Don’t lower speed limits - that’s not the problem
Ispent Easter the same way as about 50,000 other confused souls – sitting in traffic on State Highway 1 between Christchurch and Dunedin. The traffic was at a standstill on occasion as frustrated Ed Sheeran fans sat in their cars explaining to their spouse that yes, perhaps they were right, and yes, the family should have left earlier, and yes, they will seek to listen more in the future.
How about those jerks who felt their time was more important than that of the rest of us and set to overtaking a line of standstill traffic? What pieces of work.
My wife and I managed more than
1500km of trouble free motoring over the weekend.
The ‘‘trouble free’’ bit was important for our marriage on account of the fact that the last vehicle I’d bought at a steal had proceeded to hemorrhage the contents of the engine all over a busy intersection moments after I’d explained to my wife that she needed to relax and trust me when it comes to buying vehicles.
We returned home to a report that suggested that lowering the speed limit to 70kmh on roads without median barriers (most Kiwi roads) is a sure-fire way to save lives.
I think it goes something like this: if the speed is lower, the impact is lessened and therefore we should reduce the limit to ensure nobody dies on our hazardous roads. Speed to impact is a squared relationship and all that.
I think what’s missing is the fact that if you continue with that line of thinking, why not reduce it to 50kmh or 20kmh? There’ll be bugger all fatal crashes at that point.
While we’re at it, why not reduce it to zero and we can all sit in our cars on our driveways in perfect safety and dream about the good old days when people realised driving was a dangerous exercise and treated it thus.
Speed isn’t the problem, people. Speed’s not dangerous. Otherwise flying in a plane would be fatal and all astronauts would be dead. Impact’s the dangerous bit. Speed’s just easy to demonise. There’s no pro-speed lobby.
Personally, I think the two main issues are idiots making poor decisions and driver distraction.
Now don’t think I haven’t fallen into both those categories on occasion. But my point remains the same – blaming speed is like saying bullets kill people. Bullets don’t kill people, someone pointing a gun and pulling the trigger does.
I thought the cops had a good wellexecuted strategy for the weekend. I’ve not seen a police presence like that in as long as I can remember. And they weren’t just hiding in the bushes collecting revenue; they were on the roads, visible and present and catching up with a few of the mouth-breathers.
Just because the road toll was higher than last year doesn’t mean it was a failed exercise. Maybe without that presence it might have been higher – I dunno.
But let’s not act like reducing speed is some magic pill for safe roads.
I thought Clive Matthew-Wilson of Dog and Lemon fame was spot on with his observation: ‘‘About 80 per cent of the road toll occurs below, not above, the speed limit. Of the 20 per cent of accidents that occur above the speed limit, most are caused by either yobbos, impaired drivers or outlaw motorcyclists. All these groups tend to ignore speed limits anyway.’’
As someone whose spent much too much time driving an Austin Seven at 70kph flat-out on the open road I can report that it’s awfully boring and not safer by definition. When we stop blaming speed and start blaming drivers then the discussion will be meaningful.