The argument has a lot of validity.

When you add to the equation the low margin of error given to drivers, ie high penalties for slightly exeeding the speed limit, and the frequent changes in speed limits, we are heading to a situation of speed limits and enforcing reducing road safety as drivers are spending too much time looking for speed limit signs and monitoring their speed.

The fact that BMW withdrew from the Australian market their automatic speed limit notificaton system as it was too hard to determine the speed limit just shows the system in Australia is broken.

One point not mentioned in the article is the number of places where the only message conveyed by speed limit signs is "the people who set these limits and put up these signs are complete idiots".

The examples I have in mind are where the posted limit is actually too HIGH. For example - a 100 metre stretch of road, between a T-junction and a roundabout, with a limit of 60 (without the sign, it would be 50); for example - a tightly curved narrow climbing road - where it is hardly possible to do more than 30, with a sign increasing your limit from 50 to 60. Etc.

Good article David. This is a subject on which I hold a great deal of passion.

< Previous versions [of the National Road Safety Strategy] were largely responsible for such things as lower suburban speed limits, greater use of speed cameras, double demerit periods and school zones. The current one proposes lower speed limits, additional enforcement including point to point and in-car speed monitoring, and increased penalties.

Well… I think that the NRSS is way off-track with their approach!

Firstly, I totally disagree with school zone speed limits, implemented as a matter of course in front of every school in the country! In some instances, where a school is on a major road with an 80 or 100kmh speed limit past it, slower zones might be appropriate. But only in a few cases.

This is a terrible complication for drivers, which in my extensive driving travels around Australia, I have found just impossible to confidently deal with.

The trouble is; the school zone signs are there all the time but only apply for a couple of hours a day on certain days. So I find that the signs often don’t register, because you become conditioned to them not meaning anything the vast majority of the time.

Presumably authorities realise this and so we have big strips painted on the road, orange borders on speed limit signs, lit up speed signs and the like………… in some instances, but nothing of the sort in many others!

Sorry, but slow zones that apply for only a short period are DANGEROUS! Especially when you are required to reduce speed from 80 or 100 down to 40!!

Children around schools get put in a false sense of security that all traffic is moving slowly past them. But there is the very real chance of the occasional driver, quite inadvertently, going much faster.

continued

I also totally disagree with 50kmh limits in urban areas as the standard unless otherwise signed. This is another complication that drivers didn’t need.

We now have a complete mixture of 50 and 60kmh roads in most urban areas….. and nowhere near enough speed signs to make it clear which applies where. If you don’t see a sign in an urban area, you are supposed to assume that the speed limit is 50. But it could easily be 60 or more if you are on any road other than a minor suburban street. All other drivers around you know the speed limit, but because you have recently turned into the road and not yet encountered a sign, you don’t.

These different speed limits, plus a hopelessly inadequate amount of speed limit signage set up conflict situations, which can lead to tailgating and other risky impatient belligerent behaviour and cause road rage, and just generally be more dangerous than if we had never had 50kmh speed limits imposed upon us in built-up areas.

In short, I think that the management of road safety is really quite dismal.

And when this management regime hits you with a whopping great fine and loss of demerit points for exceeding the speed limit by a mere few kilometres an hour, regardless of whether it is perfectly safe to do so the particular conditions and circumstances, then I will yell; BLOODY SUBINTELLIGENT HYPOCRITES - you get our the management regime properly worked out, and then you might be in a position to really heavily clobber drivers who commit very minor offences!

If people drove to the determined speed limit, everybody would have a fair go. Trying to cross a road when people are not at the appropriate speed, makes judgement errors.
Most drivers seem to think 5 k's over is ok.
Responsible drivers drive to the limit.
Authorities will now take the opportunity to further lower the speed restrictions.

Australian Road Safety experts agree with their European peers who have greatly reduced the road death rate per 100,000 population in much of Europe And urban Australia needs follow and save the lives of around 800 people a year

Road traffic Injuries now pose a public health crisis that requires urgent action at at a national an international level. That is why the Director General of the WHO in 2004 said.
“ Too often, road safety is treated as a transportation issues. Not a public heath issue ... many countries spend far less effort into understanding and preventing road traffic Injuries than they do to understanding and preventing diseases that do less harm”

This view is soundly based on data from selected bicycle friendly EU countries which have the following 2010 road death rates per 100,000 population: , Sweden 3.0, Netherlands 3.7, Japan 4.3, and Germany 4.7, Denmark 4.5, Switzerland 4.5 France 6.1. Australia’s death rate is higher (6.2) . The data shows that Australia is not bicycle or pedestrian friendly country.

This why The European Parliament adopted a resolution in 2011 that “strongly recommends the `responsible authorities to introduce speed limits of 30 km/hr in all residential areas and on single lane roads in urban areas which have no separate cycle lanes “ This resolution is is part of a wide range of measures to halve Europe’s 31,000 annual road fatalities by 2020. (Kock Report 2011)
Europe is that a 30 kph limit on local roads and main roads are much safer for all non-motorised users, motorised wheelchairs and electric bicycles. It is very clear that on the basis of kilometres ridden by bicycle in the Netherlands is still safer even though no one is compelled by law to wear a bicycle helmet.