There are drivers and drovers, good bad and ugly.
And the act its self is very different.
City driving is one thing express way or open road another.
I speed, the thought that those who do are criminal, or cause more smashes is weird, every one speeds now and again.
Swapped the big six 4x4 fora Suzuki Jimny, great toy.
Speed? 110 if dropped from an airplane.
But yes in slower zones it is safer to make clean air around you.
Driver training courses need constant updating.
Road workers know in school holidays death is never far away, saying the kids are driving at that time,or school teachers.
What they actually think is the joy of holidays has seen some drivers leave the brain at home.
Surely some of us can tell story's of slow cars just managing to over take a massive truck at the top of a hill.
Then slamming the breaks on just sitting under its bull bar all the way down.
First and often fatal mistake, putting your trust in another driver.
Drive to survive.

Some just don't grasp the basics. They'll defend their right to be a nuisance to the end. Stay left and go with the flow. Everyone travels at around 105. They just do. If you've got a problem with that either stay left AND ON 100 or don't go on the motorways. You deserve to be abused if you're in the right lane trundling along like an old fart driving a volvo. GET OUTTA THE WAY.

I noticed someone mentioned 60km/hr zones. They're different as they are in populated areas. No one has an issue with doing smack on 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 as these speeds exist to protect pedestrians or road workers. But the highway is something else.

<< But the highway is something else. >>

Yes StG the highway is different to built-up areas. But what is really different is roadworks zones. Now they are something to behold!

Very few people lower their speed to anywhere near the temporary low speed limit right through roadworks zones or only approximate the signed 40 or 60kmh right in the actual work area and not in the lead-up or lead-out parts of the zone.

Time and time again when driving on highways all over the country, I’ve been in a line of traffic that is happy to sit on 105 and maintain respectable gaps between vehicles, and slow to 80 and 60 in the towns, but which just treat roadworks temporary speed limits with total disdain!

I don't have much sympathy with the nanny state. Our current speed limits are one obvious expression this affliction that has overtaken our lives.

In the 60s, driving the rather agricultural cars of the day, on the very agricultural roads, I regularly averaged 70 miles per hour from Sydney to Melbourne/Brisbane over night, towing a 1.5 ton trailer. On the long straights in Victoria I would regularly be passed by semi trailers. Believe it or not, I did not have accidents, & as you can see, I survived.

In 68 General Motors gave a few of us pre production models of the 327 GTS Monaro, the Bathurst model, with instructions to "break them if you can". They wanted any weaknesses found before the big race.

On the same overnight interstate runs I would often average around 80 MPH in those Monaros. Even then the semi trailers were passing me on those long Victorian straights.

Today on vastly improved roads, in the much better cars, we are told it is "dangerous" to drive at over 100, or occasionally 110Km/H. They even have the hide to claim that "every kilometer over is a killer".

Now I don't know what it takes for some of you to be insulted, but I find this cr4p highly insulting. If they were a little honest they may say that my neighbour is unsafe over these limits, & that is possibly true. True but only because those speeds take so little concentration, that drivers are likely to fall asleep, or be busy texting as they go.

Yes I should be dead some say, but I last had an accident on the public road in 1960, & even that was the other blokes fault. Perhaps speed isn't quite as dangerous as they reckon.

It’s a very good point Hasbeen – speed limits are often just patently too low!!

Of course, they’re set on the cautious side, but often ridiculously too much so.

A couple of pet hates:

50kmh zones on main roads in some towns, where they are flat, straight and just the same as 60 or even 80kmh zones elsewhere. This I consider to be a total perversion of the introduction of 50kmh as the speed-limit-in-built-up-areas-unless-otherwise-signed a few years back.

and

Absurdly long zones on highways leading out of built-up areas, and out of roadworks zones, where you are obligated to do a stupidly low speed.

There is this crazy requirement for the speed limit to be the same on both sides of the road!

Yes we need a slow speed limit leading into build-up areas and roadworks zones. But for goodness sakes we don’t need it leading out of them!

On the lead-out, the speed limit should not have to be the same as it is on the other side of the road!

I noted in WA last year that there are many minor back roads with lots of curves and hills with 100 or 110kmh speed limit, on which you are really battling to get up to that speed. It is almost like saying that there is no speed limit!

It seemed to be so totally at odds with the super-cautious approach I’ve seen in various places in other states.

But it apparently works for them, with no increase in road fatalities as far as I’m aware.

And 130kmh works in the NT. Indeed, there appears to be a strong call to remove this speed limit and go back to no speed limit at all on the highways, and very little call to lower it.

So yes, I agree Haz: there is plenty of scope around the country for raising speed limits…. and doing so with no or insignificant reduction in safety.

I too agree with hasbeen lets face it I too am a petrol head and at times in the past raced a bit of road on track.
speed in the right hands is not dangerous.
Cars may have auto gears and the lazy fools ability to set speeds but the driver is in control.
And of the car that may run in to you.
Defensive driving is the best way.