‘Need for speed’ on Aussie roads

AUSSIE Formula One great Mark Webber has called for speed limits to be increased by up to 15 per cent on Australian roads to bust traffic and improve driver concentration.

Webber declared Australian road users among the worst in the world and said motorists and cyclists needed to learn how to better share our arterial roads.

He said it was no surprise drivers bored in traffic gridlock reached for their mobile phones on stop-start roads.

“The speed limits are so, so slow in Australia that people are not engaged with operating the vehicle,” he said. “So that is why you’re going to look at your phone, you’re going to look at other things.

“In Europe the speed limits are higher because then you have to concentrate. Well here, because the speed limits are so slow and they have all these different speed limits up and down to create revenue that’s where that model needs a total look at.”

In Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix, nine-time F1 race winner Webber said “in Australia obviously the standard is low,” for driver safety.

“We know that,” he said. But there was a need for speed and he urged Aussie authorities to adopt European-style laws to allow drivers to get where they are going faster.

“If you drove from Sydney to Melbourne at 40km/h you would probably crash, you would fall asleep,” he said.

“But if you can go a little bit quicker — I’m saying 10 or 15 per cent quicker — maybe there is something there. The cars are so good now — the tyres are brilliant, the brakes are brilliant, the airbags.”

The 2015 World Endurance Champion also backed calls to get more people out of cars and onto bikes for their daily commute. He said a federal subsidy for Aussies to salary sacrifice a bike so they could cycle to work would reduce traffic gridlock.

And he said drivers and cyclists needed to break down barriers and respect each other on roads.

“I just think by nature we are obviously impatient on the road and that can cause a bit of angst,” he said. “I hope we can do it together but there is still a way to go. Keep talking, keep waving, keep communicating and breaking it down.”

The speed limits are so, so slow in Australia that people are not engaged with operating the vehicle MARK WEBBER