O gee, just when I was going to pull my woolly head in, someone wants me to continue. How nice.

The other horrible aspect to the policing of speed is……. the incredible inadequacy of speed limit signage!

‘What!’ you say? Well, how often do you find yourself not knowing what speed zone you are in? Around the area that you are familiar with, maybe not much at all, but in unfamiliar areas; a damn lot! How often do you assume a speed limit or just roll with the flow of the traffic without actually knowing the limit? How often do you find you cannot recall what the last speed sign was? How often do you turn into a road and not see a speed sign for a considerable distance?

The fact is, speed limits are extremely inadequately displayed in most places. This creates a number of problems.

Firstly, it is all too easy to assume the wrong speed limit and wind up getting busted for doing 25kmh over the limit. If you assume it is 80kmh and you do 88, (which is acceptable to the general public and police alike, as explained in an earlier post) and the limit turns out to be 60, then you could be dealt quite serious blow in terms of a hefty fine and demerit points – considerably more than if you exceeded the limit by less than 15kmh. In Queensland at least, speed limits often jump by 20kmh rather than 10, especially from 60 to 80 to 100.

More next prattle

From previous prattle

Secondly, it creates a schism between those who know the area and the speed limits and those who don’t and have to take it very carefully until they encounter a speed sign. Basically, if you don’t know the speed limit, you need to err or the side of caution and that means doing 10 or 20kmh lower than you think the speed limit probably is. And if you do that, you often incur the wrath of other drivers, with consequent tailgating and other impatient and offensive behaviour.

But the police tell us that it is totally the responsibility of the driver to know what the speed limit is, end of story. Not knowing is not a defence that will stand up in the face of a police officer who has pulled you over to book you. And police have a tendency to operate in areas where there is a lack of adequate signage and a consequent high frequency of drivers who wrongly assume a higher speed zone.

So why aren’t speed zones adequately signed?? I am completely stuffed if I know! Some small coastal communities in central Queensland have speed limits painted on the roads. Tenterfield and probably many other NSW towns have speed limits painted on suburban roads just past very corner. THIS is what we need! We need know what the speed limit is straight away each and every time we turn a corner into a new road. And we need to be reminded on the same road, very regularly

There is an awful duplicity inherent in the policing of speed. It is multifaceted;

Firstly, as explained above, there is often a schism between those who know an area and hence know the speed limit, and those who don’t. So the next time you see interstate grey nomads Ma and Pa Kettle pottering along at 40 in a 60k zone, it may just be that they are not being road-hogs but that they are driving slowly because they have not yet encountered a speed limit sign on that particular road, and they are new to the area.

Secondly, there are two rules; one for the vast majority of us, which says that we can do a few kmh over the stated limit and not risk being harangued by the cops or anyone else, and one for those who either take a principled stance or just don’t trust the police and stay under the stated limit at all times, usually 5 to 10 k’s under. The difference in all situations is up to 20kmh. If you have experienced a vehicle in front of you doing 20kmh less than you want to do, or if you have a vehicle behind you right up your arse, pushing you to go get a move on, you’ll know what I mean. Every driver has experienced both.

Thirdly, the degree of leniency shown by the cops is not constant. In Queensland it seems to be pretty uniformly 10kmh over…. except in 40k school zones and apparently sometimes in 110k zones.

Fourthly, the powers of discretion that police have as to whether to book someone or turn a blind eye and as to what margin of leniency they are going to observe, are a real worry. They do get abused, but even if they didn’t, there would still be a strong belief in the community that they do.

This duplicity breeds impatience, aggressive and intimidating driving, road-rage and other offensive and dangerous behaviour. It is not the only cause of these things, but I reckon it is a major contributor.

Crikey, I haven’t had a whinge for a few days.

As if the incredible paucity of speed signs wasn’t bad enough for those who desire to keep to the speed limit all the time (or within 10k’s over), there is yet another whole miserable aspect to the saga – you just have to monitor your speedo every few second to make sure your speed is hasn’t crept up over the limit!

When you are driving around town or on the highway and you want to roll with the flow, which is basically almost as fast as you can get away with, you literally have to monitor your speed at least every five seconds! Of course your speed is going to occasionally creep over your desired level.

I experimented with this for about a year. I tried as hard as I could to keep my speed from not exceeding 10k’s over. Every time it did, I would pull over and wait for ten seconds, then the second time in the same trip, for twenty seconds, etc. But no matter how much of this self-inflicted education, or punishment, I just could not prevent my speed from creeping over the limit every so often.

Most of the time you have a very small speed margin in which to stay. That is, between the cruising speed and the effectively illegal speed.

Cruise control is good on the highway, but not around town. As soon as you touch the brake it turns off. So you have to concentrate on whether it is still functioning or not. And it has the downside of making you reluctant to touch the brake until you really need to. If you can set so that it doesn’t turn off when you touch the brakes, then you have to make sure you reset it every time you change speed zones. And of course only a very small fraction of drivers have this facility.

I don’t know the answer, but it is one of the truly maddening aspects to driving.

So why am I so concerned about road safety, to a point way beyond anyone else it seems? Is it some reaction to being stung by the cops once too often? Is it a result of a death of a loved-one or an otherwise bad accident?

No.

It is a result of the realisation that there are so many real risks out there on the roads and that so many drivers are simply a million miles short of satisfactory, and that very few drivers have a good awareness of and skills in dealing with the many risk factors. It is also a realisation that the whole deal with road safety is terribly badly dealt with and could so easily be greatly improved. And extending from that, it is the realisation that we as a society have basically just come to live with the road carnage, which is totally unacceptable to me.

My passions of botany and geology have taken me across the country and off into the wilds at a very regular rate for many years. I have always done a lot of open-road driving, and around-town driving. My job regularly takes me all over north and central Queensland.

I went for about 24 years without accruing a demerit point, all the time being a prolific driver. This is the result of two things - being a cautious safety-conscious driver and there just not being anywhere enough policing effort on our roads. I could have been booked innumerable times, especially in the early years. So the second factor is very significant.

When eventually that record was broken, it was because I missed a speed sign, and was busted for doing 72 in a 60k zone, when I thought I was in an 80k zone.

So that’ll lead me into my next posting – about how an exemplary driving record meant absolutely nothing to the cops when I questioned that ticket

So I was booked for doing 12 kmh over the limit. The police didn’t book anyone at the time (2000) unless they were doing at least 11kmh over, and still don’t in Queensland as far as I know. This effectively means that the police have trained drivers to treat the speed limit as 10k’s over what the signs say. So I was effectively booked for doing 2k’s over. It was an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel infringement.

I wanted to preserve my exemplary driving record of more than 20 years standing, so I wrote to the district police superintendent pointing out the nature of the offence and my record, which I presumed he could very easily confirm.

I received back an ugly form letter saying that speed will not be tolerated and that no further correspondence will be entered into. There was no indication that my record had been checked, nor that it meant anything whatsoever anyway. Do you think that has blighted my impression of that Innisfail superintendent, that local constabulary, and the traffic branch of the Qld police in general? Bloody oath it has.. and very powerfully so.

When I lived in WA many years ago, there was a lot of discussion on a reward scheme for drivers who went for ten years without the loss of a demerit point. I don’t know what happened with it, but it was a good idea.

Basically, we need a carrot and stick approach to road safety, not just a bloody big stick! Let alone a bloody big stick that whacks a few people now and then for a small set of misdemeanours while missing the vast majority of offenders regarding the same misdemeanours, and failing miserably to whack anyone who infringes the law outside of that small number of driving offences.