Speed limits on many roads are soporific. You can knit, SMS, read the paper and roll a cigarette all at once, just to keep yourself amused and awake while trying to make ground across our huge, sparse urban sprawls. A lot of the limit setting seems to do with the notion that foot and vehicle traffic should co-exist, some PC ideal about the sanctity of life in the street, the rights of kids playing street cricket, people aimlessly walking their dogs etc. Roads are for cars and footpaths are for people, red light stop, green light go.

Pretty cogent argument, Mr Leyonhjelm.

Unfortunately you are up against two formidable obstacles:

i) substantial revenue: politicians, for the use of;

ii) the nanny state, that is dead against the idea of anyone actually taking the remotest responsibility for themselves, if it is possible to legislate against it.

Sadly, there is also a third inhibiting factor. To bring our roads (I'm talking NSW here) up to the standard needed to support higher speeds, we'd need to spend several gazillions of dollars. You will know that where high speeds are allowed overseas (e.g. Germany) the roads have solid, cavity-free surfaces. Best of luck finding even a 100 consecutive metres of road in good repair in NSW.

The equation isn't looking good. Campaign for higher speed limits and all you'll hear is "you will be murdering our children". Underneath that fib is the reality: they'd miss the revenue, and they couldn't afford the proper infrastructure anyway.

...Far worse than speedsters are the plodders; I have witnessed some of the most amazing acrobatics performed by frustrated motorists, interminably log jammed behind impassive “plonkers” driving at deliberately provocative speeds well below maximum, blissfully ignorant to the trailing convoy of fuming victims in the rear.

...How does the law deal with that particular hazard first and foremost, enabling motorists to at least reach the currently set speed limits?

Excellent article David, though I fear Pericles is absolutely correct as to the reasons why your proposals will never happen. It is just a lose-lose situation for the government and any relevant administrators to let the people actually start telling THEM what to do- worst still deciding how much pocket money they are going to be getting!

Whenever a new speed camera is installed along a road, the traffic decelerates to a good 20km BELOW the speed limit. And often the speed limit itself is altered to something ridiculously slow- despite the road in question being an expressway with no driveways or turnoffs whatsoever, and exceptionally straight to boot.

And on another issue, is that I have witnessed too many people to count who have cut across multiple lanes last-minute to take an exit on the opposite side of the road they had been preferring for a long time, suddenly brake or decelerate when changing lanes (especially those eventually leading to a turnoff about a hundred meters ahead)- and worse, tailgating and weaving through tight traffic, drifting between lanes, suddenly jumping out into oncoming traffic- yet these are never, ever, ever taken seriously- let alone make it into very many commercials and road signs.

When the road toll gets to be zero, you will have a case to up the speed limit. Serial speed offenders have no place on the road, with or without a car. Road trauma costs billions a year, hence the restrictions. The road deaths are being looked at now to separate suisides from Drug, and alcohol related deaths.
We will probably see zero alcohol readings in the near future.
Most deaths now are caused by drivers on drugs.

fascinating response a597. "Serial speed offenders have no place on the road with or without a car". That has to be about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Are they supposed to just stay at home for the rest of their lives?
"Most deaths are caused by drivers on drugs". Where do you get the statistics to support this? If you are going to make assertions of fact like that then you really need to have some evidence to support them or people will simply dismiss you as an ignorant fool.

Believe what you like mate, in this state it is common knowledge.
Serial offenders are killers in waiting. It is not a right to have a driving license. The more speed cameras there are the less the road toll. What we really need is black boxes in every car. If you are pulled up for improper driving, your black box is scanned and suffer the consequences.
The ones that scream about speed cams are the ones continually being caught flouting the law.
A minority of drivers are deemed to be above the law, in their own head, and have no place being on the road.

It is also a matter of "don't the police have anything better to do than harass drivers going a few kph above some arbitrary limit?" Speeding is a victimless crime. With 200 unsolved murders currently sitting in NSW police files, my answer is "Yes, start chasing down the REAL criminals and assisting the REAL victims of crime!"

Speeding is a crime, i wouldn't say victimless. Those victimless crimes cost billions of taxpayers money every year.
Persons knowingly speeding and someone is killed is murder.
There's no such thing as a little bit over. The limit is the limit, is there any part you do not understand. Let the people decide how much they pay in fines. Ask the families of some victimless crime.

Out of the mouths of babes. Speeding is a crime! Drivers flouting the law! I wonder if these people depend on government for their sustenance? Perhaps they are simply incompetent drivers who need to stay slow.

Driving at quite moderate speeds is now against the law because overspending by governments sent them off looking for a source of money. Any source they could rip off would do.

It was not illegal back in the 60s, when we could, & were capable to drive somewhat faster than today. We did so on mush worse roads, often gravel, in cars of 40s 50s, & 60s technology, much less capable than today's cars. We even survived to tell you of the fact.

Isn't it a pity that the folks of today are so incompetent that they have to have an all powerful, all knowing all consuming bureaucracy to guide them from the cradle to the grave.

"overspending by governments sent them off looking for a source of money. Any source they could rip off would do. "

Perhaps the approach discussed here should be applied to tax and fines. Remove all compulsory tax for a period then set the relevant tax rates based on how much money people actually think that the government should get.

R0bert

We have laws to protect the innocent, so which part of the law don't u understand. Misunderstanding the restriction signs is not an excuse.
You blame revenue raising, well the offender pays, and rightly so, we need to cover the billions each year caused by bad drivers.
The art of driving is to never pay a fine in your driving career.
Number plate recognition immediately tells the policeman that you are not supposed to be driving that car. [if your license has been suspended, stolen car, or a petrol thief.]
You can't win, so comply or pay. It is up to you.

But what you fail to realize 579 is that, just as Mr Leyonhjelm and Pericles have pointed out, speeding is not the primary cause of road accidents, neither statistically here, nor statistically compared to countries in Europe where people drive over three times faster than we do, but are somehow not reaping in a phenomenally higher accident toll.
Why?

Furthermore, considering how large many of our cities are, it would not be unreasonable for motorists to expect to get from point A to B in less than an half and hour going along some major roads.
Or would you feel that driving at 60km an hour to cover the distance from Parramatta to Central is reasonable?

What would you say to high-speed expressways? Or perhaps this alternative- that we raise the standards of testing and give licenses only to the very competent drivers who are mentally capable of driving at the same speed limits imposed on those in Europe?

I'm just curious

We have laws to protect the innocent,
579,
Where can I get a visa to have a look at your planet. Sounds great !

Not always A597.

When I pass a fixed speed camera for an 80k zone, I continue past at 80ks not braking with people up my backside. The problem with some of these cameras is that some people, including myself, are unsure as to how far these speed cameras are able to take photos once you pass them. For instance around the bend from one fixed speed camera, the 100k sign appears up a hill, and in turn, most people commence accellerating up the hill, only to discover that the speed camera has done them for 90ks in an 80k zone.

This has happened to me twice just as my car has approached the 100k zone sign.

I paid the fines and lost the demerit points. How the other drivers fared I have no idea.

By the way, only a couple of accidents [non fatalities]in ten years were recorded along this straight section of road/highway.

Quite a few interstate motorists brake in both lanes approaching the speed camera almost causing accidents.

We have expressways a speed limit of 110 applies. You can drive from central vic; to spencer st melbourne without one red light.
Speeding up before a restriction sigh is speeding. You cant drive for someone behind you. The car in front is the one that pays the penalty.
Speeding is the primary cause of accidents. Driving licenses are far to easy to come by, they are given to people that are not capable of mixing with other motorists. Mental, IQ, age, medical,and physical have all got to be part of the process.
Years ago there was not the traffic on the road ,so there is no comparison. we had a road death toll of 1064 in the 70's last year it was in the low 200's. With count back for deliberate, and off road death, the toll was adjusted around 20 deaths.
Still far too many we can do better.
Some drivers are professional tail gaters, slow down and they will pass.
Drive according to the rules of the road and you find it is cheaper.
Offender pays.

Actually I have been checking the NSW RTA crash statistics and they indicate the majority of crashes occur in the 40-60kmh speed-range, and that the majority of crashes are collision-types that would apply to someone who fails to stop or give way to other traffic, or tries to tailgate or maneuver dangerously between traffic, or didn't look when they changed lanes.

Only a fraction of offenses (mainly in the country) occured in the 110 speed zone, and the only clearly speed-based crashes were failure to slow down for a bend in the road.
So arguably, the tailgating maneuvering drivers that you dismissed as a lesser threat are in fact a vastly larger menace than speeders.

Personally if there should be an offense that automatically results in the stripping of a license it should be the above.
Hell, if that happened it might even be safe for the rest of us to drive faster, and we'd get to work in a realistic time frame.

Read it yourselves.
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/roadsafety/downloads/crashstats2009.pdf

You're wasting your time King, some fools always think big brother is right, & some of them are probably big brother in drag, trying to justify their stupidity.

We have an area behind the Gold Coast where tourists have a tendency to run off into the scenery. In one spot they have reduced the speed limit from 100 to 80 & now 70Km/H, & they still damage the scenery just as often. I'd like to see this speed limit raised to 150, to give the Darwin principle a chance to work.

On that same stretch of road, 10 previously safe straight bits have become dangerous. They must have, as the dotted centre line, allowing overtaking, has been painted over with double lines.

As our aging farmers trucks get older & slower, & our shoe box cars get quicker in acceleration, allowing safer overtaking, some twit at big brother, or the government accounts department, keep restricting legal overtaking, with these fool lines. Any wonder previously law abiding folk now often ignore them.

I am concerned that there will be a backlash, as some of the southern tourists, who left their mind behind in a glass of water, before coming up here on holidays, die of old age, while stuck behind some of our farm trucks.

Meanwhile a neighbour has grown some nice big pineapples, which I would love to apply, firmly, to the behinds of the damn fool bureaucrats who have nothing better to do than make driving around the country a pain. Surely we should be able to reciprocate.

There are those who wish to lower the speed limit to 100km/h. Yet the surviveability of a crash at 100 compared to 110 is negiligable. There were those who wanted school zones to be lowered to 40km/h. Yet most of these school are still built on or very near main roads. People accept that their is a minimal danger to flying, and also accept that someone else has control over thier lives. Yet people expect the road toll to be zero, even though driving is more dangerous.

Idiots one and all.

Let's look at it this way. In NSW the government collects around $1million/day from "speeding" fines. If they REALLY wanted to stop people speeding, they would make speeding a jailable offence, with vehicles crushed, rather than amounts which most people can afford to pay. They wouldn't, so it becomes just another tax, like a fee to be paid for the privledge of going a bit faster. We all do it!
The attitude of RTA is of a big brother who says they know best. Proof: As an engineer I met once with a civil engineer involved with road design. I quizzed him about why new roads didn't have a positive camber, on corners, to handle the higher speeds which modern cars were capable of. I pointed that some roads even had a negative camber on corners. His response (paraphrased) was "We don't do that because then people would want to drive faster and we don't want people to speed, do we?"

A fine should be a percentage of one's income. That would have a much more positive impact on peoples' attitude. I mean the bloke in a Merc Or BMW pays as much as the bloke in his battered old ute. That's an imbalance which affects the whole purpose of a fine. A fine should hurt everyone to the same degree..

To "individual": But those more affluent people who drive Mercs and BMWs are driving safer cars, which are designed to be driven at faster speeds, so they should be entitled to have a higher speed limit. They probably need to get where they're going a lot quicker too. Time is money, isn't it?

""We probably need to get where we're going a lot quicker too. Time is money, isn't it?""

Vee ALSO need to get to Brektesgarten in time vor tea mit Eva.

Any slow drivers in zee vay, und vee have vays of maching dem move over. Double Tailgate und high beam mach good sport for green P platers yah Voul

Pretty soon vee vill have und final solution. Zee poor und weak are a scourge on our great Labor Party und soon vee vill exterminate dem. Chris Bowen mach promise!

Zeich Heil!

Drive zee plonkers into zee vall!

Adolph Hitler
Springwood NSW

when more people than vote for any single political bandwagon smoke dope occasionally,it's time to recalibrate.

Rusty

Let the market decide, abolish all speed limits, or even speed recommendations.

But lets let the insurance companies decide what to do next, that is, let them impose speed limits on the people they cover, after all, that is just sound commercial sense.

But lets take it further and make those who cause accidents also meet the 'market rate' of what they have done, personally. Add to that an increase in the prosecution of people who cause deaths, injury or damage whilst driving.

So, let people drive in whatever way they want, just hold them fully responsible for what they do. If they kill someone whilst driving then impose the full manslaughter penalty, a maximum in most states of 18 years or so. If they injure someone impose the same penalty as if they had caused the injury with a gun or a sledgehammer.

If they cause damage, then hit them with the full penalty for malicious damage.

Yes, lets abolish speed limits and make drivers simply pay for what they do.

Wheels, that's too bad, but not surprising unfortunately- we seem to operate under an astoundingly dumb and short-sighted administration and engineers that would make many another country weep.

Dougthebear
You know, it's funny that you say that because I would guess that market forces ARE deciding the speed limits in Sydney at the moment (Lane Cove road is living proof- the speed limit suddenly drops from an 80 zone to a 60- even though the 60 zone has even LESS reasons to be slow, because that section happens to be over the Lane Cove Tunnel, which they have been trying to force people to pay to use).

But to compare a democratic method where the rules everyone must adhere to are decided by the public, vs an anarchist libertarian system (The system Sydney is currently running under, by large) with no rules at all, is to compare the two opposite ends of a spectrum!

And I must say, a democratic method of road-regulation is certainly looking more desirable than trusting the three biggest parties in NSW with our speed limits, I can tell you.

So, let's hope all those interested in getting back to a reasonable approach to speeding laws, will vote 1, Outdoor Recreation Party in the NSW election on March 26th! We need people like David L. in NSW Parliament to get some common sense back into the debate.

There's more to the road toll other than being dead. If you do end up dead it doesn't cost the state any thing like it does to have a person maimed for life.
The amount of kids injured in 40 km speed zones is dramatic.
Billions of dollars a year is spent because of road trauma, being dead is the cheaper option.
So don't violate someone else's road space and save the state billions.
If you are intent on being dead well keep it to your-self.

579, I'm sorry to say but simply making your posts more dramatic and mentioning death a lot more isn't going to magically change our minds- actually making some points- or even attempting to answer some of ours, would.

For example- you casually threw in the point about kids being run over by vehicles going 40kmh- which raises three things:
1- that the issue was most likely a matter of children being struck by passing traffic in proximity to a school zone during school hours
2- that obeying the speed limit and driving very slow DID NOT PREVENT INJURY, and the cause of injury was something else unrelated to speed.
3- That a speed limit so low is dangerous, what do you PROPOSE?
10km hour speed limits? Ban cars?
Neither would be practical to get around in a city like Sydney- a point you conveniently continue to avoid.

Actually King, many drivers ignore school zones and continue as if they have every right to do whatever sped they want and consider children to be speed humps to be simply avoided if possible. Selfish drivers who think that 1 minute's delay is worth more than a child's life

What gets me about these kind of discussions is the constant call that 'the government' is getting all this money out of otherwise 'law abiding' people.

Well I hate to have to inform all of those who have this view, but the money that is paid in speeding, and other traffic, fines does not go into the pockets of those people who we elect to form our governments.

It goes into revenue that is used for the purpose that our elected governments choose it to go into. To benefit the population at large.

The next thing that you will be saying is that the government gets rich from our paying taxes, that is, those of us who do and are not rich enough to have tax avoidance schemes that is.

Well, those taxes are not stowed in the fat wallets of our politicians either.

But okay. Let us abolish speeding fines, and introduce some other way to manage our (yes, OUR!) roads. If we abolish speed fines then the government will have no reason to impose speed limits to collect money from all those wonderfully considerate motorists.

Okay, no speed fines, so no speed limits? (I think not) So perhaps we impose imprisonment for speeding: one day in prison for every k over the speed limit? What about flogging? One stroke for every K perhaps? At least the government would not be accused of profiting from motorists.

And as I have said, treat road crimes the same as crimes committed not on the roads. Instead of 12 months community service for neglegent driving occaisioning death - from street racing - (yes, I have seen that as the sentence, 12 months of weekends for a life) we should imprison all those wonderful drivers who kill people for 20 years.

579...but the school zone restrictions are over-applied. In my area (Dural, Hills District of Sydney) the local school has high wire fences on either side of the road, with an elevated walk-over to the bus area well away from the road. The kids don't go anywhere near the road, yet there is a 40kph restriction, which is often monitored by the goons (sorry police) hiding in nearby bushes. Further along Old Northern Rd there is a private school, with a drive-in pick-up and drop off area for buses and parents. No risk of any kid crossing the road. Yes, speed restrictions and heavy fines apply. Revenue raising, not safety? It certainly is.

Similar story to mine Wheels- I once passed a fenced-up roadside school zone exactly like the one you describe, only with a speed camera that, rather than being placed on the side street, is on the impassable main road, mysteriously facing a steep downhill slope (where I had to squeeze the brakes just above 'parking' to stay under.
So, instead of focus on places where children might actually cross the road, it was the one place where that was impossible to cross, but easy to go over 40k on a downhill decent.

Dougthebear- wrong.
QLD government MUST put the money to roads- NSW do not- they are free to spend as they wish.
And if you'd like to believe that NSW Labor are an honest bunch who sincerely care about our wellbeing, then good for you.
Sadly, the Lane Cove Road debacle and numerous dodgy privatizations and public facility sell-offs to real-estate have shaken out any delusions or rose-colored tint I would have had for them as wise nannies earnesty trying to push us in the right direction, than a bunch of crooks.

But for alternatives to make a difference:
-Vastly more coverage on the issues of tailgating, swerving, sudden deceleration, multiple lane-changing, non-indicating, etc
-Restricting a license from people who fail to show capabilities to do otherwise, along with failure to judge distances to position their vehicle, react, maintain awareness, etc:
-Terminate school zones on major roads, erect fences
-More expressways/tunnels linking more of the city, built to accommodate higher speeds
-More public transport infrastructure
-Restore Lane Cove Road to pre-tunnel state, convert other major roads to accomodate higher speeds.
-Drink-driving = automatic loss of license and possibly imprisonment.
-NO privatizatios
-confirmed +10% exceeding of speed minimum to be liable for speeding offense

That way, less dangerous people have access to cars- instead of being waved through after lenient driving tests, and roads are adjusted to allow people to travel faster.

In the words of my mother driving is like dancing. If you dance out of tune you will step on other peoples toes.

Speed limits provide the tempo for everyone "Dancing" on the roads. Those who dance too fast and also those who dance too slow are likely to have or cause accidents.

If you want to see what I'm talking about go to India where the speed limits on the freeway are 50km per hour but drivers drive at anything from 10km/hr to 100km/hr. Slow drivers drive down the centre of the white lines as though they are guidance markers and faster drivers weave in and out of the slow traffic until someone miss-calculates and rams a car from behind.

Ask yourself how much time do you save if you speed?

A trip of 100km will take 60 minutes at 100km/hr and 55 minutes at 110km/hr.

A trip of 20km will take 20 minutes at 60km/hr and 17 minutes at 70 km/hr.

Is 5 minutes of your life really that precious?

In an urban environment the real requirement is to travel at the same speed the lights are sequenced. If lights are green for X seconds then the same number of cars will get through traveling with a 2 second headway interval irrespective of whether they are traveling at 60 or 70km/hr.

Travel too fast or slow and the block of traffic is stopped and loses several seconds getting moving again. If only our traffic engineers can get this simple formula right...

time of travel between lights = distance between lights / speed of road.

And that goes onto the next point of why our roads need to be modified:

Zero traffic lights mean (safely) speeding only decreases your journey time by a couple of minutes (although removing school zones on major roads would drastically decrease travel time by half for quite a few people).

Factor in traffic lights (not including the jams they cause), and your speed could make the difference between getting through a series of lights (and thus avoid being compressed with other vehicles and increasing your own danger if you need to change lanes), and reducing 5 minutes each light, potentially: If you were to reduce a 30 minute trip to a 25 minute trip- but narrowly avoided 8 red lights (and over a distance in the Sydney region, it could be higher)- it may very well be a 50 minute trip.
Double that for the return journey, and you see the problem.

Sydney is simply too crowded, and too much planned to act as a very very large surburbia than a real city with fast access between sub-towns, making a 10 km journey longer than 15 minutes (more likely double) quite unreasonable for such a small distance.

Of course, with traffic reduction of making it harder to access a driving license (enough to permit driving in certain roads), the need for traffic lights is reduced (and the need for lower speeds in many cases).

And considering that people who can't obtain a strict license clearly are not safe on our roads regardless of speed (as the statistics prove, most accidents are at lower speeds)- then this should be the obvious solution.

I realised something this afternoon about how silly this whole thread is.

We live in a parliamentary democracy. That is, we elect our representatives who in turn make laws and spend our money on our behalf.

We have the right, indeed the obligation, to tell our representatives what we want of them. If they do not respond they can be, and are, voted out of office and other elected in their place.

To use Lincolns famous quote from the Gettysberg Address, which, while in another place and another context still applies to our western partliamentary deomocracy, our government is a "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

So, the people already decide, through our elected representatives.

It seems that it is just those people who think that they are above the rest of us who feel that they should be the ones to decide differently, which seems to be the tone of both the original piece, and many of the posters here.

Except Doug, the obvious shortcoming of our system that due to the lack of CIR or other extended democratic powers, we cannot actually implement such a change without:
1- having enough local representatives across the electorates of the country who want it remedied- regardless of if people outside these electorates would have voted for them
2- compromising other policy (for example, if we only had three candidates who supported it, but one wanted to reinstall the death penalty, and the other advocated communism, the electorate is expected to choose between unsatisfactory road regulations, the death penalty and communism, as opposed to being able to individually remedy this rule independently and thus rendering your shallow rhetorical argument moot.

You know, it's almost sad that it takes you almost two weeks to come up with another attempt at an argument, and they take seconds for the rest of us to pick apart, even with information we already posted because you always avoid having to address them.

And King Hazaa your idea is simply to have more collateral damage on the roads until what you consifdered to be the correct balance is found?

And the other answer to CIR is for the electorate to lobby hard for these, and they could be achieved. That is part of democracy also. It seems that the vast majority of people are quite content with the present system, otherwise they would be joining political party branches in droves.

Perhaps it is really that rather than 'the vast majority' of people may agree with the speed limits - and many who get caught are because of inattention rather than your deliberate policy of flouting the speed limits because you are so much a better driver than the rest of us?

What is next? Abolish parking fines and let people park where and when they like? After all, surely there should be no reason for people not to park blocking the view of pedestrian crossings at schools, or on 'blind corners'.

Why not just let those people with high powered cars set the speed limits?

Actually, I am in favour of speed limiters on cars. And before you start arguing that they would not give you enough reserve speed, is it really necessary to have to do 150k/h to overtake someone who is driving at 108k/h in a 110k/h zone? Or is that more to do with ego?

By the way, does your nickname really indicate that you want to be able to rule? King? King!! hahaha

Lets us get rid of Kings and other non democratically elected symbols of (horse) power!

For CIR simple- if people were in fact in a position to say what they wanted with policy, and instead advocated a change, then you do not actually have satisfaction in the policy at all, do you?

And you attempt to pretend that because nobody is going to start a riot over our speed limits or lack of CIR rights = satisfaction with how things are going at the moment can be casually tossed into the "Doug's poorly constructed attempt to obsfucate or divert the issue" bin.

You know Doug, considering we have given you plenty of time to cough up a single fact of counter-evidence to the mountains of evidence to our own cases, but instead make posts that exist in a vacuum of information progress, filled with nothing but repeated attempts to be dramatic and stupid analogies, I might just wait until you can actually substantiate your position than returning once in a while just to bore us with another "If you speed you cause great death and suffering because you're bad and you don't like rules"

By all means continue- you're helping our case, after all.

And don't bother trying to pretend we aren't answering- we actually have already answered your presumably rhetorical questions long before you even joined this thread- let alone continued to reply with the same line over and over.