I challenged people to work out whether demerits work and nobody took up the challenge.So, here's the answer for you all:

Demerit points were first introduced in Australia by QLD in December 1967, NSW in March 1969 and all the other states followed suit and had them by the end of 1969. The ACT did not introduce demerits until 1993.

 There is no research to suggest that demerit points work, so I did a little check of my own.

 Let’s start with QLD. In 1968 their road toll dropped to 477 from 502, but this could have been a statistical anomaly. In 1969 it was back up to556.

 For the rest of Australia, the road toll was 3382 in 1968, and in 1969, the first year of demerits, the road toll was 3502. Amazingly, the national road peaked at 3798 in 1970, the first full year of demerits.

The national road toll was higher than both the 1968 and 1969 levels all throughout the 70’s and the decade finished with a road toll of 3508, still much higher than the 1968 pre-demerits level.

In the ACT, their road toll was 20 in 1992 and dropped to 12 in 1993, the year they introduced demerits. They recorded 23 & 22 deaths in 1996 & 1998 respectively, and in 2006 recorded 26 fatalities! From 1993 to 2006 the ACT’s death rate per 100,000 population dropped from 4.01 to 3.95 – hardly impressive and certainly not a reflection for the case of demerits.

Only in 1980 did the road toll start coming down interstate and that was obviously due to the introduction of random breath testing.

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Now, I'd love some discussion on all this because we can plainly see that demerits do not work. What I need to know is, how many points were drivers given back in the late 60's? The point being that the modern driver has a much more better chance of getting caught for an offence that attracts demerit points, what with fixed speed cameras, red light camera's, breath testing and a whole myriad of offences that did not attract points back then.

In other words, 12 points now is totally inadequate compared to 12 points in 1969.

Comments please!