"The public prosecution department is to increase sentences for some offences such as ... aggressive driving"

"AGGRESSIVE DRIVING"? What does this mean? Does it include having an overly hearty exhaust, or perhaps a vehicle coloured red?

Is there actually an offense entitled "driving aggressively" (in Dutch, of course), and if so, what does it encompass - too many lane changes in a given time period, accelerating too quickly, honking your horn when barely avoiding a collision with an inept and careless "non-agressive" driver?

And will these measures be applied also to police drivers?

Do tell. English-speaking governments are also eager to adopt measures to lower the general quality of driving skills and promote robot-like drive-by-rule behaviour on the roads.

Such measures are particularly pleasing to police, as it increases their power to inflict punishment without any need of objective proof, while further elevating their own status as drivers with almost absolute discretion to put other lives at risk.

By otropogo | June 29, 2009 5:39 PM

Coming from country where driving is almost like survival game and to what compared driving in Holland is like a child’s play (although 99% of other countries i've been have more aggressive and chaotic driving culture) there is a definition for aggressive driving.

Yes it includes slaloming in traffic, cutting the traffic jam by driving in opposite lane or bus lane, in some instances driwing too slowly.

By Jimbo | June 30, 2009 9:14 AM

..."driving too slowly" is also considered "aggressive driving"? What country are you describing?

What I object to is the substitution of emotionally loaded terms for well-defined offenses. "Slaloming" is a good example. Here in Canada, the traffic Nazis and their acolytes like to say "weaving". But what exactly does it entail?

There are rules for changing lanes, involving signalling, shoulder checking, and making sure there is enough time and space to complete the action safely.

In my experience, it is not the drivers generally called "aggressive" who fail to perform these required preliminaries, but the opposite end of the driving spectrum.

Having the skill and confidence to change lanes is an essential requirement for extricating oneself from potentially dangerous situations, and should arouse no hostility in those less gifted, as everyone on the road benefits.

I term such driving "defensive" or "pro-active", and such drivers as "assertive", and am sure that without them, there would be far more accidents on the roads.

Unfortunately, police, governments, and mass media are forever trying to curb drive-by-brain in favour of drive-by-simple-rule, and this encourages the worst drivers on the road, the inattentive, the timid, the indecisive, and the visually challenged to adopt an aggressively self-righteous attitude whenever they see a better driver performing a perfectly safe manoeuver they would not dare to execute themselves.

The whole sad trend reminds me of a Robert Heinlein scenario in which future generations handicap anyone with above average ability with ball and chain to bring them down to the median level.

By otropogo | July 1, 2009 5:39 PM