It’s an interesting question raised by comments this week from Bathurst road safety expert Matt Irvine.

Mr Irvine, looking at the road toll in our state last year and the recent horrific run of fatalities on the Mitchell Highway between Bathurst and Orange, said it was time to make use of point-to-point cameras, which can determine the average speed of a vehicle over a certain distance and therefore calculate if the driver has been speeding.

And why point-to-point? Mr Irvine says the cameras, which would cover all vehicles which pass them, are much more fair than a Highway Patrol vehicle, which clocks a vehicle’s speed at one location at one time only.

Mr Irvine says the road toll these days is much reduced from what it was in the days before seatbelt and drink-driving laws, but that’s not to say we have reached the end of our enforcement options.

And that’s where an interesting point is raised.

A critic of any use of point-to-point cameras might say it’s an unacceptable intrusion into a private citizen’s private choices on the road, punishing the many for the sins of the few.

They might say the government has no right peering at cars on the road on the assumption that the drivers might have done something wrong rather than the knowledge that they had.

But those are the sort of arguments that might have been used against the introduction of compulsory seatbelts or random breath testing, aren’t they?

And after decades of the enforcement of those rules, would there be anything but a minority of people left who think the days were better when you could have a skinful and drive home without being bothered by the cops?

In the end, it all comes down to what we are prepared to accept.

If we are prepared to accept the road toll as it is – to say that further intrusions into our privacy are unacceptable and you will never be able to fully legislate against poor or reckless driving anyway – then we will have reached the end of the enforcement line.

If we are not prepared to accept the road toll as it is, then we need to explore further options. It’s certainly been done before.