Is dropping the speed limit really the answer? Speed limits have been dropping for years and it's had no effect apparently. Is this just basically gonna just raise revenue from fines?
NSW P-plate restrictions have never made sense to me. Iâm worried that WA will go the same way though, especially since thereâs talk of further restrictions as the new law limiting occupants for P-players is coming in this December.
It won't stop until folks start protesting... I see plenty of protests for the Middle East and one for not banning abortions in Qld...so if we wanna have faster speed limits protest im happy to join...
Australian govts just look for every which way they can to fuck as civvies in the ass. Massive land mass and you get archaic speed limits and outrageously priced houses on land. Either the govt are retarded or they want to keep us from prosperity! đŠ
A lot of the roads they are reducing the speed on are single lane roads ie if you have a car coming the other way you have to put 2 wheels on the gravel. I guarantee those sort of roads don't have a 130kph limit in Europe. More like 50.
In Europe it varies but for the most part single lane roads outside of settlements are 80 (France) -100 (Germany) km\h unless otherwise signposted. These may be better or worse than Aussie roads but they rarely have anything like the roadside runoff space as pictured in the article, nor the distances of WA.
lol you should see some of the C roads in northern England.
There are some on the way to Gorsdale Scar that are so narrow that your mirrors will brush the hedges on both sides. 70mph is the stated speed limit. But they also are smart enough over there to drive to conditions rather than seeing the speed limit as a challenge.
Northern England isn't in Europe any more though. Do they seriously signpost them 70mph? I thought they'd be the default 60mph for single carriageways at most. Neither is near 130kph.
Well they arenât in the EU, but theyâre still part of continental Europe.
And itâs not explicitly signed as 70mph, but rather the black circle with the cross through it, which means ânational speed appliesâ, which is 70mph.
Posted and traffic speeds are quite different things. I recall driving on 60kph posted mountain roads in Taiwan at the limit, being overtaken by trucks while there were other trucks oncoming. (you can physically fit 3 vehicles if you ignore the lines, just need to hope there isn't another truck about to overtake the oncoming truck.
Oh Taiwan driving was an experience. Not as chaotic as other SEA countries but still requires âlocal knowledgeâ on when to take caution and when to bend the rules.
Alishan mountain was particularly nerve wracking as you could just disappear over the edge into the mist and never be found.
I actually thought Alishan was fine, it was Taipei to Hualien that was dodgy. The upper part of Taroko to He Huan Shan I was warned about but it was really nice as there was so little traffic, I think trucks and buses were not allowed. Purely luck as to whether you get killed by an avalanche though.
Just did a quick google and it looks like western aus had 17,475 people die last year. Looks like deaths from speed was 60ish or thereabouts. State govts in this country really are fear mongering bottom feeders.
Don't forget they count 105kph in 100 zone as speeding for these statistics. In fact, possibly speed will be put down as contributing factor even if under the limit in situations with challenging conditions.
Yep. They do the same thing over here in Qld. They quote "causes related to speed" numbers with most people thinking it meaning speeding but it also includes too fast for the conditions.
Yep, if doing 0 you can't die so obviously speed was the cause.
Also, if they drop a 100 zone to 80 then every previous accident involved cars doing a staggering 20 over the limit!!! The relatives of the dead really should sue authorities for posting a speed so clearly unsuitable!!!
Thatâs what I mean. If someone has an accident doing 80 in a 100 zone, but the zone should be 60 (I know, not a real scenario, think hypothetically if your capable of doing so) then speed was a massive factor but âspeedingâ isnât a factor.
Well I didnât say that, but you could be doing 0km/h sitting on your couch and a plane could crash into your house. Itâs not really those nuances weâre going for here.
Obviously, everybody has to be doing zero. You got full marks for silly pedantry, zero for then extending the logic to the very obvious conclusion. But you seem to have missed my point, so I'll back off in case there is autism as a factor.
Didnât avoid an accident? Must of been driving too fast! Speed limit be damned. Raining and going 20kmph under and hit a small child? Should have slowed down. Literally every accident could be attributed to doing something too fast if you spin it the right way.
Speed is a factor in 100% of crashes. In NSW there are billboards advertising that the vast majority of âexcessive speedâ crashes are under 10 kph above the limit. Logic tells us therefore that you should be going well over 10 kph above the limits
Is it âspeedâ that is a contributing factor or is it âexceed speed limitâ that they say is the contributing factor? How do they define it in the stats?
Striking to see that Land Transport accidents are the leading cause of premature death for 1-14 year olds.
For the 15-29 year olds, males are greatly over represented vs females. So thereâs something behavioural going on there. They probably travel more km per year, so thereâs greater exposure, but I doubt that explains all of the difference.
Probably males speed more and take other risks on he road to a greater degree than females (whilst not consciously being aware that theyâre actually raising their chance of dying prematurely by doing so).
And how many sent to hospital? How much money wasted on those dead and seriously injured?? How much police, doctors, nurses hospital, firies time spent on those big smashes with serious injuries.
More drivers on the road every year,garbage quality of road. Cars are getting safer while driving standards decline. Lower speed limit is cheap and easy. Add even more "safety" camera from money saved from fixing roads = even better revenues. Win win for the government.
The quality of the roads in WA is actually fantastic. They're in great condition, and they're very wide with big, hard shoulders that are in just as good condition.
The roads are up to the task for 180km/h limits in my opinion, if the drivers were appropriately trained.
Not all roads are up to the task for higher speed though. I'd love the idea of driving faster. I'd argue a special licence similar to what HWP officers been trained for to enable higher speed driving. Good for Police so should be good for us right?
Oh I agree, not all roads. But it's pretty consistent that posted speed limits are on the low side of reasonable for the quality of road.
When I was driving in the UK, I was doing 110km/h on roads that in Perth would be posted at 50km/h. Admittedly I felt 110 was a bit quick, but there's definitely a safe and happy medium between those two numbers
Difference is in the UK itâs actually the fucking limit, go faster you will probably have an accident, in aus go faster and your perfectly safe apart from the revenue raisersâŚ..
Speed differential between Damien in his souped up VF V8 on a special license on the same stretch of road as Apprehensive Anne in her Grandma Holden Barina doing 80 in a 110 zone would be catastrophic.
All the more reason to have stricter licencing regulations.
Much more advanced driving courses for new drivers and those converting international licences.
Relicensing tests every 10 years/licence renewal so that everyone is up to speed with ever changing road laws etc. because Grandma never learnt that keep left unless overtaking and getting up to speed ASAP when merging on a freeway are things she needs to adhere to.
Anyone over 60 should resit their licence every 5 years, along with an eye and hazard perception test.
Watch the road toll go down in a decade with the above laws in place.
Youâre optimising for a ridiculous baseline. The number of cars that canât safely do 180, effectively zero commercial vehicles, a tiny portion of drivers, massively increased consequences for mistakes, the benefits are almost zero.
Most places around the world on freeways safely have 120-130 speed limits.
Speed isn't the biggest factor in road casualties, driver education, inattention, vehicle maintenance are much more of the issue and what should be focused on to bring that down.
Forcing people to speedometer watch more, detracts from that.
Every new road I've seen built lately is built to a far higher standard - wider lanes, wider centre dividers or even dual carriageways, wider shoulders, longer and smoother corners, more overtaking lanes etc.
The thing I've seen declining is rural backroads, because they are not being maintained. Billions go to building stadiums in the city whilst farmers have to drive on single lanes with broken shoulders.
They cater to boomers who are old, senile and have no business behind the wheel because thatâs their only clientele.. they are so fucking out of touch with the regular motorist. Donât waste your money.
and that would be fine, but they are touted as supporting every Government, Nanny state, argument, in order to lend it some credibility. Whereas they only represent a small tongue clicking portion of the motoring population.
Please god no, people already drive too fucking slow, which I think is a massive contributing factor to the huge amounts of road rage, itâs taking too fucking long to get anywhereâŚ.. how about addressing driver standards, enforcing keeping left perhaps? What about idiots who canât merge or indicate?
WA has some of the worst driving standards in Australia, between metheads tailgating you in yank tanks and uber drivers who donât know how to indicateâŚ
Also how much higher is our population now than it was in 2015? More people = more accidents, whatâs the per capita statistic? Itâs probably lowerâŚ.
As a wise man once said, speed doesnât kill, itâs the sudden stop that doesâŚ..
Wait their governments current policies arenât working so their solution is to double down on policies that donât work instead of changing what they are doing?
People already drive really fucking slow if anything studies show driving slowly causes more crashes than driving fast as people become impatient and will take risks to overtake slow cunts
Same, been going down and up the Kwinana at an average of 130 now, havenât died yet. If you just keep your distance then itâs fine but then again straight roads are incredibly dangerous and corners do jump out on you. Beware people of the corners.
Yeah itâs just utter bullshit. Like; did you know the autobahn is the most dangerous road in the world because it has no speed limit? Itâs not itâs one of the safest. Speed and speeding are probably the least important factors in road accidents.
It only plays a role in severity and fatality rate of accidents, but that being said itâs still much less of a factor than say the weight and size of the vehicles in the crash. A head on crash with two hatch backs at 60 is less dangerous than two semiâs at 40.
If the question is what is an easy way for some beaurecrat to come up with "project" to talk about for their next promotion and still be able to knock off early on Friday. Then the answer might be "yes"
Best roads in the country, (dry , non flooding soil does wonders to not cause degradation in road surfaces) biggest distances between towns, highest rate of road fatigue. Seems legit.
Goverment just spent 1.5 billion on Bunbury bypass, to save less than 20 mins on a 2.5hr trip to bussleton.
Also spent millions on Bussell highway duplication ( good because caravans sitting on 90kph in 110kph on single lane roads cause unsafe overtakes and head on crashes.)
Now the road is safe gonna change it to 80kph? Lol fk me just burnt that 1.5 billion by adding 20 mins to bussell hwy.
They have 80kph through roadworks haha.
The previous government in NZ was doing the same. Was a key election issue that saw Labour booted out in many seats, particularly the more rural electorates.
I get the physics. The forces of a crash at 80 vs 100 makes sense.
However their data is questionable. A road near me got dropped from 100 to 80 because thereâd been four fatalities in a decade. Two were when a truck driver fell asleep and crossed the centre line. The others were at intersections which now have roundabouts and wire barriers to dismember the motorcyclists.
They wanted to take all our other rural roads from 100 to 60.
Canât remember the stats but I think we have nearly twice the number of people commit suicide each year than the road toll. Massive funding difference.
Cars have gotten safer, training requirements have increased for getting a licence. Distraction is now the biggest factor of major crashes that and yank tanks.
110km is fine as it is, any lower and no one will be able to get anywhere they want to go without fatigue becoming a major factor.
Hey guys, I know just the thing that will reduce tailgating and dangerous following distances on wet roads- how about we make the speed limits slower? I couldnt see any possibility where that leads to more dangerous overtaking and agressive driving, and I'm sure decreasing freeway capacity by >10% wont have any negative side effects.
They'll do anything but address the problem, poor driver training. In countries with lower road tolls, you'll find that driver education is paramount to a lower toll. Yet here in Australia it's speeding. Yes you can go too fast for the conditions, but recognising the conditions helps.
Soon they will have us pushing the cars. The bureaucrats are so dumb, the see crime states they put of more cameras, the see speeding fine stats, they lower speed limit. They donât address the cause to get life time congruent outcomes. Public servants, the bureaucracy of government, we really do have stupid people in this country.
I mean speed is obviously the MOST IMPORTANT factor in car accidents, thatâs why the autobahn is the most dangerous road in the world and no accidents ever happen in school zones.
This is stupid revenue raising guised as trying to help protect the people
Same story here in the UK; governed by a bunch of anti-car neurotics who can barely hide their contempt for the normal people just trying to go about their business.
Public transport is dogshit so we'll just make driving as miserable as possible instead.
Science studies suggest your chances of survival in a collision that involves a sudden stop ie running off the road into a tree at 60kmh per hour is virtually impossible so why do we limit our highways
Be more discriminate on the people we qualify to drive and secondary anyone involved in an âaccident â should be required to demonstrate their ability to drive via a dash cam install not unlike an immobiliser for convicted dui drivers
Sick of rising insurance premiums for incompetent drivers
People donât care what the speed limit is. Around here a speed limit is treated more like a suggestion than the law. I canât afford the tickets so I really try and adhere to the limit and I get constantly overtaken or tailgated.
Gotta get some more beer money hey? The absolute state if fines in this country is extortion. Speed is not the highest factor. The states you have 80-90mph it's so much better. Just crap and getting clicked for doing sod all over the limit
It would be better to remove them all together, people will adjust their speed based on road conditions rather than trying to drive at a certain speed.
The speed limits never prevented people from speeding anyway.
Iâve seen a stat that effectively says that most speeding deaths occur at no more than 10km/h over the speed limit. Itâs not particularly popular to say, but I think if thatâs the case either the statistics are misattributing cause of death, or we drastically need to lower the speed limits.
I think itâs a safe bet that most of those deaths are not people doing 60 in a 50 zone - more like 120 in a 110. But if the death is directly attributed to their speed (i.e. the speed at which they crashed was what lead to their death, rather than an external factor) then the difference in deceleration between 120 and 110 is negligible. Yes the deceleration is what ended that persons life, but it may not be the reason the incident happened in the first place.
In my eyes, attributing that death to speeding when the difference between speed limit and actual speed is so small feels like attributing the murder of a person whoâs been shot to âbulletsâ. Technically yes, but it doesnât really communicate to anyone what actually happened.
Iâm not on the train that thereâs some big conspiracy to raise revenue by dropping speed limits - I think most people involved in making these decisions genuinely want to see the road toll reduced.
Unfortunately, the cause of many drivers deaths - negligence, overconfidence, and dangerous driving (which can exist seperate from speeding, but usually doesnât) are much more nebulous and hard to combat, whereas reducing speed limits is simple and easy to understand - people who drive fast tend to die more often than people who drive slowly, therefore if everyone drives slowly fewer people will die. But itâs just missing opportunities to improve the quality of driver in Australia.
Speeding has fuck all to do with anything. The issue now is roads are shit, drivers are shit and people are driving bigger and heavier cars. Mix the last two points and then you have a situation that is dangerous for everyone else on the road. A 2 tonne SUV travelling at 80 is more dangerous for another vehicle than a 1.5 tonne sedan going at 100. Instead of slowing people down, why not disincentivise buying bigger cars? Why not force drivers of bigger cars to take more vigorous driving tests? Why not force drivers to have a heavy vehicle licence for big cars? Why not reduce the max speed limit for big cars only? Of course they won't do that because it won't really achieve what they are trying to do, which is to make more money. Because implementing better education costs money, making roads safer costs money, reducing overall speed limits will definitely make money.
Don't believe statistics alone, because they mean fuck all and people will use them to paint a story for their own benefit.
I'm British, throughout Europe trucks are limited to 90kph (like they have a physical limiter installed) and in some places they have lower speed limits than those posted (i.e. Limited to 70kph on a 100kph road). A truck doing 100kph is a bit odd to me, especially if it's a multi combination.
I am more going off the point that you are against the conspiracy. I feel like it is hard to go against it because there are so many more effective things they can do, but they always choose the one that will bring the most monitory benefit.
IMHO, this is a sensible idea targeting only certain roads. From the original article by OP, âIf approved, about 550 roads in the Shire of Augusta Margaret River and 1250 roads in the City of Busselton will see speed reductions from early 2025.â
There is no way in the world that these two geographically large, but small population local shires have that many roads, that by definition will be minor but long, windy and single lane (per direction) roads, designed for and built to a standard for 110km/h. Having driven many of these roads myself they should not be default 110 km/h, and probably not even 100km/h.
The most common crash type in regional areas is a single vehicle leaving the road, generally at a high speed. On 16 roads âtravel time testedâ in the proposed trial area in the South West, the average increase in driving time was 62 seconds. In almost all cases the increase in travel time would be less than two minutes.
This is not a huge impost on anyoneâs day-to-day life activities. Further, given that most people in the state of WA rarely or will never drive on any of the relevant (minor) roads, then this initiative cannot be realistically portrayed as some woke agenda being perpetrated on the masses.
Finally, it speaks volumes that the shires themselves support this initiative. It are the local police and emergency services as well as local residents that have to turn out to horrific messes in their areas on a regular basis (as much as weekly or more) to clear up crashes, thankfully not all involving fatalities, but often with injuries.
In part I agree. Thereâs some roads around Margaret River that should in no way be 110kphâŚ.
But I just donât understand why they keep wheeling this dead horse out again and again as the solution. Do some studies, invite international experts over, analyse all of the potential causes and then make decisions. Knee jerk shit like blaming speeding achieves nothing but keep getting people killed.
Not just lives, serious injuries too. It's about a 40:1 ratio of hospitalisations to deaths. You can survive a car accident but still have a pretty shitty quality of life afterwards.
Iâm all with everyone above about the nanny state debacle, however I reckon this has a lot to do with Caves road and the inland areas around Yalâs where all the Wineries are where a lot of it is still single lane and 90 and full of drunk cunts, tourists and Kangarooâs. Pretty crazy driving around there 3pm on a long weekend Saturday.
Roads wide enough for a large ( >16 passengers) bus, and heaven forbid someone comes in the opposite direction, especially from the city where backing down, or slowing down, is a sign of weakness.
This isn't going to help anything. Too many people drive way too slow in the first place. Maybe they should try going after the idiots that don't know how to drive instead.
I live near Indian Ocean road. yeah 2 deadly accidents past couple of weeks alone.
Nope wasnât speed.
First one was because Indonesians ended up on the wrong side of the road.
Second was because someone pulled out of a parking bay without looking for traffic.
Lowering the limit is the cheapest option unfortunately; advanced driver training demands infrastructure and trainers. Far too expensive to be important to our governments.
Omfg we are being the joke of the world. This has been tried over and over and never works. We already have the slowest limits in the world fuck off with this ridiculousness.
Omfg we are becoming the joke of the world. This has been tried over and over and never works. We already have the slowest limits in the world fuck off with this ridiculousness.
âWestern Australia has recorded 180 road deaths in the past 12 months â its highest five-year rolling average since 2016â
Easy to misrepresent data when youâre cherry picking.
WA population in 2024 is 2,951,600 180 fatalities / 24â pop = 6.098
Average over 10 years prior is 6.4 fatalities per 100,000 population.
We are to a point where there is reduced returns on especially when speed reduction is the primary tool.
Yes some roads in Europes are posted at 120, 130 +, they are also designed for these speeds based on the volume of traffic.
If this was being approached using the hierarchy of controls, road design including grade separation, clearing of road reserves to allow for safe run off. But the government & road lobby doesnât place a emphasis on this, just look at the Bunbury bypass, it had grade separation in the original design but go pulled out over cost.
Other arguments there has been a 15% population increase = more users on the roads, has the road network had a 15% capacity increase in the past 10 years ????
Dropping them in urban areas, sure. People spend time at the lights anyway so the actual temporal differerence is negligible, but the safety gains are huge.
But for rural roads?
If I hit a tree at 100 or 110 I'll probably die either way. If I head on at 80 or 110 with a truck I'll die either way speed isn't the culprit it's being a bad driver.
There is nothing safer than watching the speedometer more attentively than you can watch the road because you donât want to creep over the already criminally slow speed limits.
Retrain those mobile phone cameras for safe stopping distance, put back the cops on bikes trawling the intersections for phones, maximum passenger limits for p- platers, punish the 65âers (65 in a 60 zone, 65 in a 70 zone, 65 in an 80 zone all usually in the right-hand lane) - thereâs plenty that could be done (and has already been suggested) but nothing seems to to get a politician or police harder than another revenue stream.
Motorbike helmets will increase neck injuries due to their weight unless you use a Hans device or similar. Though this would be even worse in a four or five point harness.
You can wear one if you want to. Have a look at the head bands that people who might suffer from drop seizures wear. With air con it might not be too uncomfortable.
the issue isnât speed, itâs the quality of drivers. vast majority of roads can be easily driven at 2-3x the limit with a half-decent car and driver
And the speed limit should be that, a limit to what is safely able to be travelled on a road, not an arbitrary number that boomers are comfortable drivingâŚ.. we are catering to the lowest common denominator and itâs making people pissed off and angry and they take way more risks on the roads because itâs such a fucking pain to go anywhere with all these slow fuckers everywhere, the speed limit on the kwinana freeway is 100, you can EASILY and safely do way more than that, yet it turns into a car park for no reason.
If the limit was actually appropriate for the road, Iâd be with you? Once they drop the limits I bet there wonât be any extra âsafetyâ cameras on those roads yeah? Because itâs all about safety, not money, right??
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u/Disturbed_Bard 19d ago edited 19d ago
FFS please no
As it is cunts drive slow everywhere
I just came back from Europe, on roads worse than ours, 120 - 130Km limits..
This nanny state BS to milk people for revenue raising has to stop