Supercar Drivers May Need A Special Licence In South Australia
If you have ever dreamt of taking a powerful car on a road trip across Australia, you may have to take on a series of additional tests and training to do so in the near future. That’s because lawmakers in the state of South Australia have announced plans to introduce stricter requirements and training for those who want to get behind the wheel of high-powered vehicles.
The policy calls for a special licence requirement for those who want to drive vehicles such as supercars, though the machines aren’t being banned from the country altogether. Think of it like getting your ‘Super’ licences on Gran Turismo. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas hopes that the shift in policy will result in fewer car-related incidents, while the proposal also aims to ban drivers responsible for deadly crashes from holding a licence until the case has been resolved in court.
The proposed change has come about after a crash involving a Lamborghini Huracan in 2019 that led to the death of a teenage girl. The driver was acquitted of the pedestrian’s death after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, but Malinauskas hopes that the new regulations, which are set to be presented before Parliament by the end of 2022, will help prevent incidents like these from occurring in the future.
What do you think of the idea? Is it good to have tighter regulation on who can drive what, or is this just another method of control over motorists?
See also: Controversial Digital Number Plates On The Way With GPS Tech
Elsewhere Down Under, petrolheads are also being targeted by a bank that will no longer hand out loans for ICE cars (including hybrids). Bank Australia has announced that it will stop giving new-car loans to customers for petrol or diesel-powered vehicles, including hybrids, by 2025 in an effort to increase EV uptake across the country.
Bank Australia claims that the decision was made in response to Australia’s low EV adoption rate of two percent, which lags behind the global average of nine percent in the rest of the world. However, it’s certainly a bold choice for the bank to tell its customers which cars they are and are not allowed to buy.
However, given the high cost of buying a brand-new EV, Bank Australia has confirmed that used-car loans will still be available on combustion engine-powered cars after 2025.
The bank is a relatively small operator in Australia, with around 185,000 customers, and it prides itself on its policies around renewable energy. It remains to be seen whether larger banks will adopt such an aggressive approach in cancelling combustion engine-powered vehicles, but what do you think of Bank Australia’s radical new policy?
Next up, check out Big Electric Cars Officially Aren’t That Green. Are E-Fuels The Answer?
Comments
Yes it’s over-regulation, that’s the Australian government’s problem.
Australia is absolutely a totalitarian and over-regulated state. If you want to know how bad they are, look at the situation with East Timor and the journalists, witnesses and lawyers arrested, including whistleblowers, because their intelligence agencies have no oversight. The decision to coerce Australians into certain modes of transport, especially those that have unsupported infrastructure in many parts of the country, and just so happen to adopt anti-consumer and privacy features in their cars (Looking at you, Tesla), is even more concerning, and sets a precedent that banks can force the public to adopt product which they deem that you should own and buy, and then repay them for the ability to buy. Whats next? The Bank of Australia wont let you mortgage a house because of some arbitrary reason such as ‘deforestation’ despite the fact that the house has already been built? Or due to some other factor? Its time people take more action against such bullshit and instead of meekly agreeing with institutions, they should prevent their freedoms from being eroded.
While the incident involving the Lamborghini is tragic, adding a extra layer of bureaucracy will hardly fix it, and will definitely not prevent more crashes from occurring. Thousands of people die due to motoring incidents every year, and yet this specific case is focused upon due to the car in question. A extra license will do what exactly? Every single car can be a murder weapon, including a 1.0 Daihatsu, because its a tool which usage is defined by its user. Dangerous driving wont be prevented by a extra license, it will only inconvenience owners of such cars.
TLDR; The Aussie government want you to own nothing and be happy. Eat the bugs. Stay at home, shut up, do not attempt to think or depression may occur, because of course, according to the goverment the number one enemy of progress are questions.
Definetly over the top.
But it might be necessary.
2 years ago a Lambo driver crashed into some pedestrians on the footpath, killing a teenage girl. Last week he was found not guilty of dangerous driving. Maybe this is our government’s reaction to the public backlash from the court result.
Not like many people in Adelaide own supercars anyway.
Australia being an overbearing nanny state? Never.