Editorial: No room for bad behaviour on our roads

Drivers need to watch their behaviour on our roads.

So a man was clocked driving faster than 200km/h.

And it wasn't an 18-year-old boy racer showing off to his mates either.

No, this was a "professional" Auckland man with his partner and mother in the car.

Police stopped him on the Waikato Highway and charged him with dangerous driving - and rightly so.

If he'd made just a slight error in judgment the story could have been very different.

The chances of surviving a crash at that speed would be slim.

Unfortunately he is not the only person behaving badly on our roads. I saw some atrocious driving on State Highway 5 coming back from Taupo at the weekend.

I watched one driver use the road like his own personal race track and another sat on the wrong side of the road for a lengthy period too impatient to wait for a passing lane.

What was so important to these people that they needed to get home one minute faster while putting other people's lives at risk?

To top it off another car thought the white line was an advisory only - cutting corners and drifting across the centre lane.

This driver wasn't speeding but clearly did not know the road or did not have the adequate skills to handle the winding road.

I didn't feel safe sitting behind this car, fearing a car would come around the bend as it drifted across the line.

It made me wonder if we need to tighten driver licensing even further or make our penalties harsher - because there is no harsher penalty for a family than to lose a loved one.