking how about making pushbikes get registered/insured?

They need to wear some kind of plate so they can be identified (when running red lights etc) and they need to pay some type of insurance & registration fee to contribute to road maintenance and the cost of accidents they are involved in.

there was a column about this in todays Gold Coast Bulletin. Writer was a total tool, must be nice to just make your view the one and only view.

It's depressing that the only way governments reckon you can solve problems is to ban everything. Can't do this, can't do that, can't drive this, can't go there. It's the cheap and lazy way out.

P-Platers. Yes, some of us drive like absolute idiots, but that's what young people are like with everything. Stopping us driving V8s won't solve the problem, we'll just do it in Commonwhore V6s. Teaching and testing us on whether we can regain control of a vehicle, or emergency-stop on a fast corner in the wet, would be a good start, instead of focusing on whether we can angle park to get our license. VicRoads asked for submissions on ways to lower the roadtoll, and I sent pretty much the above in an email. It will be ignored.

Four wheel drives - how about jacking the import duty right up on M class vehicles (non-commercials) above a certain GVM? They're clearly not for Bill The Farmer, they're a big luxury vehicle and should be priced accordingly. Landcruisers and Patrols don't belong in school zones if you're worried about size. Conversely, Navaras and Hiluxes are quite possibly picking the kids up from school on the way home from a building site.

on a similiar note I think we should be taking more idiot drivers off the road .. my preferred choice of removal includes a small peice of lead and something resembling a high velocty out put module .. with a trigger .. commonly known as a gun.

I was involved in an accident 3 months ago where a p plater pulled out in front of me from a T intersection resulting in a collision between my nav and her hiyundai thing. Now there was nothng i could do accept attempt to brake .. and plow into her at 60km/h ... .. she was hospitalised for 7 days in ICU and her car was written off.. i suffered no injuries .. and drove home from the accident.. ok it was $ 7600 in repairs .. as the bull bar bonnet side panels tyre flairs and radiators and airc on bits were replaced .. but moral of that story .. I had no injuries .. and the nav was still drivable .. if i wasnt driving the nav .. i would have been injured also .. and probably would have ben 2 write offs .. all those idiots who complain about it ... i say .. they will be the next to pull out in front of me .. and next time i wont brake i will speed up dam you !!!

ps .. how do you not see a 3 Tonne navara that is almost 5 meters long and over 2 M high !! and bright white .. im sorry .. no sympathy in this situation .. oh and btw .. if i handt lifted and done all the suspension mods etc etc to the nav .. the driver of the car i hit would have been dead !! .. need i say more

how do you not see a 3 Tonne navara that is almost 5 meters long and over 2 M high !! and bright white ..

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I asked the same about my white Commodore when I was towing my 18' van. Total length of the combination was 13 metres (about 42 feet). The car+van is not exactly done up in sniper-issue camouflage and yet people would continually do it to me. It became so annoying I'd drive around on high beam in the middle of the day. Annnoyed the daylights out of truckies, who I could hear on the UHF cursing "that idiot in the Commodore".

I put it down to this: people don't want to be stuck behind what they consider may be slow. According to the law, if they can pull out in front of you and face their tail at you, and you hit them, YOU are in the wrong (most of the time, this is how it'll be handled by the police). Knowing this, they jump out and make YOU stomp on your brakes.

Talk to a truck driver. They'd be well-versed in this phenomenon too. And yes, the whiners have done the "keep trucks out of residential areas" thing as well. This isn't anything Australia hasn't seen before. Hopefully the PTB will handle this reasonably.

I don't think the PTB even got a chance, this BS seems to have died on its own again which it so rightly should, well it seemed to die off here in Vic anyway. 24 hours after the story hit the news it was quite again which is really unusual for this state where our state government has to nanny us with every rule.

No doubt it will rear it's ugly head again when some moron in the media thinks it's a slow news day and gets cut off by one of these soccer mums driving their kids to school in their BMW 4WD. At the same time as they are sitting ignorant in their prius thinking about how much good they are doing the world by running such a great car instead of watching the traffic around them and driving through a stop sign which could only have been put there by some uncaring bastard driving a 4wd.

As for truck and truck drivers, there is nothing I like seeing more than a convoy of log trucks blocking Spring St in Melb protesting against...well it doesn't matter what they are protesting about they are bringing all those morons in the city to a stand still because they are blocking the roads. We could all do it in 4WD's to make a point but lets face it trucks just take up so much more room and cause more inconvenience.

Wow it really looks like I have anger management issues in relation to other road users, then again admitting my problem means I'm in recovery so all those moronic, annoying, self centered, do gooding, tree hugging, hybrid driving, pricks can FO and let me drive in peace.

Well I feel better now that I am cured