While the Police scour the Helensville district for the killer white ute that seems to have targetted Dr Robinson and run him off the road with fatal consequences it seems time that the community embraced some of the “Big Brother” measures that could make our communities safer without creating civil liberty type problems.
One of our petrol station “brands” recently proposed scanning all vehicle registrations and comparing to a hot list when they pulled up the pumps. If you weren’t registered or had outstanding fines, sorry, no petrol. After all, supplying petrol could be seen as aiding and abetting. That alone makes the investment in the technology worthwhile.
Lets take this one step further.
What if those petrol stations passed down 3 bits of info to a central database…
- date/time
- petrol station
- vehicle registration
Then when there is a hit and run accident or any other investigation involving a motor vehicle the police would be able to track when vehicles of that type had filled up in that area.
Take the “white ute” as an example. It appears to be hidden in some farm shed somewhere and won’t be driven for a while. The police will have checked all utes registered in the area, but what if it’s not registered locally for some reason? The Petrol Station register would have shown it was in the area and filling up routinely. Then after the accident that routine would suddenly change – and trigger investigation.
It’s too late to put the database in place for Dr Robinson and his family but there will more hit-and-run accidents. Some will be genuine tragedies, some will be deliberate, murderous acts – but we will see the drivers involved flee with a variety of motives. Justice has to be done, and has to be seen to be done, and we have to give our Police to have the tools to work with.
If it takes us one step closer to Big Brother, well, that’s a price I’m prepared to pay.
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