Suggested 70kmh limit has few fans

Coming to a rural road near you – a 70kmh speed limit?

A report by an intergovernmental organisation with 59 member countries, including New Zealand, is recommending lowering speed limits to 70kmh on rural roads without median barriers.

That would mean most of our roading network, state highways included. Only motorway sections with median barriers would be allowed to retain the 100kmh limit.

The report out of Paris by the International Transport Forum also recommends a 30kmh limit for built-up and residential urban areas where vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians share the same space, and 50kmh for other urban areas with intersections.

Once again that would have a major impact in NZ, where urban speed limits are currently 50kmh except in inner-city areas and around places such as schools.

It’s the result of a big study, Speed and Crash Risk that examined how road safety in 10 selected countries changed after they changed speed limits or introduced automatic speed cameras on a large scale. The forum acts as a think-tank on transport policy for governments worldwide.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has hinted more highway median barriers could be on the way, but dodged questions on the 70kmh recommendation for rural roads without barriers.

Opposition leader Simon Bridges said the previous government had been making roads safer, including through its Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme, which the new Government had ‘‘stopped effectively’’.

No-one had ever died on any roads of national significance after they were upgraded, Bridges said.

The 70kmh proposal was ‘‘ridiculous and unworkable’’, said

Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of car review website dogandlemon.com.

But on the most dangerous

roads, it made sense to reduce the speed limit to 80kmh.

‘‘If the speed limit is lowered on the worst roads, as an interim measure before median barriers are installed, I support it,’’ he said.

Imposing a 70kmh limit on long, straight roads would be met with ‘‘open rebellion’’.

The vast majority of crashes were caused by a tiny group and a lowered speed limit was unlikely to have any effect on those motorists, Matthew-Wilson said.

AA motoring affairs general manager Mike Noon said the 70kmh suggestion was idealistic.

‘‘If you were trying to stop anybody dying at all, or being injured, on the roads, you take it to the point that everything was going very very slowly . . . But it’s a long way from where the public is at.’’