The whole business is enormously frustrating.

I travel all over the country. Those who know me will attest that I am a very conservative driver. I hate tailgating and belligerent driving. I hate not knowing what the speed limit is, which happens very frequently. I want to roll with the flow, which is the safest speed to do, but which puts me dangerously close to the bookable limit most of the time.

I went for over 20 years without losing a demerit point despite being a prolific driver. I’ve tried to do my bit by making complaints about seriously bad driving that I have been subjected to. I’ve developed a very keen interest in road safety.

I want there to be a good policing regime, I want to support the police.

I pass fixed and mobile speed cameras all the time….but I cannot avoid occasionally exceeding the speed limit or the speed that I want to travel at – it just gets away and I suddenly find that I am doing 5 or rarely 10kmh faster than I want to be doing – only for a few seconds at a time, because I am so frequently watching my speed and still driving perfectly safely and conservatively for the road and conditions….and then…bang…you’re compelled to fork out for a very substantial fine.

There is something severely wrong with that. As far as I’m concerned, it really does amount legalised extortion.

Ludwig you are just whinging about the speed limit problem.

I suggest you start thinking how to solve the problem. In urban areas the EU road safety planning agencies found solutions in many countries which has reduced road fatalities for all road users of all ages including young pedestrian bike and the elderly not allowed to drive a car on medical advice. Ludwig should always consider that because, someday before you die you will need to cross roads on foot or in a wheel chair.

I wrote a book in 1974 "Safe Cycling" which was advocating a 40 Km/hr speed limit on urban residential streets and have lobbying for that ever since and still am. In Geelong (Corio) it was done as part of the Geelong Bikelan. It still works well today as it does in many suburbs in Australia. Particularly in Unley a suburb of Adelaide and in Sydney 4 lane feeder roads with parking lanes and bikelanes side by side allowed the road to have two motor vehicle lanes only with a 40 km/hr limit. It needed a few pedestrian refuges cut into the parking lanes.

Very impressive result, however Sydney still has along way to go but its is trying hard despite the opposition of petrol headed whingers.

<< I suggest you start thinking how to solve the problem. >>

PEST, have you read all my posts on this thread?

We can solve the problem by:

Having adequate speed limit signage, instead of utterly inadequate signage that just leaves you so often not knowing or not being sure of what speed zone you are in!

We particularly need speed signs just past intersections so that when you turn into a road you know what the speed limit is, instead of often not knowing for a long distance until you encounter a sign.

Ideally we should have speed limit signs (erect signs of numbers painted on the road, or perhaps a colour-coded line along the side of the road) on all sides of every intersection. But it would be huge improvement if we just had this at all major intersections.

I find it absolutely amazing that this isn’t considered to be a fundamental and mandatory part of road engineering, construction and maintenance! Crikey, every other sort of sign and line marking on the roads seems to be done to death, while speed limit signage sits in absolutely stark contrast!

Empower the public to make complaints about speeding and the dangerous antics of those who bully you when you are going too slow for them even though you are sitting on or close to the speed limit, and to gather evidence to corroborate these complaints.

It is of fundamental importance that the very thin blue line is considerably thickened! And the best way to do this is not with thousands more police, but by involving the public, with just the same sort of principle as with neighbourhood watch or community anti-littering campaigns. I really find the lack of facilitation of community involvement in the policing of road safety to be utterly disgraceful.

More suggested solutions tomorrow.

Good on you for working on the facilitation of cycling and the maximisation of a safe and harmonious relationship between drivers, riders and pedestrians. Great stuff.

Hi Ludwig,
I agree that it is of fundamental importance that the very thin blue line is considerably thickened by involved citizen action. That how the speed reduction scheme in Unley an suburb of Adelaide over many years and the state government is encouraging that in the rest of Adelaide. There is on road signage and traffic management measures are provide good back up.
If you send me an email I will sent you some photos and an article.

alanparker@labyrinth.net.au

PEST, I would certainly like the article and photos that you have offered, but I've tried the email address you provided and the one from your website and they have both bounced!! ( :>|

David Leyonhjelm’s 85 percentile agreement rate is good in theory, but impossible to implement in practice, if it means having a period of no speed limit on each section of road in order to determine it!

What are we to have – new signs all over the place that indicate a section of road has no speed limit for two weeks, or whatever....with a constant procession of different roads getting short-term speed-limit-free zones?!?!

We can’t determine it in any other way!

So the 85% percentile still has to be an educated guess determined by bureaucrats or road engineers. Respect for speed limits can thus not really be improved by its use.

The only thing that we can do about respect for speed limits is for the authorities to be open to public concerns and make adjustments where needed. In my experience even this just doesn’t happen at all!

A couple of years ago I took a set of concerns about speed limit signs around Townsville to the council and Main Roads Dept. I followed it up a couple of times with comments on the Main Roads website, which purports to seek and facilitate your feedback! Not one of them has been changed, and yet every one is clearly in need of improvement, and very simple improvement at that, either in the placement of signs or the speed limit itself.

They didn’t disagree with me regarding most of them (~10 in total), but seemed to take the attitude that they will not be moved to make changes by a mere conscientious member of the public! This was just another example of the public being powerless to assist in the management of road safety.

So, further to my suggested solutions to dealing with speed limits, we need proper facilitation of public feedback and suggestions…and to act on them!

Authorities have to realise that the cruising speed and the speed limit are very close and that it is very easy for people to slip inadvertently over the bookable limit. So we need a strongly sliding scale of infringements….

continued