Alternative headline: National to spend $30m to sacrifice some of your lives so our trip is slightly faster.
The changes have been endorsed by transport researchers and street safety advocates as effective measures to help reduce the number of Kiwis killed and injured on the roads.
That’s all there is to it.
I’ve been trying to follow this story and the evidence underpinning the decision. That is based upon te published data for killied and seriously injured.(KSI). Any alternate approach at this time is not providing evidence, that I have been able to pick up. It seems more like a power / votes opportunity rather than a well founded argument. Despite it being unpopular, like when we mandated seatbels in 1983,I still suppot the reduced speed limits unti the evidece says otherwise.
There should be more focus on alcohol in my opinion. Speed is always a contributing factor but not often the causing factor. Keeping distance is another one many people need to understand better.
But lowering speed limits is easier and also brings in easy money as speed testing is very efficient.
I think it’s worth understanding why they are targeting speeds. It’s not revenue collection. Road to Zero is the idea that people make mistakes, and they shouldn’t have to pay with their lives.
In the past: They weren’t paying attention, hit a truck, it’s their fault they died.
Now: They weren’t paying attention, hit a truck, how could we have prevented it? Let’s install a median separator.
Basically, accepting people make mistakes, and looking for ways to stop this meaning they have to die.
The reason they are targeting speed is related to this. If you get drunk and drive and hit a power pole, if you do drugs and drive and hit a power pole, if you use your phone while driving and hit a power pole, if your kid distracts you and you hit a power pole, these are all different causes but the result is the same. You hit a power pole.
Now if you’re driving at 100KPH, the result of this accident is that you or someone in your vehicle probably dies or gets a life-long injury. If you’re driving at 80KPH, chances are you walk away from the crash, or at least can recover fully within a few months.
The idea of reduced speed limits is simply that people are going to make mistakes, people are going to crash, and when this happens we should prioritise life over saving 3 minutes on your commute.
Exactly this.
Greater speed makes every collision and accident worse.
We can save lives, already involved in collisions, by reducing the speed at which those collisions happen.
I’d rather we address the underlying cause of these accidents, personally, rather than just saying “shit happens”
As a young taco enthusiast once asked - - porque no los dos?
It’s not a binary issue - - you could address both sides of the problem. Do more to reduce the likelihood of accidents, but also minimise the damage done by accidents. Since there’s no magic on/off switch for car accidents, while we figure out the right settings to reduce them, maybe it’s wise to use strategies that minimise the damage done by them.
Thanks for your insights! I think we’re on the same page, I agree that some roads should be 80km/hour instead of 100. And indeed, risk of an injury crash seems to double from 80 to 100. I don’t mind the couple of extra minutes.
I just see the police checking for speed too often on roads where it’s easy to go over the limit, like the Kapiti Expressway, where I believe they should focus on e.g. 50km/h areas, checking for red light runners, alcohol, and tailgating.
Interesting! I have never seen police on the Transmission Gully/Kāpitiexpressway stretch of road except for police travelling along it. Never seen a speed trap.
I also think we are headed for a future with police playing a smaller part in speed detection (and cameras playing a bigger part).
We could probably keep many of the 80kph roads at 100kph if you had confidence people would actually drive at 100. Camera enforcement will play a big part in future I feel, the culture change to get people sticking to the posted speed limit.
In The Netherlands, speed traps are done by a separate unit, they’re not police officers. It’s also fully automated and a separate speed tracked process within the legal system, anything below 30 km/h is fully automated & car owners are automatically invoiced and assumed in the wrong if caught in a speed trap. You have to go through many loops to appeal. It’s a massive cash grab system and seen as just another tax as it’s used to pay for completely unrelated things, like free school books.
While most people adhere to the limits, many people still exceed the limits as it’s mostly safe to do so.
The low road toll there is mainly contributed to the very safe roads, and e.g. no crossings and traffic lights at 100km/hour roads, like here in NZ.
One problem NZ has is that things are far away from each other, and it’s mountainous.
That means we spend a lot more time driving long distance than people in The Netherlands, and this driving is largely on long, windy, poor quality roads. The roads are poor quality because we need so many of them compared to the population.
We have less than 20 people per km^2, vs The Netherland’s 500+.
Yep true, think my comparison is not entirely fair. Also, in NL the taxes are a lot higher; e.g. road tax / month for a petrol car is what we pay here per YEAR, diesel cars are even more expensive. Plus, there’s an additional tax on new vehicles.
That’s a very long winded way of saying fixing the underlying issues is too hard, so we’re just going to slow everyone down.
Road to Zero is a 30 year plan with a multifaceted approach. There is progress on things like camera detection of phone use and people not wearing seatbelts, but technology and culture changes take time. Speed limits don’t take time, and help towards the goal.
Road to Zero is not some new idea someone at Waka Kōtahi thought up. It’s something in use in many countries around the world with it’s origins in the 90s.
The chart that Dave posted is pretty inconclusive, in my view. It don’t think you can compare this to seatbelts, the evidence for seatbelts working is overwhelming.
A chart summarises the data. The outcry against seatbelts at the time was similar to the antivax arguments, which are based upon views rather than just data.
I have to agree the chart is inconclusive. COVID messes up the later years which also happen to be the ones after road to zero started.
I think National claiming it isn’t working is a bit ridiculous though, like investing in shares, seeing the price drop in one year, then deciding investing doesn’t work.