Speed limit the law so many break
Most of us regard ourselves law-abiding citizens, but Scott Tilyard begs to differ
THE average Tasmanian doesn’t intentionally break the law – we don’t assault someone, shoplift or drink and drive.
So why do we speed? Speeding is the everyday crime of the law-abiding.
While not a crime per se, speeding is illegal yet regarded by many as acceptable, provided you don’t exceed the limit too much.
Most people admit to speeding at some time. Nearly half admit to having received a speeding ticket. Yet almost all of these people consider themselves to be law-abiding.
Why do we speed? When we speed, we get an instant reward. We get past the car in front, we clear the intersection. It’s gratifying.
And it’s just a few km over… I won’t crash. I won’t get caught. I’ve done it hundreds of times. Right?
The risk of a serious crash at the individual level is very low — every day we speed without incident. But a low risk multiplied by a huge exposure – that is how often an individual does it and how many people on the network are doing it —results in a high absolute number of crashes.
We know that reducing speed is the most costeffective way of reducing road trauma. Even small reductions in average speed will have a substantial impact on road crash injuries and an even greater impact on the number of fatalities.
Nilsson’s power model tells us that a 1 per cent reduction in the average traffic speed on a road will lead to a 4 per cent decrease in road deaths.
In Tasmania about 30 people are killed and 280 serious injuries occur each year. Speeding is a factor in around a third of these crashes. The rate of serious casualties on our roads has unfortunately plateaued over the past 10 years. Prior to that we were making good progress in reducing serious crashes. You will often hear that Tasmania is the safest state in the nation.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true on our roads. We are the worst performing state in terms of road trauma.
Humans have an innate and immediate sense of danger about falling from height, but we don’t comprehend the energy forces of a crash and the impact on the human body.
The fact is that humans aren’t designed to go faster than 30km/h.
Having a crash at 50km/h is the same as falling from the third level of a building. We wouldn’t stand on the edge of building three storey’s high, yet we think nothing of standing alongside traffic passing by at 50km/h!
At 70km/h, the risk is even greater. A crash at this speed is the same as falling from level six and at 90km/h, it’s the same as falling from level 10.
It’s simple physics – the faster you go, the harder you hit, the more damage you do.
We share the road network with lots of other users. No one user can control the activities of others, but we can control our own behaviour. There is tension between our perceived individual benefit in speeding and the greater safety benefits for the community. By each of us pursuing our own selfinterest, we all become caught in mutually destructive behaviour.
If we’re not willing to accept that 100 people will die and 1000 will be injured on our roads due to speed in the next 10 years, we need to commit to being part of the solution.