In 2014, Cameron Presland (20) killed his girlfriend Danielle Kiriau (17) and her brother Shannon (22), while driving between 142kmh and 163kmh. The pair were passengers in Presland's unwarranted, unregistered, modified vehicle, which spun out of control on Dunedin's Southern Motorway and crashed into a metal pole.
Perhaps someone could explain how a lowered speed limit would have prevented this accident?
The answer, of course, is that a lowered speed limit would have made no difference whatsoever.
For your information, almost all speed-related fatalities occur to a tiny group of youths, yobbos, motorcyclists and impaired drivers.
Few of these high-risk drivers worry about the chances of being caught or killed.
Three Christchurch teenagers - Glen McAllister, Craig Hickey-McAllister and Brooklyn Taylor - died in January while being pursued by police, when their stolen car burst into flames after hitting road spikes and crashing.
Again, perhaps someone could explain how a lowered speed limit would have prevented this accident?
A 2009 summary of 300 accidents by the Automobile Association concluded:
"... government advertising suggests you should be grateful to receive a speeding ticket because it will save your life. In fact, exceeding speed limits aren't a major issue. Nor is it true that middle-New Zealand drivers creeping a few kilometres over the limit on long empty straights dominate the road toll. Only one in six fatal crashes were reported over the speed limit - and they were well over".
The Government's drive to lower speed limits is summarised in a report by the Ministry of Transport (MOT), called The Speed Reference Group Outcomes Report.
The assumption of the MOT report - that lower speed limits will prevent speed-related crashes - assumes that lowering the speed of the average driver will lower the road toll. This makes little sense, because the average driver is not the problem.
A large percentage of speed-related crashes also involve drugs or alcohol, yet the MOT report makes no mention of drugs or alcohol whatsoever. Drunk or drugged drivers don't read speed signs.
Another widely repeated myth is that lowering the speed limits in cities, by itself, reduces road trauma.
However, in almost every case I've studied, the major factor in reducing road trauma in urban areas was engineering (traffic calming).
Traffic calming involves installing speed bumps, chicanes, raised pedestrian crossings, protected pedestrian and cyclist zones and improved road markings. Traffic calming makes it easy for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to do the right thing and harder for them to do the wrong thing.
Recently, the Hamilton City Council claimed that changing the speed limit signs from 50 to 40 had significantly reduced accidents. However, in the fine print, they disclose: "Many of the areas ... [had] already been traffic-calmed, reducing speeds to 40kmh already."
Actually, if traffic calming is done properly, there is no need to arbitrarily reduce speeds; drivers have no choice but to slow down around pedestrians and cyclists but are free to accelerate to change lanes on safer arterial routes.
So, the first step to lowering the road toll is to modify our roads and footpaths. A simple median barrier transformed the Auckland motorway from a high-risk road to a low-risk road. The drivers didn't change.
Second, we need to move freight off our roads and on to rail. While speeding gets most of the headlines, accidents involving trucks make up nearly a quarter of the road toll. By comparison, speeding is just 15%.
Third, another reason for the high recent road toll is motorbike accidents. The Government needs to make it much, much harder to ride a motorbike.
Fourth, we need to get car drivers off cellphones and into seatbelts. That means confiscating cellphones used by the drivers of moving vehicles.
The police should also spend a few months warning motorists who aren't wearing seatbelts. Then the police should start confiscating cars for seven days if seatbelts aren't being worn. Tough, but necessary.
In the meantime, few motorists are opposed to speed limits being lowered on high-risk sections of road. However, the current attempt to lower speed limits on a large percentage of the country's roads is simply alienating ordinary motorists, without changing the behaviour of the tiny group that causes most fatal crashes.
Clive Matthew-Wilson is a road safety campaigner and editor of a car review website.
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Comments
To Clive & the ODT = "cellphones used by the drivers of moving vehicles".
Please ensure readers understand that being in a queue at traffic lights is counted as 'moving'. You are not parked and off the road.
As for the rest off the article, as a former paramedic & driving instructor (with UK police quals) it is spot on. Its not the speed but how one can stop short of an obstacle. Your eyes are the best brakes in your car. There is fatal danger at any speed if you approach a bend or intersection too fast that causes a vehicle to lean.
The NZ police will not budge from it 'speed & alcohol' as it would be seen as a back down. i was involved in a survey in the 90s and every long weekend the police hammered the 'slow down' message to drivers - the road toll went up.
When i was testing, drivers would sit next to me driving slower than usual & of course sober. I saw massive "crash potentials" in many. Steering is our biggest killer. People do not know how to operate a steering wheel whilst moving. They either pull it like a rope, a lever or lean around a corner and when an emergency arises, they freeze and stop steering.
And then lack of knowledge of the road rules.
"The Government needs to make it much, much harder to ride a motorbike".
Rubbish!. We need to stop the cars from knocking them off their bikes and we need to make it much much harder for faux 'road safety experts' from having the governments ear (he only wrote a 'book' about cars).
If we are going to do anything to the road then lowering the speed limit is not the answer, nor is putting lumps of concrete on the roads ie 'traffic calming'.