Is talking about speed limits banned yet? - Page 4

rat156 · #61 14-10-2010, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by multiweb

Maybe our driving licence system should provide an incentive for good drivers and penalise harder the bad ones, so this way we don't 'pay' for the hoons. If you clock another year without speeding offence or accident then your speed limit gets increased. If you incur any kind of offence it goes down. Maybe linked to the point systems. You've got 12 you can do the speed limit, you've got 6 you're back to P, 3 left back to L regime. You don't want to learn, you walk.

The only problem with a ayatem like this is that some people think that they are "good" even "great" drivers because they don't speed and have never had an accident. My mother in law had one of those stickers on her car from the insurance company that said as much, because she hadn't claimed for 5 years or so, which, automatically made her an exemplary driver. NOT. I have never been sh!tscared as much as her picking me up from the train station and driving me to her place. It's just the fact that she didn't drive far or often that meant that she didn't have an accident. Put her on the freeway and all hell would have broken loose. We shifted her into a new house a few years ago, I took her car and sold it on eBay, then told her to hand her licence in. I think that she realised that it was time and didn't put up a fight.

Many people, here and everywhere, think that they are good drivers, I even thought so before I started racing cars. You soon learn what a good driver can do in terms of car control. I'm not one. I may be above average, but that's only because the average standard of driving in this country is appalingly low.

My daughter turns 16 in February, I bought her a car the other day (I have mates looking out for cheap cars), she will learn to drive in this car, then drive it around. She will also do at least two driver training courses (run by the Alfa club, open to everyone, plug, plug, plug) before sitting her driving test. She will do her madatory hours behind the wheel and then some. Driving is something that we can all continually improve upon, no matter how good we are at it.

Now with the money the State would save from not running pointless "Speed Kills" ads we could send all our kids through an advanced car control course. Then we would be increasing the average skillset of our drivers, it'd take a while to show, but as our young'uns are overrepresented in the road toll stats, there's the place to start.

Cheers
Stuart

mithrandir (Andrew) · #62 14-10-2010, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roobi

... Not to just pinpoint older drivers, but i think as well as having much better beginner training, defensive driving courses and such, we should all have to sit a test every 5 yrs or so once we reach a certain age as eyesight and reaction times obviously slow down as we get old. (i dont mean like 30... more like 60 yrs) My own mum needs to stop driving, or get better glasses, but she refuses to listen to anyone on the subject and thinks theres no problem at all.

My mum, and SWMBO's father (Doug) and his lady friend are all over 85. At their age they have to pass an annual doctor's exam and driving test to keep their licenses. They have unrestricted licenses. Doug regularly drives from Port Macquarie to Sydney and Tamworth.

Because of the tests they probably have a more up to date knowledge of the road rules than many people 20 years their junior.

NSW also has a restricted license so you can drive around the local area to get to services - eg. shops, doctor, church. Depending on your eyesight it might further restrict you to daylight hours only.

Peter Ward · #63 14-10-2010, 09:29 PM

I'm with Stu on this one.

Posted speed limits are based on rules the were out of date in the 1950's. They assume absolute dullards are behind the wheel 99% of the time driving cars...well...also designed in the 1950's.

There are many excellent dual carriage-ways and suburban bypasses in Oz that have have their limits *reduced* often simply because a resident has complained about the noise. Safety was never the issue. What was once a safe speed is deemed no longer safe. What utter nonsense.

Yet while the automotive industry has been innovating for decades with car seat belts, safety glass, side impact protection, crumple zones, airbags, ABS and traction control...another group of dullards (RTA + Pollies) have claimed the lowering of the road toll has been due to their even more conservative speed restrictions.

Fine revenue is so high now that is a part of many State budgets.
The words conned and fleeced come to mind.

Glenhuon (Bill) · #64 14-10-2010, 10:58 PM

[QUOTE=Peter Ward;645697]I'm with Stu on this one.

Posted speed limits are based on rules the were out of date in the 1950's. They assume absolute dullards are behind the wheel 99% of the time driving cars...well...also designed in the 1950's.

Posted speed limits are aimed at the common demoninator, don't care how good you think you are, we all think we are good drivers, unfortunately we not as good as we think. Try going through the test again, most of us would fail.

There are many excellent dual carriage-ways and suburban bypasses in Oz that have have their limits *reduced* often simply because a resident has complained about the noise. Safety was never the issue. What was once a safe speed is deemed no longer safe. What utter nonsense.

So you want to put the foot down on these places, reckon all the other drivers on the road with you are as competent as you, think again. The reason for speed reductions is not because someone complains about noise etc, its because life and limb have been lost at the previous limits.

Yet while the automotive industry has been innovating for decades with car seat belts, safety glass, side impact protection, crumple zones, airbags, ABS and traction control...another group of dullards (RTA + Pollies) have claimed the lowering of the road toll has been due to their even more conservative speed restrictions.

If people had followed the rules and driven within the limits of their true ability and the vehicles capabilities, most of these "innovations" would be unneccesary.

Fine revenue is so high now that is a part of many State budgets.
The words conned and fleeced come to mind.

If ya do the crime, pay the fine. Governments can't give you a clip around the ear, so hit you where it hurts most, in the wallet.

OK, I'm not innocent, I've done rediculous speeds on public roads in my time. I've been caught and paid up. But, I have seen the damage done to people and their loved ones through trying to save a few minutes getting between A and B. Reduce the revenue, and the damage, take the lead out of your boot. The only thing speeding in a vehicle does is use more fuel and wear and tear on the drivers nerves.
Whatever made time, made a lot of it.

Peter Ward · #65 15-10-2010, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenhuon

Governments can't give you a clip around the ear, so hit you where it hurts most, in the wallet.

You've missed the point. Posted speed limits can't safe at 2:29pm then unsafe at 2:31 pm (eg school zones).... as is the case in NSW even on 6 lane highways. The presence of school children is not in their equation.

The nonsense argument that a child could be injured as there is a school within a deemed radius is utter BS.

Do kids quantum mechanically pop out of the aether these days?

No it's just Nanny state bubble wrapping.

I'd suggest those who are capable of critical thought hit them where it hurts most... in the ballot box.

GrampianStars (Rob) · #66 15-10-2010, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AstralTraveller

I think it is pretty well accepted that 3 hours behind the wheel is too much for anyone. I can see little mistakes creep into my wife's driving after about 1.5 hours. I think I'm good for 2h (perhaps 2.5h on a good day) but 3h is too much for me. It isn't bordom, it is fatigue. I do a fair amount of back country driving where boredom certainly isn't the issue and even there 2h is a good stint. It's amazing how much difference 10-15 minutes out of the car makes.

Yep tend to agree these days

back in the days of yore (70's) i used to do 8 hour streches with ease
Adel- Roxby Downs & Adel -Melb straight through
nowdays only do Melb to Pomonal max in 1 stint 2.5 - 3.0 hr. or the odd Pomonal - Adel (6Hr tough) for reasons stated above.
I find the adherence to speed limits

(not wanting fines) creates extreme boredom and fatigue. and therefore IMO contributes to a driving hazzard and eventually the road toll

Lee · #67 15-10-2010, 10:06 AM

I agree with school zone speed limits - it is designed to hopefully reduce the average speed of motorists to 1. reduce your stopping distance and prevent pedestrians being hit, and 2. if you do hit them, you do so with less energy.
Some people have uber-cars coupled with uber-ability and may be able to negotiate through a crowd of darting 8 year olds at 92kph and not hit them, but most of us don't.

telemarker (Keith) · #68 15-10-2010, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Yet while the automotive industry has been innovating for decades with car seat belts, safety glass, side impact protection, crumple zones, airbags, ABS and traction control...another group of dullards (RTA + Pollies) have claimed the lowering of the road toll has been due to their even more conservative speed restrictions.

Sorry, the impetus for these innovations did not originate from within the automotive industry. I think you have the cart before the horse on this point.

Steffen · #69 15-10-2010, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Do kids quantum mechanically pop out of the aether these days?

I reckon we should give the RTA credit for taking quantum mechanics into account. Not many govt orgs are that cutting edge

Cheers
Steffen.

Peter Ward · #70 15-10-2010, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee

I agree with school zone speed limits - it is designed to hopefully reduce the average speed ...

I have no problem with them either...provided there are children/pedestrians about to actually be mindful of.

Look out the windscreen and beyond some lame sign to tell you slow down if there are kids about.

What we have now is a sign, time of day, and day of week (which ignores pupil free days) that will slow 6 lanes of traffic to a crawl due to those qantum kids

Peter Ward · #71 15-10-2010, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by telemarker

Sorry, the impetus for these innovations did not originate from within the automotive industry. I think you have the cart before the horse on this point.

If you are talking Detroit, there is some truth there. However manufacturers such a Benz have been innovating safety technology for decades.

AstralTraveller (David) · #72 15-10-2010, 12:27 PM

I agree with school zones. Children may not pop out of the eather but there behaviour can be erratic and they may not think before they run. However the implimentation of the good idea is sometimes poor. There is a school nearby that has a boundary and gate facing onto a major road which therefore has a school speed zone. The problem is that the gate is not in use and all pupils enter and exit via the gate that opens onto a back street. I have never seen a pupil on the major road. Just 200m up the road another school backs onto the major road and again all the pupils enter and exit via a gate on a back street. This one doesn't have a school speed zone. Go figure.

There are a few school around here which were built some time ago and are situated on what are now busy roads, thus causing traffic conjestion on the major road. OK, that is a product of history. However at Albion Park they built a school facing onto an existing busy road and then put in the school zone. When they planned the new sub-division there was no good reason why the school couldn't be situated a few hundred metres off the main road thus not slowing through traffic. It was just thoughless planning.

telemarker (Keith) · #73 15-10-2010, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

If you are talking Detroit, there is some truth there. However manufacturers such a Benz have been innovating safety technology for decades.

Certainly. Benz and Volvo have used these as marketing features for decades. However, the majority of car manufacturers were forced by having to comply with legislated crash and safety standards. The public was also not immune to being compelled as well (a la safetybelt/restraint legislation). Not all the RTA/pollie actions in this arena are those of "dullards".

Peter Ward · #74 16-10-2010, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AstralTraveller

.... It was just thoughless planning.

The Queenslanders don't have schools zones on major arterial roads.

High fences/pedestrian overpasses fix that issue..... in NSW this sort of infrastructure is paid for at great (taxpayer) expense, then ignored under their...as you correctly say... thoughtless legislation & planning.

KenGee (Kenith Gee) · #75 16-10-2010, 09:20 PM

I really don't understand why this keeps coming up. Perhaps it's whenever one of our lead footed Astro friends gets a ticket!
The reality is the slower the speed limit the safer things are basic physics. You stop quicker hit things with less force. That fact also is the death toll has halved in the last 2 years for a number of reasons including lowering the speed limit.

To my mind what you guys a calling for is to increase the danger on the roads simply so you can get to your home 5 minutes faster!!! Have any of you lost a family member to a speeding driver?

BTW for those of you worried about speeding fines how about we drop the fines and make it loss of lience or even jail time will that reduce your revenue rising concerns?

Lastly I live in the country have to drive for long periods at highway speeds. I never speed and have only one speeding ticket 25 years ago.

Peter Ward · #76 16-10-2010, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KenGee

I really don't understand why this keeps coming up. Perhaps it's whenever one of our lead footed Astro friends gets a ticket!

No ticket here, but I suspect it's always a good bone to chew

For me it is the arbitrary nature of posted limits...plus the fact I have no faith at all in the ability of some bureaucrat to define what is a "safe speed"

I grow tired of the argument that speed is inherently unsafe. It is a non issue in well regulated environments (eg aviation, autobahns).

Oz road toll figures have been somewhat static. About 1500 (1441 in 2008, and 1507 in 2009) Australians die on our roads each year. You'd think if our draconian speed regime was effective, this number would not be static....

Rather than a morose "speed kills" mantra, I suggest a different approach be taken. Could it be a simple as: hitting things in the first place is the problem?? .... hence the German perspective of mitigating the chance of such events by good driver education and flow control has to be worth a try.

marki · #77 17-10-2010, 12:34 AM

Peter, I like to go as fast as any lead foot, probably more so but when I get the urge to cut loose I go to a track and race. Most people believe they are far more competent behind the wheel than they really are (when the flag drops the bull**** stops) no matter how good or bad their cars are and this is a major problem. Even mercs, barvarian money wasters, volvo's and lambo's etc crash and people die. I think you have your wires crossed here. The speed limits are not set by brainless pollies but rather the engineers that designed the road ( I know I have worked in this area). Like all things designed to a "standard" there are built in safety factors which must be included and it is these which determine the sign posted speed. If local governments and councils reduce these speeds further it is because of public pressure to do so (democracy at work). School zones have a purpose, protecting the most vunrable in our society. Just this year we have had two kids and believe it or not one crossing guard run over by stupid drivers that refuse to obey the law. Whats more we are on a side street not a main roadway. Join a club, get involved in hill climbs and learn to enjoy your car in a safe environment. Public roads need to be heavily goverened as there are just too many fools out there and no amount of driver education will fix this, thats why we call them fools. Revenue raising? You bet, we should get something from idiots who put others lives in danger.

Mark

Roobi · #78 17-10-2010, 08:07 AM

Good stuff mark. Glad to see some more responsible people out there for a change rather than so many that think they're above the law. People really need to get their facts straight before making comments such as

Quote:

plus the fact I have no faith at all in the ability of some bureaucrat to define what is a "safe speed"

In an article on german autobahns this is said:

"Not all German motorways are free of restrictions. Many eastern German autobahns, more roughly shod, have a 62mph limit. But most drivers know precisely which stretches of autobahn can, in effect, be converted into racing track. “I take the beast out for the weekend,” Fritz Bernlich, 54, a Porsche driver, said. “The 60 miles or so from the Berlin ring road to Helmstedt is a fine place to let loose.”
The overall autobahn death toll is difficult to determine, but a recent study on a stretch of the A66 in central Germany is giving ammunition to the speed limit proponents. Around 90,000 vehicles a day travel down this motorway. In August 2000 the guideline limit was raised from 62mph to 75mph — and the number of accidents rose from 100 in the year 2000 to 170 last year.
Why don't those of you going on about how the autobahns are so good, so speed doesn't kill, take a look at some of the road tolls on said roads. Theyre not as great as you might think when you take into consideration populations sizes, condition of roads etc.

full article here : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1015843.ece

supernova1965 (Warren) · #79 17-10-2010, 08:25 AM

More speed = less reaction time scientific fact no'one can argue that this is not true.

rat156 · #80 17-10-2010, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KenGee

I really don't understand why this keeps coming up. Perhaps it's whenever one of our lead footed Astro friends gets a ticket!
The reality is the slower the speed limit the safer things are basic physics. You stop quicker hit things with less force. That fact also is the death toll has halved in the last 2 years for a number of reasons including lowering the speed limit.

To my mind what you guys a calling for is to increase the danger on the roads simply so you can get to your home 5 minutes faster!!! Have any of you lost a family member to a speeding driver?

BTW for those of you worried about speeding fines how about we drop the fines and make it loss of lience or even jail time will that reduce your revenue rising concerns?

Lastly I live in the country have to drive for long periods at highway speeds. I never speed and have only one speeding ticket 25 years ago.

Well I bought it up, but no fine recently.

I think it keeps coming up because 1500 Australians die on the road each year. It's the most risky thing many of us do (particularly without think about it).

Again I have to remind people that the thread is not about being able to speed. It's about raising the speed limits on appropriate roads to try to help mitigate driver fatigue. Believe it or not driver fatigue is a huge factor in road accidents in rural areas and because the speeds at which the car is travelling are higher, then the severity of the accidents is usually greater. (http://www.monash.edu/muarc/reports/papers/fatigue.html)

Now, many would think that I've just condemned my own argument, but the thrust of the German opinion is that traveling at higher speed reduces fatigue. Yes, the severity of any accident does also rise, but hitting a tree at 100 or 130 kmh is likely to be fatal either way. Besides which the roads that can take a higher speed limit should have barriers (like the Autobahn) to prevent crashing into trees.

Also death tolls have not halved in the last couple of years. In fact since 2000 the road deaths have been pretty much static. (http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications...oad_Deaths.pdf)

More alarmingly, the overrepresentation of young drivers in these statistics remains and the Governments are doing little about it. All the speed cameras in the world will not save someone who doesn't have the right training.

So my arguments are that instead of trying to push the "speed kills" mantra down our throats, spend the money on road safety initiatives that will do some good. Fix bad roads, raise the speed limits on the really good ones and spend money on driver education for young drivers. It's not sour grapes about getting a speeding fine, it's just that I can see the wasted effort going into an area that has had far too much publicity and an area that needs attention being essentially ignored.

Cheers
Stuart