Simple is as Simple does

One thing I appreciate about Sweden is that they generally don't try to overcomplicate things. Most things are pretty straight forward, once you understand them of course. Things like the drink/driving alcohol limit for example. They have made the limit so low that it's almost impossible to drive legally after consuming alcohol. So it's simple, if you are going to be drinking, you don't drive. Way easier to work with than the higher limit we had in NZ where you could have 3 or 4 drinks during the evening and potentially still be ok to drive. Or not. Depending on the alcohol, depending on body types, and so forth. Un-necessarily complicated. Make the limit so low that you take away the risk of guesswork, the accuracy of which naturally decreases over the course of the evening. Stopping at a Stop Sign. Again, a simple rule, you stop at the Stop sign line. No questions, no room for movement. In NZ, you also have to stop, but not necessarily at the Stop sign line. You can stop anywhere you like providing that, when you stop, you have a clear view of the roads in front of you. So you could be the 3rd car back in a queue, stop once, and then sail on through. Sure you had the responsibility to check that nothing had changed, but relying on human observation isn't always thesafest option. Sweden recognised this and simplified the rule. Well done, them.

But then they go the other way in a few strange areas. Fixed speed cameras are a classic example. It is the driver of the car who gets fined. And that's fair enough. But the system relies on the ability of the camera to identify the driver. Mostly it's not a problem, but there a significant number of people who avoid detection by flipping down their sunvisor as they pass through the camera zone, thus obscuring their faces. Enough people are doing this to warrant the police to now propose a ridiculously complicated solution. They will use manned camera set ups and, when they catch a person, they will check to see if the same car has regularly been photographed previously at the same location and at the same time. But does that prove who was driving ? Lawyers are going to love this one. The solution is simple. In New Zealand, it is the owner of the car who gets fined if a car is photographed at a fixed speed camera point. No arguments about who was driving, you own the car so you are responsible. The reasoning behind the rule is sound. 99% of the time it is going to be the owner of the vehicle who is driving the vehicle. That's the same anywhere in the world, including Sweden. So the penalty immediately gets placed at the feet of the right person without having to figure out if the driver still resembles their driving license photo. The downside is that, because no attempt is made to identify the driver, there are no demerit points, or loss of license penalties. I don't think that's a major loss as people are generally more worried about how much money they will have to pay as a fine. That's the deterrant. If, on the rare occasion, the driver is not the owner, the owner will know the person who was driving their car and they can choose to recover the cost from them if they wish. It's no longer the problem of the police. The owner of the car, albeit private, a company, or a car rental, has a great incentive to chase cost recovery themselves. The same deal goes with the use of seatbelts. Instead of leaving it up to several different people to ensure that seatbelts are worn, follow other countries and make it the responsibility of the driver to ensure that all passengers are wearing seatbelts. Again, the driver has an incentive to ensure all seatbelts are worn, as they cop the fine, and the police only have one person to deal with. Sweden, you do simple things well, you can do this.