Just another case of people wanting to be their own god and make up the rules themselves. Just not enough smacks as children I suspect.

Steve I very strongly believe that what you should be doing is calling for speed limits to be policed at face value. And for drivers to be aware of and take responsibility for all the error factors that may lead to their speedos reading lower than they should be.

Calling for a larger leeway in speed limits is just the wrong approach altogether.

It doesn’t make sense. You lay out all your arguments in a very logical manner. But you miss this most fundamental point.

Crikey, if people are not going to respect the law at face value, but at some fuzzy approximation, or what they think they can get away with, then we are in real trouble when it comes to road safety, equality on our roads and harmony (eg; absence of road rage and aggressive driving).

How do the people that you (or your organisation) are going to address at this rally reconcile the notion of not sitting strictly to speed limits with the notion of being expected to do all sorts of other things on the road in a totally proper and safe manner? Your message may well serve as reinforcement for them to do what they think they can get away with, with respect to all sorts of other things, regardless of the letter of the law.

To promote anything other than top-quality law enforcement and top-quality law-abidance is I think irresponsible.

“we're not asking for an increase in speed limits”

Well, essentially you are Peter.

The experience in Queensland, where the police don’t book anyone on the highway until they are doing at least 11kmh over the limit, is that most drivers sit a few ks over, in the full knowledge that they are over the limit. Many sit right on 10 ks over, including lots of truckies.

Long-haul truck-drivers have got the message loud and clear that they won’t get booked for 110 in a 100 k zone or 120 in a 110 k zone. They know exactly how accurate their speedos are, and they sit right on the maximum that they can get away with. This means that they are constantly coming up behind other traffic. Most of them follow too closely. And when you have large articulated trucks overtaking other traffic at a regular rate, you are bound to have problems.

We also just run into general problems between people who take it a little bit easy and keep their speed to 100 or a bit below and those who do a few ks over. There are an awful lot of people our there who get impatient real fast with drivers that are at all slower than them.

continued

woops, that should have read … ‘Well, essentially you are Steve.’

And worse still, many people who would drive at or under the speed limit, because they respect the law or because they don’t trust the police not to book them for going even a little bit over, or because they are not sure of accuracy of their speedos, are forced or strongly pressured to cruise at a few ks over, in order to better roll with the flow and be less subjected to tailgating and risky overtaking.

With a leeway, you effectively have two different speed limits – one for the law-abiding citizen and one for the irresponsible citizen who pushes the envelope as far as they can…. and there is no shortage of them around. The larger the leeway, the more pronounced this is, and the more conflict that is generated as a result.

So I have to strongly disagree with your push for a “reasonable tolerance” with speed limits, and I implore you to take an entirely different tack, as outlined in my previous posts today.

Ludwig, how do you do?

You ask, in retort to pepper's post, "where were there open speed limits in the 60s?"

A - pretty much all over the entirety of Australia, except within built-up areas which were a blanket 30 mph or sign posted as 50 mph, otherwise speeds were "de-restricted".

And...

"You can hardly say that cars then were more of a death trap than they are today. What’s your rationale for this?"

A - I can't explain pepper's rationale, but I can certainly understand why he would say such a thing. Here are some of the reasons -

Cars didn't have seat belts.
Cars mostly had 4 wheel drum brakes.
Seats didn't have head supports.
Dashboards were made of steel with little impact padding if any.
Windscreen wipers rarely did anything useful.
Few vehicles were equipped with windscreen demisters/heaters.
Tyre technology was almost non-existent, corners were always exciting.
Cars didn't have collapsable steering columns.
Cars didn't have any roll-over protection built into them.
Doors had no anti-intrusion structure.

And there's plenty more to prove the point.

Basically, back then cars were difficult to stop and didn't like going around corners. If you hit things, the vehicle's construction wasn't at all user friendly. The modern car must be, at a guess, 100% more safe than those old "death traps". But might I add, those old cars were a lot more fun, required much more strength and skill to drive well and had just so much more character and charm than today's "fantastic plastic". But those days are gone forever. Thankfully, some of those old cars have survived in caring hands.

Hi Gentleman this is my first post here.

I've read what has been said and I find very logical and sensible arguments over all.

It would be interesting to find out the back grounds of each poster here as that may indicate/explain your different views. I personally come from a Policing background (mainly traffic) so feel qualified to comment on this subject.

Whilst I agree that speed limits are there to be obeyed and there are strict guidelines that the NSW RTA have to use to determine the speed limit for each section of road, I also believe that many of them are unrealistic.

I have also found that the use of speed limits to a certain extent has been hijacked as a cost effective substitute for many of the wider ranging and vastly more expensive problems eg: driver education, upgrade of roads etc.

I think today's motor vehicles are vastly better than they use to be and the 'good' road are vastly safer than they use to be, yet we have maintained an artificially low speed limit in some areas, such as expressways. The reasoning for this is varied and very controversial. I am of the opinion that many drivers today are not capable of handling over a fraction of their vehicles' capabilities. I've found that most drivers over estimate their ability rather than under estimate it. This happens to varying degrees and what influences this is a whole topic in itself.

I don't believe that anyone should be given a ticket for exceeding the speed limit by 3Km/H. This to me is a joke and is quite rightly called revenue raising. I would defy anyone to tell me with any certainty that they can accurately estimate their speed to this degree (ie: without looking at their speedo), so to be enforcing at this speed is ridiculous.

I think I'll stop on now as I don't want this to be too long.