What really frustrates me about this debate about dropping the speed limits is that it’s not evidence-based.
This proposal doesn’t seem to be based on facts.
People have just accepted the argument at face value without looking a little deeper and asking: will dropping speed limits on 500 kilometres-worth of roading in this country really help us get road deaths down significantly? Will it really help us get road deaths down to zero?
So let’s look at the facts.
Only 15 percent of road deaths happen because of speed only. Which means 85 percent of crashes happen below the speed limit or because the drivers are boozed or drugged up.
85 percent.
So Waka Kotahi’s big solution to getting the road toll down completely ignores the fact that 85 percent of the road toll will probably be unaffected.
And as a justification for dropping speed limits, Waka Kotahi has drummed up a lot of publicity around our particularly bad road toll this year.
Come on. It’s pretty much on par with the last five years, and frankly in context, our road toll has been falling every single decade since the 70s.
Back in 1973, when we had a population of 3 million, the road toll was 843; more than double what it is now with almost half the population.
The worst thing about this is that it gives transport officials an excuse to not do the things that would actually make a difference.
They’re doing this so they don’t have to put in median barriers that would actually be effective at stopping cars crossing the centre line and smacking into other cars head on.
And that wouldn’t just stop head on crashes from speeding cars, but from everything else as well. Tired drivers, distracted drivers, drunk drivers, drugged drivers.
Logically, putting in a median barrier would probably save more lives than dropping a speed limit, but they don’t do that. They instead drop the speed limit so they can keep being lazy and not spending proper money on the roads.
What’s frustrating is that those facts are not what are being debated; instead, we’ve got an argument dictated by emotion.
Which means we’ll probably all end up having to drive more slowly, while hundreds of people still die on the roads each year because speed isn’t really the biggest problem.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
5 comments:
Maybe cars produce less carbon at a lower speed, so climate change is driving NZTA decisions, not functional and safe reading for New Zealanders.
Evidence is never needed when ideology is the game being played.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The focus on comparing absolute numbers of deaths from year to year is an irrelevant consideration.
Every year we have more drivers on the road doing more kilometres (ask any Aucklander).
Therefore, a more relevant consideration would be something like number of deaths per hundred licensed drivers or, even better, number of deaths per kilometres travelled (getting that last bit of information may be difficult).
It would be then obvious that the road toll is actually decreasing.
It would also be interesting to know the Actual annual spend on roads vs the amount collected in petrol tax and road user charges
I believe their logic is, that if we are all going slower, it gives us a greater chance of dodging the potholes. It's a health and safety thing.
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