In the midst of an election, Victorian Liberal leader Ted Baillieu had this to say about speed limits in that State.
I’m not suggesting that people should exceed the speed limit, far from it,” Mr Baillieu said. “In reality, the tolerance at the moment in 60, 70 and 80km/h zones is even higher than that. We’re making it simple so people can understand. “People don’t want to speed, they simply want a system that is fair and they can understand.”
But of course that’s exactly what he’s suggesting – what’s so difficult to understand about a speed limit?
Meanwhile in the Northern Territory, which currently has open speed limits, Clare Martin gets it, and sees a logic that appears to have escaped the Victorian Liberal opposition leader.
Open speed limits will be axed in an attempt to curb the Northern Territory’s devastating road toll. Demerit points, increased fines and a gradual roll-out of red light cameras will also be introduced. “We’ve taken the tough decisions needed to reduce the number of people killed,” Chief Minister Clare Martin said.
Yep, speed kills, so why is Ted Baillieu encouraging an interpretation of the road rules that may see more Victorians die on the roads?
What are the numbers for NT, Phil, so we can compare like with like?
It would be great if what was actually happening down there. people get booked for doing 2k over the limit.
Ted is simply saying that they will be more tolerant and not use fines to gain revenue. On this alone Bracks should lose, as he has gouged the public so that labor can hire more of its consituency.
I’ll agree that it’s not exactly the same JC, NT is coming off a base of no real limits, while Vic is practically a police state on this issue.
However revenue raising is not the issue, road deaths are.
But the point is made, speeding is the issue and has been shown to increase fatalities, so why the leniency when we already know this is the case?
Ah, but has speeding by 2-10km/h been shown to increase fatalities?
And do they set cameras up where fatalities are likely, or where it is really really safe to speed?
Disclosure: I have TWICE been booked for travelling at 66km/h on Alexandra Pde (8-lane dual carriageway with a 5-metre grass median strip) AFTER the last side-street (i.e. just prior to it becoming a 100km/h freeway) at 5 in the fucking morning.
Trust me, FDB there is a difference being hit by a car at 40kph versus that of 50kph and for that matter 60kph, my broken bicycles and those of my customers can attest to the damage, and when I’m in serious training I’m usually on the road at 5:30 am, and have been buzzed by far too many drivers either drunk/asleep and speeding at that time of the day.
Not you though………..
I think there are two things that aggravate me about speed cameras:
1) they don’t make allowances for overtaking. If you’ve got a car doing 107 km/h in front of you on a freeway , is it really safer to crawl past them at 110, or temporarily accelerate to 120 and get yourself clear of them? With speed cameras, you have to crawl past?
2) Furthermore, the speed limits on rural freeways, and some of the lightly trafficked rural roads, are too low. Travelling on the Hume Freeway at 114 km/h, or for that matter 130 km/h, in a modern well-maintained car is not particularly dangerous. The Europeans do it all the time, with a lot more traffic and worse weather than us.
Robert, if there’s a car in front of you on the freeway doing 107km/h, you’ve got no choice but to suck it up. It’s illegal to overtake them, and really, do you need to get to where you’re going 3km/h faster?
What I’d like to do is design traffic lights with inbuilt red light cameras and take out a patent on it. Then offer it to state govts where they pay me $X per year for each of these traffic lights. Or have the red light cameras in the poles the traffic lights are on.
Just need to make the red light cameras fit in the poles.
[ahem] illegal to overtake them at more than 110km/h.
Ooops – I wrote about red light cameras – same principle for speeding cameras. And not put warning signs “there is a speeding camera coming up”.
Don’t get me wrong (actually, I probably went a bit over the top). Of course there’s a difference. Just like there’d be way less fatalities if everyone went at 20km/h. I just think the stats would show that the likelihood of accidents and the damage caused would be only very slightly worse at 10km/h over the limit. Whether the limit is 20 or 80 km/h.
They say “x% of drivers are speeding, and y% of fatal accidents involve excess speed, therefore we’ll slug you $150 for going 5km/h over the limit” and pass that off as a decent stat analysis. How much excess speed to significantly increase risk? Can’t we have a decent explanation, or are we too stupid?
My main point is about the positioning anyway. Transparently it’s done where they will catch the most speeders, and of course that is where it’s safe to speed, because most people aren’t psycho idiots. In Melbourne, that’s largely on streets with dedicated cycle lanes, pedestrian crossings with lights, and in my case no side streets and about to go up to 100km/h about 300 metres down the road.
I’m almost always a cyclist myself, and have no time at all for speeding on the streets where they never have cameras – the ones where there’s much more danger of speed actually being a problem.
Liam, you’re missing my point. There’s nothing stopping me overtaking. It’s just that the overtaking process itself is made more dangerous than it needs to be by the rigidity of the limits.
FDB,
The risk of damage from increased speed depends on a few things – driver skill, vehicle design, vehicle maintenance, road design, road maintenance and several other factors.
The best things to do to reduce the road toll would be to improve driver skill and the roads. An idiot driving a car would be unsafe at any speed. You can kill someone by driving over them at 5kmh – at 20kmh you are already going faster than most people can run. A better skilled driver will be safe at much higher speeds on an appropriate road in an appropriate vehicle.
The various Australian governments do not want to spend (our) money to improve driver education or the road system – it is much better to appear to do something by putting on ads that mis-represent the true risks and then buy a lot of cameras to pay for it and get even more revenue. If they were putting them outside schools and in other such areas I would not have such a problem with them – but wasting them on nice, wide, safe dual carriageway roads is just plain revenue raising.
I would take a bet that if there were no speed restrictions on adults over 25, the roll toll would barely budge.
look, the only roads I watch my speed is where I think there could be cameras. I never watch my speed on secondary roads where they are less likely. I sometimes find myself doing 70 on tehse roads yet I see no problems traveling at that speed.
It’s not speed that kills it’s careless driving. You could be driving slowly yet get into trouble.
Anyway it has become really stupid. We’re been forced to drive slower than 30 yars ago when roads and particularly cars were much less safe. It’s a joke. Most cars these days have abs brakes etc. and road handling even for an average priced car is terrific.
It’s a joke. Bracks shoud get the boot for theft.
JC, you’re right about the tech, cars are way better, however there are a lot more of them, and increasingly, a lot less road to service them, and as you say the main issue is recklessness, all the more reason to curtail speed whatever the technological improvements.
Unfortunately those are the roads where cyclists are very likely to be, not to mention other similarly vulnerable road users, many of us avoid the main roadways because of the traffic intensity and speed. Look out for us, ok?
Phil,
I think that is the point. The abuse of the cameras is driving negative behaviour. The failure to put them on secondary roads and instead using them for revenue, is probably why the toll is no longer really dropping as fast. People know it is “safe” (in monetary terms at least), to speed on minor roads, while watching our speed on the major roads. This is just plain silly – but it is precisely the behaviour being encouraged.
I take your point Andrew, so that leaves education………
1. Every set of traffic lights should have a red light camera.
2. It is technical possible now, to introduce a system where the road tells the car the speed limit, and the car will not exceed this limit.
3. Speeding while overtaking is still speeding.
âHowever revenue raising is not the issue, road deaths are.” What road toll would be acceptable Phil? Zero? Last I checked, catching the train was still an option if you donât want to take the risk.
âFDB there is a difference being hit by a car at 40kph versus that of 50kph and for that matter 60kph..â? so should we wipe off 5km, 10km, 20km? See where this silly argument is leading?
ââ¦.my broken bicycles and those of my customers can attest to the damage.â? Ah. Now I get it. You are an enthusiast for that wondrous piece of 1880 technology the bicycle. You may think you are saving the planet but I would love to see how many accidents are caused by bicycles forcing cars to brake and change lanes.
The only comment you have made that I agree with is âVic is practically a police state on this issue.â? If Ted can take on the road toll wowsers, I may actually vote Liberal.
Wow. Watch those strawmen burn.
Robert, if the car in front of you is driving at 107km/h and you’re in a 110km/h limited zone, the two things that are stopping you from overtaking are 1. the local speed limit, which you can’t (except legislatively) change, and 2. the potential safety of the overtaking maneouvre, which is a function of how much road you have to creep past at 3km/h. If there’s lots of straight road and no oncoming traffic—I might do it too.
It’s not the laws that are stopping you overtaking, it’s the driver in front of you. Lots of laws are arbitrary, but it doesn’t mean you can break them just because you think they don’t make sense. And I ask again, just what’s the big problem with a difference in speed of 3km/h? Even if your journey is hundreds of kilometres long, that’s a difference in trip time of minutes. You’ll probably save petrol and engine wear, too.
…
On the rare occasions I drive a car, I wear a hat and drive at or slightly under the speed limit. Deal with it.
Yep, Student T, zero. And that’s among motorists as well, who make up the bulk of death’s. And yes, catching the train is a great idea for those who drive. I highly recommend it to you.
And one last thing on your silly polemic, the bicycle is a wondrous piece of 2006 technology, something that attests to it’s longevity and continued usefulness.
Have you actually been into a bike shop lately? As for this quote:
I think you’re confused. Cars should be changing lanes when passing another vehicle that’s in front of them. I know you may be surprised to hear that.
i really would like to kick some heads in this thread, just for fun, like a bully, but I don’t have the patience today.
(however, phil, you do realise that many of the deaths on NT roads are actually not caused by ‘speeding’ for memory the system of automobility is very different: different populations using vehciles, different roads, drink driving, etc. The speed factor is almost irrelevant.)
I’ve found that the best way to defeat the speed camera system is to use the speed advisory cameras to ‘calibrate’ my speedo and then confound them by refusing to go over the speed limit. Gets ‘em every time!
My main commute to places away from home is the Great Ocean Road (yeah it’s tough I know) and after years of driving during peak tourist season, the Sunday returning drivers, the middle of the night, I’ve found that the duration of the trip of 70km or so varies little – 2 or 3 minutes out of an hour.
You can give yourself stress attacks waiting for the few seconds every few kms where you might have a chance to get past only to find yourself stuck behind the next lot. I’ve driven like this myself, and often found myself parked next to someone I passed 15 minutes ago at the first traffic lights in Geelong. Now I just chill and go with flow, listen to some music or the radio and arrive less stressed. It also gives me more opportunity to watch out for drivers who might become one of the 2-3 people who fatally sacrifice themselves on this stretch of road every year.
Trying to get everywhere as fast as I can in my car is stressful and a large effort for little return. Relax and enjoy the journey. As equally important as the destination.
Tyro Rex, yes, it’s entirely technically possible. The fact that no government has been game to try implementing such a rule should tell you something about its popularity.
Liam, might I suggest that I have done a great deal more driving on rural freeways than you, and that creeping past a B-Double at 110 km/h is much more dangerous than doing so at 120 km/h.
Do you also drive on mountain passes at 15 km/h at then refuse to let people go who are sitting behind you because if *you* don’t think you can drive the road safely at more than 15 km/h, *they* are obviously hoons and morons who need to be slowed down by your efforts?
Yes! And not only that, but they should be putting their indicators on! Before they change lanes!
Indeed. And last I checked, driving at a legal speed was still an option if you want to foil those nasty revenue-raisers.
Some of you blokes sound like a man with a
penis substitutered MG I once knew who got heftily fined for doing something like 165 kph in the country and wouldn’t shut up whingeing about it. His argument was that his car was designed to go that fast, and therefore it should not be illegal for him personally to do so.Which really isn’t very far from some of the subtexts above: ‘I’m a great driver no matter what speed I’m doing — it’s all those other idiots that make the road dangerous.’
Meaning what Glen?
Let us know what you think.
Don’t be ridiculous Glen. There’s no traffic accident which wouldn’t be less traumatic at a lower speed. I heard Ian Johnston of the Traffic Accident Reaerch Centre at Monash say this on PM two nights ago in relation to the proposed changes to the NT laws.
Student T, I hope I never have the bad luck to encounter you on the road.
Actually Pavlov, here in NSW that’s called the Singleton defense, named after John Singleton who actually used that as part of his argument to avoid being fined/suspended after a drive in his Bentley somewhere north of Hornsby. It was pretty funny and caused a rukus for a few days.
What is this thing all these guys have about PASSING other cars??
Fellows. No matter how many vehicles you pass there will always be another one in front.
Speed limited trucks going 110km/h on freeways don’t need to be passed. Just drop back to a comfortable distance.
And as for ‘letting’ someone past on a road like the Great Alpine Way, I don’t know what this would even mean as most of the time the road shoulder either abuts a cutting or a steep drop.
Why is it so goddamn hard to go the speed limit? I manage to do it, like, all the time.
I’m really interested in what kind of broader constituency Bailleu is pandering to here, obviously he’s struck a nerve with the motorheaded amongst us who accuse states of revenue raising.
But is that enough? Or is this just populist nonsense from a Govt that will probably go on keeping on with the revenue raising if some miracle saw them come to power.
And yes, I’m also puzzled by the attitude of many motorists and their god given right to do as they please on the road, why isn’t 110kph enough?
For several years I used to work the road as a rep for bicycle importers (I know, irony), loads on driving all over the state and one thing you learn pretty fast is that it’s not worth it to beat the road train to the front, and it ain’t worth it from a financial POV as far as the fines go, driving like that for a living also gives you perspective, as I’ve seen several accidents later on up the road that I know were brought on by speed.
Anyway, I’m with th ladies, when driving, patience is a virtue.
And remember Victorians, if Baillieu is elected the dead will rule the living (I stole that).
Ahem.. I’m not a lady Phil. But well put. An entirely rational perspective.
I humbly bow and seek pardon from those whose magnificence at driving is such that driving with one eye on the speedometer and the other on the road and another checking the blind spots and another the rear vision mirror – whoops, slight problem here.
The question (at least to me) is: What are the road rules there for? If they are there to allow for all of us to drive as if we were driving an EH Holden after having a frontal lobotomy, the current rules make sense. We do not have to think and we simply accept that our betters, in the government, know more than we do. Our cars and roads are simply not capable of such terrifying speeds as 111 kmh – why, you could die simply thinking of such a speed.
If our rules are to manage the risks, though, then they should be more risk sensitive – either in their enforcement or (better) in their framing.
Spped does not kill. Plenty of countries have higher limits than ours – and some have no limits on many roads. What kills is poor driving and poor roads. Governments will simply not admit to that as it is easier to blame the road users and then appear tough by dropping the limit again.
Oh dear, can’t you move your eyes, Andrew?
Do the drivers’ licence people know?
I imagine you have done a lot more rural driving, Robert. Can’t argue with experience, but then, ‘experience’ isn’t at all relevant to the point I was making. No matter what kind of road it is, you still shouldn’t be passing B-doubles at 120km/h, as it’s against the law, as any rural copper I’m sure would be glad to tell you on the other side of an infringement notice.
I’m not saying uncritically that you shouldn’t do it, nor do I believe road rules are the be-all and end all of road safety, the same as I know that there are lots of things that are illegal that are intuitively safe for adults to do—say, smoking joints with mates, protesting in a crowd of more than three in 1980s Queensland, or buying booze in WA on a Sunday—I’m just saying don’t be surprised when you get booked for breaking a law you knew perfectly well existed.
Anyway, as driving temperament goes I’m with Laura and Slim.
(But I’d love to see Glen get angry).
“I humbly bow and seek pardon from those whose magnificence at driving is such that driving with one eye on the speedometer and the other on the road and another checking the blind spots and another the rear vision mirror – whoops, slight problem here.”
If you can’t handle the complex nature of driving, perhaps you should consider voluntarily handing your license in?
(This reminds me of the time I got into a stoush with a dude on Liam’s blog about whether or not wearing a helmet whilst riding a bicycle diminishes one’s ability to move one’s head around quickly to look behind you etc etc., hence leading to more accidents for cyclists. Words fail me.)
And here’s the short but wierd thread in its full glory, Kate.
No, it’s the sudden stop.
Slim, on the net anyone can be a lady, there was this one time on a dating site………………oh, sorry, wrong post.
Andrew, I learned to drive in a comprehensive program in Canada many moons ago, it taught me to do all of those things you appear to have trouble with, plus how to handle a car in inclement weather, black ice that kind of thing, so yes it is possible to drive and chew gum at the same time.
You should try bicycle racing, in a bunch elbow to elbow, corner to corner at 50kph, that’s trust in your fellow man and skill in the extreme, I should also mention that cycling does make you very aware of your vulnerabilities so many cyclists (and I should not forget motor cyclists) do make very good drivers.
I just read Liams post at Stoush, how on earth did I miss that one, very funny. Helmets weigh around 250-300 grams, must have been the tinfoil and antennae that boosted the weight.
Glenn Reynolds posted an interesting story yesterday on speed cameras and the possibility they actually make driving more dangerous.
[LINK].
But he would say that wouldn’t he CL?
I ‘m puzzled by the inability of people to travel at the speed limit, why the yo-yo on the accelerator? They have some kind of twitchy foot problem?
Trackback
Great post by the way. Was going to make a comment but decided the topic deserved a thread to itself over at Catallaxy.
Ok, you are, of course, free to have a go at the flippant comment and miss the substance. Are we here to simply comply with possibly arbitrary rules, or do the rules have to have a reason?
Or another question from a differing point of view – when the rules are being enforced, should the resources devoted to enforcement of those rules be targetted at people doing things that would normally only increase the associated risks in a small way (travelling at 120kmh in a 110kmh zone) or those increasing the risks in a large way (120kmh in a school zone?
Every time a camera or a police unit is deployed on a major highway (where few deaths occur) we are missing an opportunity to deploy them outside a school, shopping centre or on a suburban street.
“I ‘m puzzled by the inability of people to travel at the speed limit, why the yo-yo on the accelerator?”
I’ve lost two friends (both of whom were in the sober non-speeding vehicles) in car crashes where speeding and booze were cited as culpable factors.
So yeah, why the need for speed? Unless of course yer in a Bentley GT, nipping cognac from yer hip flask while spiritedly motoring down the Autobahn from Hannover to Stuttgart. The Krauts have had 80 years to get it right, and did so with Teutonic throughness.
Meanwhile back in Aus, yeah why the panic you may arrive 12 minutes late if you don’t leadfoot it?
If people want to go fast in urban and semi-urban conditions while in control of several tons of metal, then they should stump up for this luxury -whether it’s occasional fines, road tolls or other infrastructure and medivac taxes.
Out there on long country roads though, what the camera doesn’t see, no one grieves over. Except the odd parent.
Hmm…I don’t think this has really been a helpful comment for either side of the debate.
Fucking html tags just flash by when yer speeding online don’t they? Lets reverse and try that corner again.
Unless of course yer in a Bentley GT, nipping cognac from yer hip flask…
Ideally, both. But the place to decide is Parliament, not the overtaking lane.
Andrew, I encourage you to buy or borrow a bike and ride along any given major highway, and see the glass and smashed car bits for yourself.
The speed limits do not exist to annoy brilliant drivers like youse all.
They exist to protect brilliant drivers like youse all from terrifyingly hopeless drivers who wander from lane to lane at a zillion miles an hour..
I really wish people who complain about being forced into being slow would realise that simple point. The life they save could be your own.
.
With all the revenue gathered from speeding libertarian folk, surely we can afford to have cameras in both places! Apart from the initial capital cost and some maintenance, it’s mostly done by computers anyway. And then subvert the system by refusing to break the speed limit! Leadfoots of the world unit, you’ve nothing to lose but your fines (or maybe your licence).
ps – this thread now reads like the letters page in the Drive magazine in the Age.
Stupid tossers (not youse, who are all brilliant drivers and have sophisticated arguments and listen carefully to each other and admit when you are wrong) whinging about evil governments trying to enforce speed limits and how changing your tyre pressure means you might be accidentally over the limit etc etc..
In fact, I have noticed on long drives to Bendigo that most people are staying UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT, particularly where it goes up to 110.
I get cranky about this because a) I mostly ride a treadly, b) I used to have a Subaru and now drive an aged Magna c) I used to drive the Great Ocean Road all the time d) I am really fond of children and small furry animals and e) I used to ride a motorbike which teaches you that the laws of physics make things happen faster than any mammalian reflex system.
Oh, and h) I once worked with people with Acquired Brain Damage.. dreadful, dreadful stuff.
Three boys in my class. One of my classmates’ father. My neighbour, with four children. Country blokes, they all like a bit of booze and a nice V8 with a bit of grunt. Some of them were barrelling down those rough old roads, ‘one for the road’ (most likely a longneck of VB) between the legs. They probably didn’t see the tree or the roo or the truck that got them.
Maybe there is room for a debate on road laws, on speeding, but let’s make it factual and real. This isn’t just about being stuck behind the nanna in the volvo doing 70 in the 80 zone. It’s about people’s lives and deaths.
“Every time a camera or a police unit is deployed on a major highway (where few deaths occur) we are missing an opportunity to deploy them outside a school, shopping centre or on a suburban street.”
Fun with road stats. From the safety of your own swivel chair!
And what’s wrong with deploying more cameras? Won’t they also protect us from crime and terrorism and shit? Not to mention the economic boost they deliver by providing more raw fodder for reality TV shows. Surveillance =entertainment these days. With the added sousveillance bonus too!
On a slightly tangential note, can’t wait to to watch on YouTube, JG Ballard’s knighthood ceremony.
I should add that I am *not* in favour of changing speed laws in urban or semi-urban areas. I support the imposition of the 50 km/h speed zones in urban areas.
I merely think that on rural highways and freeways, with minimal traffic, on a fine day, I am prepared to accept what I believe is a very small extra risk to drive faster. There is *nothing* magic about 100 km/h or 110 km/h. If Europeans can happily drive on their motorways at 130 km/h, why can’t we, given our better weather, wider lanes, and less dense traffic?
And, even in urban areas, it’s not just about speed. Fitting the kind of tyres I have on my car, instead of the POS original equipment rubber, and keeping the pressure at the recommended level braking reduces distances by about as much as “wiping off five”. What kind of tyres do you have on your car? And do you know the proper braking technique for panic stops (it differs depending on whether your car has anti-lock brakes or not)? All of these might just save you or a pedestrian one day.
Yeah Rob M. I feel the same way. Exceeding the speed limit on well-surfaced country roads while sober in daylight while driving a well-maintained car with big legs you want to stretch is to my mind a perfectly acceptable tradeoff between risk and reward. And great fun too.
Hooning down Alexandria Parade at 5km past the speed limit ‘cos you’re late for a meeting is not.
phil, by that comment i meant that in 200 years time when future historians look back on our present, the definition of STUPID will be anyone who argues the case *for* speeding (as if there was some reason — beyond obscene individualism — to travel faster then the rate of movement inculcated into the system of automobility as a social convention???). When people invoke pseudo-scientific rationale in their argument I want to crush them with the grace of my ninja intellect… which unfortnately is tired and exhausted after travelling across several time zones and levels of sanity today. Yep. It is a kind of sport.
‘Speeding’ is the wrong way to tackle the inherent contingency of the road-car-driver network. Period. Pointing out the speeding and then stopping quickly is bad IS FUCKING COMMONS SENSE. This works both ways, in the arguments from pro-anti-speeding (or anti-automobile mobility) *and* the right wing ‘free movement’ libertarian bully-fodder. Forget speeding.
Laura: No offence to the fine people who work in the road safety industry, in particular the local council RTA people who mostly do really good work, but those who operate as apologists for the current system of automobility by writing shit like the research that I have read and which comes out of MUARC are beyond the pale. That is what is truly ridiculous. There’s no traffic accident which wouldn’t be less traumatic at a lower speed? Right. So instead of transforming the SYSTEM OF AUTOMOBILITY WHICH IS INHERENTLY FLAWED WE HAVE STUPID FUCKS PRANCING ABOUT TALKING TO THE PM ABOUT SPEEDING. Why? So people have a space to take out their anger, to act as an affect sink, to provide the illusion of individualism when they are infact completely controlled, to argue about how fast they should be going in a world increasing constrained by excessive energy consumption, etc. An example is this sort of shit:
Let me guess, an automotive and/or traffic engineer? Representative of the people?
Liam’s response nails it:
However, it doesn’t often happen in parliament. Talking about ‘speeding’ gives shit governments something to act tough about, ie Laura, your namesake, Laura Norder, especially the NT jokers underfire for all the balls they’ve dropped while serving up neapolitan flavours of idiocy. This is because automobility is something that touches everyone. Everyone knows of someone who has crashed, been injured or died while participating in the system of automobility. Indeed, the real problem is the *quality* of mobility, which is a socio-technical competence (ie distributed across technologies and humans). This actually goes a long way to defining the freedoms and responsibilities of contemporary adulthood in Australia.
ok. so. The mobility of the NT IS NOT THE SAME MOBILITY AS FUCKING VICTORIA!!!! Just because they can make up the same statistics from similar looking sets of the populations MEANS SWEET FUCK ALL. How do people drive a car in the NT compared to Victoria? Different regions, cities, suburbs, even different streets have different mobilities!!!!??????
Here is my wager, I will take it up with *one* person. $5. I am a poor student. If the only element of the system of automobility in the NT that is changed are speed limits, then this will have very little effect on the NT road toll, if any AT ALL. Before you take this wager up with me: why doesn’t someone provide the statistics for how many deaths occured where the vehicle was predicted to be travelling above 110km/h (which is the maximum speed limit of WA which also has large rural and desert distances to transverse)? That is how many lives will be saved, plus a few more because the education value of the FUCKING SPECTACLE OF THESE INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENTAL DICKWADS.
However, on the other hand, you could look at how many deaths/serious injuries occured because of:
1) roll-overs of 4WDs, or lack of roll-over protection,
2) extremes in classes, age and quality of vehicles involved in crashes compared to other states/regions,
3) geographical complications (distance to medical care, access to remote indigenous communities, etc),
4) drunk/drug driving and other idiotic masculine driving cultures popular in semi-rural settings,
5) nonsense urban spatial distributions of the population across suburbs, regions, etc. which encourages automobile-based mobilities.
Yes, these are off the top of my head. It makes mobility much more complicated. Ugly. Horrendously so.
Speeding provides a nice, safe, FALSE measurement to compare the systems of (auto)mobility in different places. The problem is that it is not the same system of the same automobility.
The contemporary discourse of ‘speeding’ captures the least creative impulses of contemporary social science. Fuck MUARC. I am glad I am a hoon in the humanities because I would go crazy with their brand of shit.
Why are so many people even driving? Driving is very rarely a social good, and should be thought of as a luxury.
Yeah, see, impatient. I am in Perth, angry, and very very tired. But the worst thing is that all of this should be obvious to anyone exposed to contemporary road safety research and yet politicians and researchers with wannabe-charisma of the popularist charlatan continually return to the ‘speeding line’. This is an ethical problem.
ooops, blog mods, ignore my previous attempts to post that comment (they were eaten by the spaminator I think for not having email addy)
Speed Kills!
So, as part of my own Laura Norder platform, I’m now advocating that all cars be speed-limited to 10kph. Anything faster than that and THEY COULD KILL SOMEBODY. (Slowly, sure, but THEY COULD.)
All you people advocating a 50kph speed limit – are you mad? At 50kph you could hit and seriously injure a pedestrian or cyclist. You could at 40kph, too. And 30. And 20 (although they’d have to not be paying any attention whatsoever not to be able to duck out of the way).
Yup, Speed Kills. So won’t you get behind my WIPE OFF FIFTY campaign? Sure, it’ll take, what, two weeks to drive to Sydney. But aren’t our children’s lives worth it?
RobertM; just because it’s unpopular doesn’t mean its not right. But I concede that it would probably be a politically fatal move (and not something you can really introduce in isolation given most of our vehicles are mode elsewhere).
Another thought – and this is also technically feasible, if not now, within the decade. Cars should not even be in the control of the driver. Tell it where you want to go, and it takes you there, obeying all road rules and safety conditions along the way. That’s about as stress free as I can imagine. Stuck behind an old style driver going under the speed limit? Just more time for reading and posting on LP.
I knew you’d turn up here sooner or later saying pretty much just that, Lefty, complete with sarcasmo caps.
I don’t know. Maybe it ought to tell you something that Baillieu is essentially advocating the same views you seem to hold.
TyroRex: more and more, there already *is* an intervening layer of electronics between what you tell the car to do, and what it actually does. Anti-lock braking was the first such system. Now there’s something called “brake assist”. Despite the introduction of anti-lock brakes, rear-end crashes weren’t being reduced. The boffins figured out that people in panic-stop situations don’t actually use the full capacity of the brakes (NOTE TO EVERYONE: IF YOU ARE IN A PANIC-STOP SITUATION IN AN ABS-EQUIPPED CAR, STAND ON THE BRAKES AS HARD AS POSSIBLE AND LET THE ELECTRONICS DO THEIR THING). So they introduced a system that, in effect, slams on the brakes as hard as possible if the individual seems to be trying to do a panic-stop, but not using the brakes full capacity. Then, there’s stability control. This uses subtle applications of the brakes and throttle control to ensure that vehicles don’t break traction when changing direction. So no matter how ham-fisted you are, it’s much more difficult to have a lose coming round a bend (though it’s not infallible; no electronics in the world can save you if there’s oil or ice on the road, for instance).
Various US-based studies estimate that stability control will cut road deaths by about 25% once they’re installed on all vehicles.
BTW, Laura, you may not like Lefty’s snarky delivery, but you haven’t responded to his essential point.
Always knew Lefty was a closet Liberal.
âPeople donât want to speed, they simply want a system that is fair and they can understand.â?
Err, I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand. If there’s a limit, obey it.
However, it’s not just speed that kills, of course. It’s inexperience, tiredness, booze, drugs etc etc
Tim Blair was right about Lefty. He loves charting Jeremy’s progress from callow lefty youth to boring lawyered up old fart complete with leather upholstered chair and cigar smoking room. He’s well on his way, to a Bentley and a court appearance for speeding, where he will defend himself and confirm the adage that only a fool has himself for a lawyer.
Robert, I didn’t think it was worth responding to. And what is it, anyway?
1. No I won’t get behind his WIPE OFF FIFTY campaign. I do support the enforcement of current Victorian speed limits and safe responsible educated driving.
2. Aren’t our children’s lives worth it? Yes, they are.
Mister Lefty, Laura and I aren’t advocating greater speed limits, what we’re in fact doing is making a counter-argument to the pro-speeding one, which as Glen says, is totally unviable. If there are any laws or regulations that *shouldn’t* be amenable to change by civil disobedience or individual noncompliance, road rules would be the ones.
Speed limits are inherently arbitrary, and they wouldn’t be any less arbitrary if they let you blast down Sydney Road Brunswick or Norton Street Leichhardt at any speed. Deal with it, or don’t, but whatever you do, don’t exceed the speed limit.
Nail, meet hammer.
Glen, thank you for the phrase ‘affect sink’. I can see myself using it often.
Enough already. Here’s $20 go get yourselves a track day.
Well, Glen, the problem is solving all those other problems is rather expensive, isn’t it? (/sarcasm)
I do want to take issue with this comment from Robert Merckel: “If Europeans can happily drive on their motorways at 130 km/h, why can’t we, given our better weather, wider lanes, and less dense traffic?”
Look, I’ve never been to Europe but I’ve spent a lot of time driving around rural Australia and let me tell you, mate, the roads are shit and the drivers are shitter.
(On a recent trip to Tamworth from Sydney we saw TWO accidents and we were nearly totalled by three cars attempting to overtake trucks in the worst f*cking places. And not many people were doing 100 or 110.)
The point isn’t about the drivers, actually, even though I have strong opinions on driver education in this country, but rather the quality of the roads: there are many, many roads in Australia where speed limits should be about the quality of the road and the safe speed on that road. So while I agree in principle that on a good safe well-maintained stretch of highway a speed limit of 110 is a hugely arbitrary, on many country roads, with many many trucks and poor maintenance and kangaroos willing to commit suicide via your windscreen, the ‘no speed limit’ mantra fails to convince.
Mr Lefty, 10 kph limits would impede drivers without making roads much safer 50 kph limits. That’s why we don’t have them.
As if you didn’t know.
Re this campaign by the Victorian Liberals, they tried this at the last election too, with disastrous results. Speeding drivers are a vociferous lobby but politicians discovered there are a lot more parents concerned about speeding near schools and the like. Also, the facts are against speeders.
Re fast freeways in the country, there are in fact reasons to stick with 110 kph. Entry and exit ramps are designed for working with posted speeds. Faster limits would see many more crashes as people tried to exit on sharp turns. There are also crossings where locals drive straight across, and thus depend on freeway traffic travelling no faster than normal speeds.
Higher speeds would also require billions of dollars of expenditure on improved exit and access ramps. That money is better spent on schools and hospitals.
Also, even high speed freeways are not completely safe. At night, I’ve had kangaroos jump onto the road and stop, concrete blocks fall off a truck ahead and impossible-to-see flooding at the bottom of a valley. As a result of travelling at posted speeds, I’ve safely handled all those dangers. People travelling at 130 kph would probably have crashed in one sense or another, possibly fatally if their car overturned.
Why does Baillieu like cars and speed hoons?
Just like the walls at the Baillieu clans Toorak Fortress- he feels safe inside his little metal box. His metal box is his castle to be used as he wishes, regardless of the safety and rights of others. His box prevents him from engaging with the outside world and keeps him at a safe distance from the great unwashed.
He’s suring up the tory thug vote- and good luck to him.
I don’t think David Cameron would approve of his latest road safety iniative.
Nabs:
“Hooning down Alexandria Parade at 5km past the speed limit ‘cos you’re late for a meeting is not.”
Are you talking to me? I don’t see anyone else here… etc etc
Dude, I was accelerating towards a 100km/h freeway at 5am with no other car in sight in either direction and with literally NO POSSIBILITY of other traffic getting close to me (pedestrian, cyclist or automobile). The most dangerous thing in the whole scenario was the flash in my fucking eyes.
Once it was a Sunday morning and I was off to the country for a relaxing week of recording. The other time, a Saturday, I was going fishing.
Sorry, I’m still pretty pissed that I can be slugged $300 total for ‘hooning’ (at 65!)down the world’s safest 60km/h road when fucktards regularly drive past my house in North Fitzroy at 70.
I say put cameras where the danger is real, and put the fines up (and means test them). And how about linear-scaling them to the excess speed? If you’re only 2km/h over, you pay 10% of your daily income – then an extra 10% per extra km/h. Actually, give it a curve. I’m no mathematician, but I know what I hate, and it’s arbitrary brackets.
Tony, having driven on both German autobahns and pretty much all of Victoria’s rural freeways (and a fair whack of its other highways and more than a few dodgy secondary roads), I stand by my contention that Victoria’s rural freeways are more capable of handling high-speed traffic (given weather conditions and traffic levels) than the autobahns. I’ll see your kangaroos and raise you a moose…
Road crossings are a problem, but on most of the Hume you can see oncoming traffic for well over a kilometre. As for exits, on the rural freeways you are warned of the exit several kilometres in advance. Stick an addendum on the signs saying “exit speed 90 km/h” or whatever the appropriate speed is.
Anyway, what sensible driver thinks that it’s always safe to travel at the speed limit? If it’s pouring with rain, 60 km/h can be the maximum safe speed on the widest freeway in the land because you simply can’t see far enough ahead to drive any faster. And most of the mountain passes in Australia are, at their harshest, restricted to 80 km/h, despite the fact that the tighter corners would be suicidal at 50.
Sorry for the multipost, but Kate, I agree with you about general Australian driving standards. The amount of idiots who overtake on crests and blind corners boggles the mind sometimes.
Robert, there are plenty of people who don’t adjust their speed to the driving conditions. Those people are dangerous enough at 110 kph, let alone some higher state sanctioned limit.
At its most extreme, how many times have you been in thick fog and experienced suicide rockets screaming past at highway speed?
RobertM, I’m fully aware that technology is taking control away from the driver: I’m advocating the logical end point of that process. I believe it should be a completely upfront stated goal of road safety systems; remove control from humans.
I don’t mind those revenue-raising cameras; they’re a tax on people who are too thick to observe speed limits. But please, Mr Gubmint, don’t waste half the proceeds on pointless “education” campaigns”: instead, use it to buy shitloads more cameras, to be deployed at times and places likely to catch the sort of young idiots who blast down my inner-suburban street late at night at 90 km/h (why, there goes one now)? And don’t just take demerit points off people who get caught doing 25 over the speed limit — take their frickin’ licences away.
Oh what fun..Driving from Darwin to Alice Springs at 100km hr.. How many dead from sheer boredom.
There is a difference between Darwin to Adelaide and Melbourne and Geelong (Thank the heavens)
Tony,
Good point – speed should be adjusted to the conditions. Merely following the state sanctioned speed limit is not always appropriate and, in some cases, it is even dangerous.
Personally, doing the drive north from Kalgoorlie at 110kmh I believe to be more dangerous due to boredom than fog. The towns up there are over 100k apart and the view is monotonous.
Oh, and to the people saying that the appropriate place for this debate is in Parliament – you are agreeing with Ted Baillieu, who is clearly saying the laws need to be debated and perhaps adjusted, not broken.
Yes. Well, FDB, I live a block from there – and I can hear your howl of rage as I roll over in me bed. We also walk a 5 year old across that road each morning (takes half a bloody hour to cross), and I’m glad to hear that they’ve got cameras along there. No, I haven’t noticed a fatality there recently – but am voting to keep the cameras anyway! You know, just in case. Call me a worry-wart.
They actually don’t seem to make much difference to a lot of drivers.
and btw – Robert Doyle (ex leader of Vic Libs) tried this anti anti-speeding measures trick at the last election. Didn’t do him much good neither. Rank populism.
You are all missing the point. It is not about whether a % tolerance is acceptable to allow people to drift over the speed limit.
The issue is that car speedo’s are not that accurate. There are a lot of people driving around with their cruse control being set so that their speedo indicated 100km/h, and then getting tickets for 103 or 106 etc.
That is OK by VicRoads and the manufacturer, because /-10% is the speedo tolerance.
In addition, VicRoads admits that there are no facilities available to the public to re-certify their speedo’s. And if they did, they would only be able to re-certify the speedo to the manufacturers tolerance, i.e. /-10% pre July ’07.
Now the new standard, post June â07 says that the speedo cannot read slow. A friend gave an example last night, when she drove under the speed check sign on the Ballarat road, she had the cruise control set on 100, and the sign said 93. So if she is keeping up with the traffic, she thinks she is speeding. Not to mention the question as to the accuracy of the speed check sign.
Simply put, you cannot enforce tight speed limits, if the people are not equipped with accurate speedoâs, or provided with the facilities to check them.
Yes there are speed checks on the Geelong and Ballarat freeways. I live on the Mornington Peninsula, what if you live in Malvern, Doncaster etc.
Where is this?:
âVicRoads will collaborate with the Victoria Police to develop a suitable public awareness campaign This will include collating information about the accuracy of speedometers and producing and disseminating written guidance for motorists. The details of the campaign will be determined and a proposal reported to the Government by the end of 1995. Other Government and non-Government agencies will be involved as appropriate.â?