Speeding vs accidents

[RichieRedHotSS]

Does anyone have any ideas or an explanation as to why it is apparently OK to have an accident, but it is illegal to "speed". As you are all aware there are several fixed speed cameras around the country located at alleged accident "black spots". These cameras are there to take a happy snap of you as you fly along at 5 or maybe even 10 km/h over the speed limit. As you are obviously a menace on the road and have the POTENTIAL to have an accident you are automatically issued a fine and lose the allocated amount of demerit points from your licence. However, if you are not speeding and actually DO have an accident, well that's all good. Providing the damage is minimal and no-one is injured (as you were not speeding the accident is proabably a minor one) you will get away with it. This is because the police are not required to attend these minor accidents even though someone has broken the law. Therefore, no fine and no demerit points lost?

[SSBarney]

You answered ur own question. If the police dont attend how are they spose to know to give u a ticket:doh:
But if Police do attend it is quite possible for them to give both parties a ticket, and do if warranted. Just cause u didnt cause the accident doesnt mean ur driving didnt contribute. In England it is standard for both parties to be charged with careless driving.

[planetdavo]

Swapping lanes without indicating, tailgating, talking on mobile phones, drink driving, doing burnouts and other reckless driving. Many as bad as speeding in the eyes of the law, some worse.
ALL are offences that police can book you for, just a camera mostly can't.....
All of these don't need an accident to occur to be fined for, BUT, if they cause an accident that police attend, any can lead to a fine.

[spuddamonaro]

i was involved in a single car accident 3 years ago, where i lost 3 points and a 200 buck fine for reckless driving, was doing 5-10 km/h over the speed limit which is why it happened. it was totally my own fault, and learnt from it!

[Vulture]

i was involved in a single car accident 3 years ago, where i lost 3 points and a 200 buck fine for reckless driving, was doing 5-10 km/h over the speed limit which is why it happened. it was totally my own fault, and learnt from it!

So you're saying that there was no other factor involved other than you travelling 5-10km/h over an arbitrary limit? Hmm, it must be a magic number indeed, this speed limit.

[spuddamonaro]

So you're saying that there was no other factor involved other than you travelling 5-10km/h over an arbitrary limit? Hmm, it must be a magic number indeed, this speed limit.

yes that and not knowimg the area i was drving through!

[gaz vyss]

Go and do the advanced driving course. May open up your eyes as to why these rules are thrown in our face everyday. Find a local authority that conducts them at the dragway and you will find out how long it will take to pull up from 160.

And before anyone says so, yes, i have done both the advanced car and bike courses, several times.

An accident is 2 objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time. Better space management would be great, but who's going to shift the little child that walks out in front of you. That's why time management is imposed... AKA speed limits. No accident is acceptable.:cool:

[shyLS1]

Ok speed is ONE of the causes in any given accident, and the gov and coppers sure do like to jam it down our necks!
But road conditions should be look at alot more closely then it is. In my area a bridge that has been unchanged for as long as I can remember (lived in the area for over 25 years) has been neglected, locals including myself have been complaning to the local council for a least that long to get the bridge fix, it carries a large volume of traffic and is extreamly dangerous for anybody who doesn't know the area.
A work mate had an accident on the bridge at the start of the year on his moto, but as he didn't cause himself any major injury (bike right off) the bridge issue did not change.
A couple of weeks ago a young lady with her cousin were on their way home along the same road when they lost controll of their car and went off the side of this bridge (no gard rails!) and hit a tree, killing both. Speed was not the cause.
Council then said that they would look into a redevelopment of the area, they sent out planners to the bridge and replaced the road marker that the young lady had taken out.
One week later (or their abouts) a nother car lost control and went off the bridge in the opposite direction and landed on it roof, lucky the lady driver survived. Speed not the cause.
Now the local council and state gov are doing something about the bridge, it only took 2 deaths and 1 near fatial accident to get things moveing.
As I said eairler speed is not the only cause of the accidents, maybe the pollies and the press should look at road conditions and do something about these "black spots" instead of sinking money into more speed cameras that in my oppion do nothing to safen our roads.
And where is all this money that they get from drivers going to? not the roads thats for sure!
Matt

[planetdavo]

Speeding is the easiest one to catch the most people doing. The governments theory, (besides revenue), is that reducing the amount of speeding leads to a change in drivers attitudes. Whether people agree or disagree with it being only a money making exercise, there is merit to their argument.

[jhono23]

i think we should be able to speed as long as we get proper training like police do...hahahaha

[RichieRedHotSS]

Speeding is the easiest one to catch the most people doing. The governments theory, (besides revenue), is that reducing the amount of speeding leads to a change in drivers attitudes. Whether people agree or disagree with it being only a money making exercise, there is merit to their argument.
Yes, I agree their is some merit to their arguement, but if the government / police were serious about changing drivers attitudes, they would be fining everyone that caused an accident (not just those involved in major accidents). These are the drivers that really need to be educated and have their attitude adjusted. Some people a very capable of driving at 5 or 10 km/h above the limit, yet others struggle to drive at 5 or 10 below the limit and invariably cause an accident, or at the very least, frustration amongst the drivers around them.

[planetdavo]

Yes, I agree their is some merit to their arguement, but if the government / police were serious about changing drivers attitudes, they would be fining everyone that caused an accident (not just those involved in major accidents). These are the drivers that really need to be educated and have their attitude adjusted. Some people a very capable of driving at 5 or 10 km/h above the limit, yet others struggle to drive at 5 or 10 below the limit and invariably cause an accident, or at the very least, frustration amongst the drivers around them.
True, but there have to be some rules in life, a speed limit being one of them, re having a license. I'm sure we all know of a few areas that have speed limits set too low, conversely some seem a bit too high to be safe as well!
But, "accidents" do happen, and it is a part of life. It's all about trying to minimise the number of them and the severity of them, but there simply isn't enough police hours available to go looking to fine EVERYONE who has a minor accident. I know a couple of police officers, and they definitely don't have enough spare time to take up this suggestion. Remember that all the speed cameras around are a POLITICAL decision, not a POLICE decision.

[chook]

i was involved in a single car accident 3 years ago, where i lost 3 points and a 200 buck fine for reckless driving, was doing 5-10 km/h over the speed limit which is why it happened. it was totally my own fault, and learnt from it!
So you reckon the contributing factor was the extra 5kph, I doubt that was the only factor.

So who draws the line in the sand and says that the posted speed limit is the safe speed and that every KM over that posted limit is unsafe. If we use the logic currently used then we should be all stationary. After all 60kph is more dangerous than 50kph. 50kph is more dangerous than 40kph and so on. If sombody pulls out in front of you at the wrong time you can hit them at 10kph. So 50kph is safe and 55kph is unsafe. Bullocks.
Yes the higher the speed the greater the stopping distance, no question there but to say that 50kph is safe and 55kph is unsafe is a load of crap. Any speed can be dangerous if something happens in an instance even the posted limit. So 5kph will make SFA difference.

[BRISVX]

I think RichieRedHotSS makes a good point, because the people actually causing crashes often receive no punishment other than an insurance excess payment (which they just pay and forget about). If they were also punished with driving offenses, maybe they would drive with more care in future (wishful thinking?). The insurance companies can often attribute blame to one, or both drivers, based on the road rules, so it could be just a matter of passing the outcomes to Police, based on certain critera (for example where the matter was clear-cut). I don't believe fining both parties as standard practice is appropriate though, as most incidents would only involve party doing the wrong thing (running into the back of a stationary car at lights, not giving way, going through a red light etc.). The way technology is going, it will probably happen in the future anyway........cars will be continually tracked and logged by GPS, and crash investigators will subsequently analyse the data to attribute blame.

In regard to the other aspect raised of "speeding", I think it would be better to look at it in terms of whether the speed was appropriate for the circumstances/conditions, rather than just an outright limit as such. I can point to many situations where someone may be doing less than the official limit, but still be driving totally inappropriate to the conditions (such as I saw on the weekend where an idiot drove dangerously close to a crowd of people who had spilled onto the roadway outside an auction........driver wasn't speeding, but it was totally inapproriate to not slow down to a crawl). The reverse also happens where you see people getting booked for speeding simply because it is sign-posted 60, but it's a 3-lane highway with no intersecting roads and protected by barriers on both sides.........someone travelling at 65 on such a road is officially "speeding", but doesn't mean it was unsafe to do so. Common sense just isn't being applied much anymore.

[el_hefty]

'Speed doesnt kill, its the sudden stop'

Speed can contribute to an accident but more often than not there other causes as well.

A general lack of skill required to pass a test to get a licence and a large cause of accidents probably the largest but for some reason the government is doing nothing to change this.... oh except have your l's for longer or p's for longer... doesnt mean your skill level is increased at all

Road conditions which include, road surfacing, off camber, lack of vision, objects by the side of raods (lightpoles trees ) just to list a few

Lack of courtesy, tailgating etc etc

the list goes on and on and on, but for general road use speed is just a contributor to 'some' accidents and often very few

To believe the advertising SPEED kills is stupidity as speed alone never kills or every race driver would be dead... wouldnt make for good f1 racing. Not every German dies on the Autobahns and for good reason actually they are incredibly safe roads. Yes a racing environment is the perfect environment and driving down the road isnt but we can make it a lot better.

The government has a focus on just one of the contributors as to why there is carnage on our roads and for them its just the easiest to 'police'

[planetdavo]

Solution?
Make it MUCH, MUCH harder to get a license in the first place! Places like Germany wouldn't give 90% of our drivers a license. People in Australia EXPECT to get a license.
It's really just way too obvious......

[nudenut]

... and too politically unpopular. Either party's voting base would dry up pretty quickly if they adopted a policy of more stringent training and examination, because while people pay lip service to wanting road safety, they don't want to pay for it themselves.

Focusing on speeding is the easy way out - unfortunately it even seems to have permeated down to some of the cops who have the tough job of trying to keep the roads safe. I was behind a (unmarked but easy to spot) cop travelling along the freeway, and saw him ignore an idiot changing lanes where there wasn't enough room, causing the guy in the other lane to brake to avoid a collision. Less than a minute later the cop pulled someone over who went past him about 5km/h faster. Go figure.

[spuddamonaro]

So you reckon the contributing factor was the extra 5kph, I doubt that was the only factor.

So who draws the line in the sand and says that the posted speed limit is the safe speed and that every KM over that posted limit is unsafe. If we use the logic currently used then we should be all stationary. After all 60kph is more dangerous than 50kph. 50kph is more dangerous than 40kph and so on. If sombody pulls out in front of you at the wrong time you can hit them at 10kph. So 50kph is safe and 55kph is unsafe. Bullocks.
Yes the higher the speed the greater the stopping distance, no question there but to say that 50kph is safe and 55kph is unsafe is a load of crap. Any speed can be dangerous if something happens in an instance even the posted limit. So 5kph will make SFA difference.

Like i forgot to mention, but then stated afterward, i didnt know the area aswell, when a roundabout came up after a short crest, where signs for the roundabaout, displayed on the down hill run on the crest, didnt give me enought time too pull up, in a car with no ABS, and 5 people while doing approx 55-60 in a 50 zone at the time. Also it was quite cold so the road may have been slighly damp/icy, but am not entirely sure on that fact so that is why i disregarded it.

So long story short, i should not have been speeding in an area i did not know. Mind you when i say i caused $7000 damage to the car, apparently $3500 was to repack the airbags, and installing new sensors, so really i caused 3500 in body damage. I believe it would be hard to cause 7000 damage to a cars body, just travelling 5-10 km over the speed limit.

sorry i should have also mentioned this. i probly confused the hell out of some people:weirdo: :doh:

[Firebug]

I think everyone in this thread so far has made a good point. But there are too many variables to pin down one or two reasons. In my opinion, some points made (not verbatum):
:) "Speed increases the potential to have an accident", more accurately, speed decreases the potential to avoid an accident.
:) "was doing 5-10 km/h over the speed limit which is why it happened" Refer to above. If spuddamonaro has learnt a lesson from this situation, then cudos to him. You will often find most drivers after a stack will blame anything else but themselves. To admit blame shows a bigger person.
:) "Hmm, it must be a magic number indeed, this speed limit." Yes a magic number. Too many think it's the be all end all to travelling safely. I think its more of a level of risk the govt is happy for you to pose to yourself and other road users.
:) "Go and do the advanced driving course." I think a great way of learning what your machinery under you is not capable of doing in controlled conditions, so it may infuence the way you drive on the road.
:) "But road conditions should be look at alot more closely than it is" Very true. Not a lot we can do as individuals but slow the f*ck down in any area you are not familiar with. I'd try to balance my unfamiliarity with the speed of the traffic around me so as not to become a rolling road block. "And invariably cause an accident, or at the very least, frustration amongst the drivers around them." Most drivers cannot control patients, touch on that shortly.
:) "reducing the amount of speeding leads to a change in drivers attitudes. Whether people agree or disagree with it being only a money making exercise, there is merit to their argument." The rule makers have a win win win situation here. Maybe save a few lives, look good on the tv doing so, make buckets of $ in the mean time...
:) "others struggle to drive at 5 or 10 below the limit and invariably cause an accident" This will probably never change so we need to adjust our driving to suit these situations. Too hard to justify time lost on the road behind slower drivers by getting frustrated and risk a stack up by doing something silly. A little patients is the key.
:) "But, "accidents" do happen, and it is a part of life. It's all about trying to minimise the number of them and the severity of them, but there simply isn't enough police hours available to go looking to fine EVERYONE who has a minor accident." Pollies need to allocate more $ from speed cameras into policing to help rectify this.
:) "So 5kph will make SFA difference." Only one I don't really agree with. Attended a stack not too long back where a young fella introduced himself to a steel light post. Road was wet. In fact we worked for about an hour and a half in teeming rain to cut him out. Post hit square in the driver door. Light posts were 200m apart with nothing in between to hit if he missed it. So 5 - 10 slower and he may have missed it. Or if he still hit it, maybe the post wouldn't have intruded in as far as the transmission tunnel. Or hell, maybe he was just unlucky, might have been his time to go... If cars didn't move, they wouldn't have accidents. So every km/h you do either side of the limit is proportional to the mess created on impact.
Don't get me wrong, I love the occasional squirt and mischief like the rest of us, but one needs to keep in mind that speeding/traffic fines are just penalties imposed on us playing the game. Hopefully teaches us to play a little longer... :D

My 2 & 1/2 cents... ;)

[SLugg]

more people die from smoking than cars do they fine you for smoking ..no
and what about the 253 people in every 100,000 that die from heart attacks
do they fine you for being fat and unfit ...no

its a way to raise revenue because they know that cars are a required item and we are an easy target , same as fuel excise , cant do without it so TAX or FINE em and pollies get a wage rise...

some facts here http://www.transport.sa.gov.au/rss/content/safer_people/issues/male_and_female.htm

and here http://r2r.lgant.nt.gov.au/50k/figure.htm

[lsb05]

Remembering reading an article in one of the motoring mags last year saying that in the U.S the transport authorities had completed an extensive study on road accidents.

The major contributing factor being fatigue not speeding. Thus they are going through the process of increasing the national speed limits.
Some one else might be able to shed light onto this.

cheers
lee

[Vulture]

Remembering reading an article in one of the motoring mags last year saying that in the U.S the transport authorities had completed an extensive study on road accidents.

The major contributing factor being fatigue not speeding. Thus they are going through the process of increasing the national speed limits.
Some one else might be able to shed light onto this.

cheers
lee

I think it was in Montana that they had a REDUCTION in fatal crashes when they made their open roadways unrestricted; they then suffered an increase when they reinstated the speed limit.....the "Montana Paradox"

Read here (http://www.hwysafety.com/hwy_montana_2001.htm)

[Alleycat]

An an ex para I can tell you some stories about accidents and its not nessasarily speed but as mentioned fatigue and lack of road sence.

Road crash fatalities are something we hear a lot about – newsreaders give us the road toll almost as often as the cricket score. Less talked about are the survivors: yet for every death on the roads another eleven people are injured badly enough to need hospital treatment. The shocking truth about road trauma is that recovery from these injuries can take years, and the pain may never go away. Trauma is the hidden tragedy of the road.

Look at the point that children need to be taught this in the judgement factor in assessing a cars speed before crossing the road - that same thought can be applied to speeding in cars and as mentioned road conditions there are valid points in all the discussion here ill lay all this on you for reading though :

Many of us cheat a little when driving. We figure that while the speed limit is 60 kilometres per hour the police won't pull us over if we sit on 65. So we happily let the speedo hover just above the speed limit, unaware that by so doing we are greatly magnifying our chances of crashing.

Using data from actual road crashes, studies estimated the relative risk of a car becoming involved in a casualty crash – a car crash in which people are killed or hospitalised – for cars travelling at or above 60 kilometres/hour. They found that the risk doubled for every 5 kilometres/hour above 60 kilometres/hour. Thus, a car travelling at 65 kilometres/hour was twice as likely to be involved in a casualty crash as one travelling at 60. For a car travelling at 70 kilometres/hour, the risk increased fourfold. For speeds below 60 kilometres/hour the likelihood of a fatal crash can be expected to be correspondingly reduced.

One reason for this increased risk is reaction time – the time it takes between a person perceiving a danger and reacting to it. Consider this example. Two cars of equal weight and braking ability are travelling along the same road. Car 1, travelling at 65 kilometres/hour, is overtaking Car 2, which is travelling at 60 kilometres/hour. A child on a bicycle – let's call him Sam – emerges from a driveway just as the two cars are side-by-side. The drivers both see the child at the same time and both take 1.5 seconds before they fully apply the brakes. In those few moments, Car 1 travels 27.1 metres and Car 2 travels 25.0 metres. The difference of 2.1 metres might seem relatively small, but combined with other factors it could mean the difference between life and death for Sam.

The figure of 1.5 seconds is the reaction time of average drivers. A driver who is distracted (eg, listening to loud music, using a mobile phone or has drunk alcohol) may take as long as 3 seconds to react.

The formula used to calculate braking distance can be derived from a general equation of physics:

http://www.science.org.au/nova/058/058img/equation1.gif

where Vf is the final velocity, V0 is the initial velocity, a is the rate of deceleration and d is the distance travelled during deceleration. Since we know that Vf will be zero when the car has stopped, this equation can be re-written as:

http://www.science.org.au/nova/058/058img/equation2.gif

From this we can see that braking distance is proportional to the square of the speed – which means that it increases considerably as speed increases. If we assume that a is 10 metres per second per second and assume that the road is flat and the braking systems of the two cars are equally effective, we can now calculate braking distance for cars 1 and 2 in our example. For car 1, d = 16.3 metres, while for Car 2, d = 13.9 metres.

Adding reaction distance to braking distance, the stopping distance for Car 1 is 27.1 + 16.3 = 43.4 metres. For Car 2, stopping distance is 25 + 13.9 = 38.9 metres. Car 1 therefore takes 4.5 more metres to stop than Car 2, a 12 per cent increase.

We can now see why Car 1 is more likely than Car 2 to hit Sam. If Sam is 40 metres from the cars when the drivers see him, Car 2 will stop just in time. Car 1, though, will plough straight into him. By re-writing the first equation, we can calculate the speed at which the collision occurs:

http://www.science.org.au/nova/058/058img/equation3.gif

(where d = 40 metres minus the reaction distance of 27.1 metres = 12.9 metres).

Thus, the impact occurs at about 30 kilometres/hour, probably fast enough to kill Sam. If the car's initial speed was 70 kilometres/hour, the impact velocity would be 45 kilometres/hour, more than fast enough to kill.

These calculations assume that the driver has an average reaction time. If the driver is distracted and has a longer than average reaction time, then he or she may hit Sam without having applied the brakes at all.


Theres my 3 cents !

[SLugg]

well said mate and very thought provoking , hopefully this info will save a life sometime with someone on this forum.
Thanks for the post ;)

[Vulture]

Using data from actual road crashes, studies estimated the relative risk of a car becoming involved in a casualty crash – a car crash in which people are killed or hospitalised – for cars travelling at or above 60 kilometres/hour. They found that the risk doubled for every 5 kilometres/hour above 60 kilometres/hour.

It's touching that you have so much faith in this piece of research. When I first heard of it I was certainly very suspicious of its methodology and since it has reared its ugly head again, I suppose I should do a proper critique of it soon and post it here. Have you actually read the study in question? There are more than a few very serious problems with it. A few quick points: did you notice that a third of the crashes studied involved a car turning into the path of an oncoming vehicle? Only 10% of the crashes at the site in question were included in the study; it is funded by FORS and other government agencies – now God forbid they might have a vested interest in the results and the researchers no doubt would like more business from them. As an ex-para, you would know that transport to hospital is a crappy measure of severity of crash yet this is a key feature of the study. I work as an Emergency Principal House Officer and coming to hospital in an ambulance is not a guarantee of having any injury at all yet this is the main measure in the study – from my point of view (seeing large numbers of UNINJURED people post RTCs via ambulance) it is staggeringly naïve. It also goes against raw observational data from around the world which shows speed over the limit to be a relatively small contributor to cause of road crash.

Because of the extremely restricted nature of the study, its conclusions are likely to be extremely limited in practical application but that won’t stop authorities trumpeting it from every rooftop (they already have of course as this has been around since 1997).


well said mate and very thought provoking , hopefully this info will save a life sometime with someone on this forum.
Thanks for the post ;)

May I suggest that not turning in front of someone whilst driving at not stepping onto the road whilst drunk is more likely to save someone's life than 5km/h less speed.

[Alleycat]

from my point of view (seeing large numbers of UNINJURED people post RTCs via ambulance) it is staggeringly naïve.

Yes, I did read the study but considering that you have this thoughts in your comments and dismiss trama ( non visable in all cases) as 'uninjured' would too be considered naive.

[Vulture]

Yes, I did read the study but considering that you have this thoughts in your comments and dismiss trama ( non visable in all cases) as 'uninjured' would too be considered naive.

I think you misunderstand. I think it is naive of the researchers to use transport to hospital as measure of crash severity (which is what they have done). This will bias the results or at least introduce a poorly controlled variable This is not a good measurement. As you will know, the ambos have to bring in just about everyone now due to the medico-legal environment. I regularly see people post RTC with no injuries whatsoever. Not sure what you mean by "non visable", can you eleborate?

[VYBerlinaV8]

It seems to me that we have probably been over this topic a time or two already, but that's ok.

Fundamentally, some sort of framework has to be imposed on how we operate, including how we drive. Part of this framework (the rules, if you like) involves restricting how fast we can travel at various places. The issue, it would seem, is the numbers that are used to describe how quickly we travel.

Because the general public bitches and moans when there are many different speed limits, a few more general limts are applied. In order to make these fit the framework, they tend to be fairly conservative.

Now, given that most people here are on this forum because they like performance cars, it is only natural that many of us would like to use some of that performance. Being restricted by the current speed limits feels limiting to many of us. This is normal! Many of the limits we have probably aren't appropriate, but like I said above, I think the numbers are set fairly conservatively.

The problem arises in that 'the law' has to draw a line at some point. Where that line is will always be debated. Having law enforcement that deliberately focuses on this part of the framework (speeding, that is), doesn't really help with compliance with the full set of rules. But it's the easiest thing to police.

I think that the choice is ours. If we don't like the rules, don't drive on the road. Alternatively, take it to a drag strip or track. As someone else said earlier, Australians seem to think they have a right to a driver's license. Is this really the case?

Oh, and for the record, I have 7 speeding fines under my belt over the last 13 years - none of them in my V8. None of them were large, but all were my own fault.:nopity:

[SSBarney]

A factor I have thought might distort the wipe off 5 theory is; how do they get their factor of the speed the car was doing? If you are involved in an accident and were speeding, it is highly likely u will "reduce" your claimed speed when being interviewed by Police. Therefore the 65km cars may well have been much faster.

[nudenut]

I have no problem with wipe off 5 in suburban areas. On freeways, highways and arterials (which is where cameras are invariably set up over here) it's a different story ...

The speeds quoted in these studies can be very misleading. Years ago a Wildcats player was killed in an accident where he pulled out from a stop sign to cross a dvided road (2 lanes each way, limited sidestreets, no houses) and way t-boned. Absolute tragedy. I remember seeing a precise number, I think it was "138.7 km/h", plastered all over the papers, the alleged speed of the other car in the 70 zone where the crash happened.

Speaking to a friend recently, I found he consulted in that case - for the defence. The figure was based on calculations from skid distance, assumptions of friction coefficients, vehicle masses, dynamic responses, damage etc, from an engineer employed by the prosecution. Under cross-examination this engineer admitted that there were margins of error in most of the figures used, and gave what he thought to be reasonable numbers for these possible errors. Allowing for all this made the figure 138.7 +/- about 70km/h, so the car could have been doing anything between 69 and 219 km/h based on the calculations. No mention of this in the paper the next day (surprisingly enough).

IMO the other car probably was going way too fast in a 70 zone - let's say 100km/h. Part of the reason that that speed is too fast in that situation, though, is that other drivers know it's a 70 zone and naively assume that everyone will be doing that speed without checking properly. I wonder, if the limit was 100km/h there, and everything else the same, whether the accident would have happened at all?

Looking at the Montana thing it seems that artificially low limits can bring about a feeling of false security. Maybe that's one reason for the huge number of country crashes we have. Freeway limits of 100km/h are enforced in the metro area, which I believe are artificially low. Suddenly, a kid who's used to a 100km/h limit on a fenced off 3 lane freeway with mild curves and no side streets or roadside trees gets out in the country, sees the 110 sign and assumes the road must be 10% better. Recipe for disaster.

[Vulture]

Because the general public bitches and moans when there are many different speed limits, a few more general limts are applied. In order to make these fit the framework, they tend to be fairly conservative.

Doesn't seem to agree with almost daily experience where one can drive through 4-6 different speed zones in a few Km.
The evidence is clear from the research: speed limits should not be "conservative" they should be appropriate i.e. decided using sound engineering principles, not hearsay, public opinion or politics. This is the safest way to set speed limits.


Having law enforcement that deliberately focuses on this part of the framework (speeding, that is), doesn't really help with compliance with the full set of rules. But it's the easiest thing to police.

Indeed, it probably makes compliance with other road rules worse as people develop contempt for ridiculous speed limits and over-the-top enforcement.
The fact that enforcing speed limits is seen as easy should not be an excuse to avoid tackling the real problems in road safety - just because they are difficult or will cost money.



I think that the choice is ours. If we don't like the rules, don't drive on the road. Alternatively, take it to a drag strip or track. As someone else said earlier, Australians seem to think they have a right to a driver's license. Is this really the case?


Obtaining a driver's licence is indeed a right - provided you pass all the tests necessary to get one :)

I'll try not to be too philosophical but laws need to exist and be enforced for the right reasons. If a law is going to cause inconvenience to people, cost them money, cause them anguish, cause them to lose a privilege etc. then the onus of proof that these laws are in existence for the right reasons is on those who make and enforce them. When a law is broken by a large proportion of the population without serious consequences and without good evidence that the laws are necessary or appropriately set then there is a problem. The rabid enforcement of speed limits is probably the best example of this.

[stevej07]

Speed is a factor in all accidents as it is impossible for 2 stationary objects to collide.

Just an interesting thought i had on the whole speed issue.