CN's gripes of 2010

It's not all sugar and spice behind the wheel as the Carsales Network team reveals its pet hates for 2010

Gripes of the year 2010

In this job, you'd think we find it pretty hard to complain about anything, really. But at the end of each year there's always something to get on our goat and for 2010 the main bones of contention are car safety, road safety and safety cameras... Notice a theme?

Mike Sinclair - Editor in Chief
Broken record time... For once I'm not going to whine about poor product, poor marketing or poor performances -- from a car or car company. Frankly of the cars I drove in 2010 there wasn't a huge amount to grizzle about -- a clanger here and there but pretty good overall.

No, the thing that got on my wick this year (and in most other years) was road safety -- in particular the hackneyed and predictable focus on speed as the only cause of road trauma. When are the pollies and road safety 'professionals' going to understand that people have switched off...

If, and it's a huge arguable if, speed is the main enemy, then the campaigns have failed. Indeed, by governments like Victoria's own admission they have failed. Well, they must have -- why else, logically, would they continue to budget for the revenue they expect to gather from speed cameras to increase.

Fine-based 'hit them with a stick' road safety does not work. Fining people for petty minor speed infractions actually turns them against any of the potential positives. In my experience, even more concerning, it makes them actively contrary to the road safety messages that are proffered.

Certain Australian state governments are now hooked on fine (and pokies) revenues. It's about time they got real and admitted it instead of pretending to want to really progress road safety.


Ken Gratton - News Editor
I'm going to make myself unpopular with members of the brotherhood here, but my gripe is the constant fixation of journalists with Ford's local manufacturing/indigenous Falcon design future. We just go round and round in circles with sections of the press beating the same drum over and over again.

If even Ford Australia doesn't yet know how the post-2015 Falcon will look, why bother with ill-informed speculation -- and yes, some of it is certainly ill-informed and misreported, as we know from the Detroit show early in the year.

The parochial syndrome is now well-known among Ford's higher-placed executives too, with Alan Mulally telling one Aussie journalist at the Paris Motor Show that he wouldn't discuss Falcon -- since he would be just repeating the same thing he has told this journalist for the past 18 months to two years.

While I don't subscribe to the view that negative reporting is necessarily a self-fulfilling prophecy as then-CEO Rob McEniry suggested of the ABC's coverage when Mitsubishi's local manufacturing was looking less sustainable, I'm sure that Holden and Toyota would be pleased not to be in Ford's shoes at the present.


Melissa McCormick - Production Editor
Australian drivers, Victorian road rules... This might as well be an ongoing gripe.

My brilliant career involves lots of travel to various car-making countries; encountering odd environments (driving on the 'wrong' side of the road, weird line markings, 'where are we?' and 'am I in a bus lane?!' moments...) and of course the road mannerisms of the locals. So how come the 'culture' of road-use in these places (admittedly with Western or Westernised transport infrastructure) seems far more considerate and obliging than that shown by us, with our big backyards and great weather?

Observing local driving tactics during taxi trips from Tulla, not long after driving an Optima in Seoul for example, confirms the worst: truck drivers and slow-moving cars in the right-hand lane, tradies on mobile phones or the horn, P-platers texting... To quote one taxi driver this year (Indian-born; driving for 25 years): "Some people's driving here makes me sick. We have far more cars, more bikes and more people to deal with on the roads at home..."

Sitting in traffic around overweight cities like Melbourne is made worse by perspective-deficient tools leaving too much space between themselves and the car in front. See Volvo's latest idea on road 'trains' to prevent road congestion...


Feann Torr - Staff Journalist
The increasing number of 'safety cameras'. In Victoria at least, the number of fixed and mobile speed cameras is increasing by the month yet while the politicians rake in the cash, the road toll is still rising. Rather than looking at advanced driving training and driving behavior, or perhaps safer roads, the powers that be just install more 'safety cameras' and make us feel like criminals for nudging a few kilometers over the speed limit.

Speed is not always the issue, but it's a convenient and incredibly lucrative one.


Matt Brogan -Staff Journalist
I guess there's not a lot to complain about. I mean for a small nation (in population terms) we get a massive selection of makes and models to choose from. But what is a bother is that there are a number of vehicles we could readily have access to but don't receive due to our perceived “likes and dislikes”.

All too often at press launches we hear that a car isn't what the public wants, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. ADR compliance issues sometimes exacerbate the issue with windscreen thickness and ISOFIX preparation two notable variations that often hold up or prevent imports. Further, certain combinations of make/type or engine/gearbox selection don't make the grade.

One example that springs to mind is a pair of Japanese manufactures who don't offer an automatic option with their diesel engines, or other that don't offer a diesel option at all, despite them being available elsewhere in the right-hand drive world. Suspension tuning is another gripe, where stiffening the hell out of a car seems to mean it's "tuned for Australian conditions".

I know these examples are in the minority and we should be grateful for the level of choice we have, but until we are completely understood by our metal making overlords things are unlikely to improve. My suggestion: Vote with your feet!


Joshua Dowling - Contributing Writer
Sorry, I can't contain it to one this year. I have three main gripes. Missing curtain airbags, inflator kits for tyres, and speed cameras.

First: missing curtain airbags. Carmakers which still try to charge extra for basic safety features need a reality check. This stuff gets me so angry I may run out of space, or not get to my other two whinges for 2010.

Why is it you can buy a $12,990 Suzuki Alto with six airbags and stability control, and cars dearer than this don't have these features?

Among those on the shame file are:

Falcon... Ford still charges extra for full length curtain airbags on some models when its rivals have had them across the sedan range for years) Ford: it costs $300 retail, so the cost to you must be fifty bucks. Tick the box and get over it.

The new cut price Mitsubishi Outlander and Challenger models (two airbags only, side and curtains optional, are you serious?). The Ford Fiesta base model has curtains as an option despite now coming from low-cost Thailand -- and despite the fact that many cars cheaper than it has six or more airbags standard (including Nissan Micra, Holden Barina Spark, new Suzuki Swift etc.)

And why did Toyota fit curtain airbags to the 1.5 Yaris and not the 1.3? Because the extra airbags would have made no difference to the 1.3's ANCAP safety score because it didn't have stability control at the time. So the base Yaris has no stability control and you have to pay for the extra airbags. Plain nasty, but there's worse...

Why has the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries allowed cars without anti-lock brakes to be sold? Why didn't the FCAI get its members in one room, bang their heads together and say 'Let's all do ABS, it's the only right thing to do'. And yet, less than 12 months from stability control being compulsory we still have Holden, Hyundai, Kia and Proton selling their price-leading hatchbacks at teaser prices -- without such basics as antilock.

Second topic: inflator kits for tyres instead of space savers. The fine people at Ford have removed the skinny space saver and replaced it with a can of goo in the new Fiesta. Volvo did the same with the new S60 sedan. Memo to Europe: you all need your heads read.

Let's take one of the European engineers out to the middle of nowhere and give them a flat tyre where the sidewall has split. Let's see how far a can of goo gets them. More than 3000 flat tyres are changed daily in one capital city alone. I don't buy the argument that flat tyres hardly ever happen. By Ford's reasoning we don't need seatbelts or airbags because we hardly ever crash. Oh, that's right, Ford doesn't put all airbags in all its cars.

A full-size spare tyre means you're on your way again in 15 minutes at worst. Does anyone really think 20kg of spare tyre is going to be felt in their fuel economy? No chance. It's all to save carmakers money, not car buyers.

If carmakers want to put a can of goo in the boot, fine. But it should be compulsory for customers to be told this before they sign on the dotted line when buying the car. If there is nothing for the customer to be concerned about, as Ford tried to force feed us recently, then there should be no trouble telling the customer before they buy the car -- or get stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Despite how cosmopolitan Australia likes to think it is sometimes, it is still a vast country with long, remote distances between its capital cities and regional centres.

Third topic: speed cameras. Soft target, I know. Speed cameras no doubt got a mention elsewhere in this section, but here's my two-bob's worth. If speed cameras are so great at preventing road deaths, why is it that the road tolls in Victoria and Queensland (which have widespread use of covert and mobile cameras) have not reduced by as much as the road toll in NSW (which has not had mobile cameras in recent years until a rollout of seven covert Ford Territorys mid-year)?

The five-year data from the Australian crash safety bureau shows this anomaly. Surely this is evidence there is no direct link between speed cameras and fatal crash reductions.


Michael Taylor- International Correspondent
The complete lack of official Australian government and police reaction to the visit and comments of Benz's safety guru, Dr Mellinghoff.

They ignored Holden's Laurie Sparke for years because his perspective and depth of knowledge was inconvenient to Speed Kills arguments, and they did the same with Mellinghoff.


Gautam Sharma - International Correspondent
BMW was regularly lambasted during the Bangle era for doing things to the styling of luxury sedans that nobody thought should be done. Sure, they looked a little confronting, but the superseded 5 Series and 7 Series had a real sense of innovation and envelope-stretching about them.

Not everyone liked them, but no one can deny they were among the most influential luxo sedans of the past decade. Why then is it that their successors are so plain ho-hum and unadventurous? Yes, they're elegantly proportioned and laden with techno features, but there's no way they'll spark any debate or animated discussions. BMW has played it super-safe with their styling and this is sufficient cause for me to get up on my soapbox and have a rant.

Audi is guilty of the same conservative approach. The A4/A6/A8 seemingly come from the Russian doll styling manual, whereby each one is a virtual clone of the other, with size being the only real differentiator.

I'm sure the brainiacs in charge have done their sums and determined this is the best path to go down, but I would liked to have seen each model endowed with its own unique identity, without totally abandoning the brand's family look.


Jeremy Bass - Green Motoring Writer
The financial bankruptcy of Sydney's Lane Cove Tunnel and the squeals of pain from the operator of Brisbane's Clem7 tunnel provide us with yet more proof of the political bankruptcy driving public-private partnerships. The LCT (and the Cross City Tunnel before it) wasn't even made viable by the wilful ruination of surface traffic routes to funnel drivers through the tollgates.

What's most galling about it is the subsequent propping up at taxpayer and road-user expense of the private operators who took on the projects in the first place. Whatever happened to the entrepreneurial assumption of risk after due diligence and proper assessment?

Business journalist Michael Pascoe summed it up in his recent dismissal of Gerry Harvey's grumblings about online competitors: “Scratch any red-blooded free-market-loving capitalist and you'll find someone who either wants a monopoly or government assistance.”

Maybe some things are just not made for profit. Now, when will state governments acknowledge the social costs of a AAA credit rating?

Anyhow, for the moment, half the people taking up Sydney's roads aren't driving on them -- they're standing on them in fluoro jackets and hard hats. The entire metro area has been reduced to one massive roadworks zone with flashing merge-arrows everywhere, lanes blocked by trenches and great piles of dirt, while nature strips everywhere are covered in lights, generators and all manner of big yellow machines.

Fortunately, the end is in sight. Sometime around the end of February, for the first time in living memory, the roadworks -- all the roadworks -- will be complete. Just in time for the state election. The cynicism of politicians is matched only by cynicism about politicians.

Finally, can someone please tell marketers what 'dynamic' means? It's up there among 'edgy', 'funky' and that old favourite 'icon'


Mike McCarthy - Contributing Writer
Friends, Romans and fellow drivers, lend me your gears. As a newly inducted GOB (Grumpy Old Bloke), I can't help but cite ongoing Ozzie apathy as 2010's grande gripe.

Glaring instances abound of our infinite capacity to meekly absorb whatever authoritarian wrongs come our way. More than too many objectionable subjects exist even within our spheres of motoring.

In just one f'rinstance, reflect upon our woosy acceptance of covert speed cameras, despite that insidious tactic being irrevocably contrary to straight policing and a healthy society. But it pays well. Next you'll believe in the Easter Bunny and Safety Cameras. Bah, humbug!

When were you last pulled over and warned, not necessarily booked, by a Safety Camera? Hell, it could be weeks before you learn you did a bad thing. No matter how much spin surrounds cameras, they're not safety sentinels. Try Speed Tax devices. That's them.

Ah, but we're told that if you don't speed you have nothing to fear. The gullibility is frightening. In gospel truth, speed cameras are not infallible. You know it, I know it and the police and pollies know it. Red light cameras aren't saintly either. Yet they're breeding in spite of solid overseas data that red-runners are statistically few and rarely trigger crashes.

On top of which, red-light cameras' strike rate is easily misled by traffic flow's inconsistencies, and is readily manipulated (by income-challenged authorities) by 'adjusting' the green/amber phases. Someone should tell the wallopers that monitoring Stop signs would be more lucrative.

Also more effective, if that counts for anything.

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