speed limits

[taranaki]

do you think that it is really neccesary to set general speed limits for urban streets/open road conditions?If you do,do you think your local legislators have got them right?

[tazdev]

I think it is necessacery to have the limits in place.

Do I think they have got them right? In some places I would say yes but in others (like the Albany hill) I would say that they are completely wrong. There have been more fatal accidents since they slowed the speed limit down

[Oz]

Most Australian residential speed limits are too slow. That is because of the massive fund raising effort the NSW government has going on under the guise of 'safety' with speed cameras. Oh, and they're covering their asses for the decades of woeful driver training.

[tonioseven]

I think some are necessary, like school zones and residential areas, but interstate limits are too low!!! I cruise at around 90 whenever I can get away with it but I would never knowingly jeopardize another human life.

[mopord]

I would have to say that I think most speed limits are reasonable. Also, in Pa, the local officials don't determine the speed limits. The state Dept. of Transportation establishes them.

[Ssom]

I think the limits are just numbers.


I drive according to conditions ie. Traffic, weather, police density etc.

[sarujin]

Yes you do need speed limits, as not everyone has common sense. There will be the people who go 100kmh past a school then.

I believe though speed limits should be set for the roads. Like here in NZ a road is 50 if it has houses or driveways, or 100 if it doesn't. That makes no sense at all. I know of so many roads that are 50kmh, but should really be 70kmh.

Or roads that are a 100, but are too dangerous to drive at that speed. (Think Oteha Valley, tazdev)

sarujin

[YogsVR4]

Speed limits are applicable in residential areas mainly because people dont know the conditions. Highways should be "safe and reasonable" like they had in Montana.

[higgimonster]

as far as i know the limits set in the states are a result of the fuel crisis. they were imposed to help promote better fuel efficiency. and since then they have helped fund many local government agencies and insurance companies. Hell, an entire division of police came to be from speed limits and speeding tickets (thestate police). and what about insurance companies. They supply local police forces with radar guns and laser guns to help promote 'safer highways and roads'. but while doing this community service they enable cops to hand out more tickets giving the insurance companies reason to raise the rates of the drivers' policies. most accidents are caused by inatentive drivers rather then speeders.

Overall, speedlimits are necessary but are way toolow in most places (many times on purpose, like speed traps where the limit drops from 65mph to 35mph just long enough for a cop to nail you.)

[boingo82]

I think speed limits are entirely necessary in order to save people from themselves. My biggest argument with limits is that they are so rarely enforced. Matter of fact, that's what bothers me with traffic laws in general. I would much rather live somewhere with 100% traffic enforcement than the current state of things. Right now risk-taking is almost encouraged because people so rarely get caught. Of course when they DO get caught, they feel the need to gripe about it...if they got caught every time they broke a traffic law I think most people would be much more careful drivers.

[Ssom]

Originally posted by boingo82
I think speed limits are entirely necessary in order to save people from themselves.

Say no more, that is absolutley Spot on

we have too many bad drivers not to have speed limits

[taranaki]

Originally posted by higgimonster
as far as i know the limits set in the states are a result of the fuel crisis. they were imposed to help promote better fuel efficiency.

A true statement,(history lesson - back in the 1970's,the Arab nations tried to screw the West by cutting all exports of oil,much of the world ran short and crude oil prices went through the roof.)but as a by-product of the original reasoning,it was noted that the death rate and the serious injury rate plummetted with the introduction of the fuel-saving measures.This ,of course,is good,and the government of the day decided that the health and well-being of its citizens was worth preserving....and they were saving billions of dollars worth of fuel,thus making the balance of trade look much better.

[replicant_008]

In the beginning...

The New Zealand Speed Camera office of the New Zealand Police apparently chose to set the tolerance level at the 85th percentile. Ostensibly, this meant that they did a 'speed survey' of a location and chose the trigger point at a speed that 85% of the road users would NOT be photographed ie only the top 15% of road users would be photographed.

The interesting thing was - having spent some time in another incarnation - studying this information was that the 'speed surveys' appear to have understated the tolerance as some of the locations were being triggered so often that > 15% of road users were being picked up. Indeed one of the sites in Lake Road in Takapuna (which was also the first site in New Zealand) was recording offences so quickly that the machine would run out of film in less than a day... No particular reason has been identified but there's lots of them I suspect...

Anyway, there was a philosophical debate about using the 85th percentile. The main reasons for this was that in some case the 85th percentile trigger point was in excess of the posted speed limit in many locations by a lot... anything up to 20km/h and the other reason was that they were relying upon drivers to act in a responsible, rational and sentient way to the potential hazards... (given that speed cameras have to be located on straight roads away from intersections this always has been a stretch in logic... well at least for me...) rather than using the apparently professional opinion of traffic engineers and the police.

Also you could argue that because some road users are constrained at times during the day (ie during heavy traffic) that the 85th percentile could skew results anyway... the road is being used heavily at times where drivers are crawling in traffic which brings the weighted average down etc...

Anyway, the Speed Camera Office then decided just to use a 10km/h tolerance and has been doing great guns ever since... They have argued that the reduction in the road toll is because of this initiative. However, as usual I haven't seen any research which substantiates the causal relationship - ie speed limits reduce fatalities.

In fact, I've seen suggestions that traffic congestion has actually had a more significant effect on accidents/vehicle kilometre ie because you can only do 40km/h you risk of fatality is reduced... which suggests that if we allow the network to deterioate and reduce vehicle speeds by congestion then fatalities will be reduced further... sigh. The other suggestion I've heard is that rising vehicle running costs coupled with an overall reduction in vehicle age due to second-hand imports has reduced kilometres driven + improvements in crash survival is a contributor too...

Australia is proposing to have mobile electronic signs that show your vehicle speed next to a highly visible police car to further reduce speed. Funny thing is, this was trialled TWENTY YEARS AGO in Europe and was abandoned when motorists simply sped up down the road from the radar trap in some case less than metres from the site!

The thing I'm concerned with is not speed but speed differential. Try driving on a road with a campervan doing 50 km/h with cars doing 120km/h without passing lanes...

Finally, it's been argued many times that the reduction in speed from 60mph (100km/h) to 80 km/h in the early 70s in New Zealand during the oil crisis directly reduced fatalities. However, the effect of a doubling in fuel prices, rationing, 'car-less' days had a significant effect on kilometres travelled too..

As usual there is no simple silver bullet.

Driver training, seat belts, air bags, active and passive safety features, roading improvements will also help but it's always hard to quantify the causal relationships...

[TheSyndicate]

I wish there was a 'minimum speed limit' that was 2mph less than the actual speed limit. This could help my road rage when old ladies or minivans are in front o fme....