Many of the more than 1500 people who have made submissions to the Dunedin City Council want 50kmh zones in the city to stay as they are.
The council proposes to bring 30kmh limits to substantial swathes of the city, and long stretches of the rural roading network could have speed limits cut from 100kmh to 60kmh.
Feedback has flooded in and a hearing is due to start next week.
Gene Stephenson said most people drove to the conditions.
"All these speed limit changes are just going to cause more congestion and impatient people will take more risks when passing," he said.
Lyn Whaanga said reducing speed limits around schools was fair enough, but other areas should be left alone.
"I believe it can be the slow drivers that cause crashes."
Moni Turner was direct.
"Your proposals are always about discouraging people from driving anywhere."
Other submitters were broadly supportive.
"From our current 50kmh mindset, it's easy to imagine that 30kmh will seem slow, but over time it will surely feel normal, in the same way that 50kmh seems normal today," Elliott Young said.
The city council has said its proposal was based largely on guidance from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency.
Its draft speed management plan for 2024 to 2027 follows an interim plan that was focused mostly on reducing speed limits around schools.
The council argued in its consultation material for the new draft plan that past reviews of speed limits "did not give sufficient weight to road classification or design".
"The result is that on some routes in Dunedin, travel speeds are too high for the road use and function."
Rebecca Shepherd was mostly content with what was happening outside schools, but was worried about motorists facing a lot of switches between 30kmh, 40kmh and 50kmh zones.
"The proposals to place multiple different and constantly changing speeds through towns and residential areas is going to be too confusing for drivers."
Dunedin community boards have been active in suggesting adjustments to what the council proposed.
Waikouaiti Coast Community Board chairman Alasdair Morrison said some proposed changes did not appear to be supported by data justifying them.
The Saddle Hill Community Board supported a series of proposed changes.
In other cases it did not back the extent of proposed reductions and instead suggested "a fair compromise".
