Lower speed limits mean more deaths in NT
Discussion
This blog article from Downunder might be of interest to Pistonheaders?
Thanks for posting the link.
The website in question takes forever to load so here's the content.
That said, my experience of driving in SA, NSW, VIC and WA is that the traffic is very speed conscious and hardly hazard conscious at all. Clusters of traffic head off from traffic lights in bunches, stay in bunches, travel side-by-side for kms at a time not daring to go 1km faster to overtake in case a zealous plod is hiding in a bush 30km from just outside nowhere (and they damn well do), and I've never felt so uncomfortable and at risk amongst everyday drivers.
Added to that, everyone I know in Australia has enough points that one more speeding conviction will ban them... usually for three separate 64kph offences in 60 zones. It's ludicrous and I'm amazed there's not a much, much bigger stink about it.
Shame is, with falling road death figures in southern states, the government has all the data it needs to ignore any protest
The website in question takes forever to load so here's the content.
wheelsmag.com.au said:
Removing the open road speed limit on remote highways in the Northern Territory has led to a disastrous increase in road deaths and a sharp upward trend in the toll.
In 2007, the first year of the reduction of the open road limit to 130km/h, the NT road toll increased from 42 (in 2006) to 58, up an alarming 38 percent.
Last year, the bad news continued with the death toll on NT roads increasing again, from 58 (in 2007) to 75, a hike of 29.3 percent.
The 2008 NT road toll of 75 is the worst since 1987.
During the first two-year period of the 130km/h limit, there was an increase of 33 road deaths - or more than 78 percent - says the National Motorists Association of Australia (NMAA).
Up until the 130km/h speed limit was introduced in the Territory on January 1, 2007, against great opposition from road safety experts, the NT road toll was trending downwards.
The open road limit was dumped by a cynical and soft NT Labor Government following a concerted campaign by the usual limelight junkies from down south, and an investigation by a road safety taskforce.
The open road limit was sensible in the NT with its long, straight roads and real prospects of driver boredom and fatigue. Territorians typically travel more kilometres annually than their southern counterparts.
The taskforce had found that 48 percent of deaths were alcohol related. The government acknowledged that drink driving, running red lights and seatbelt offences were the major safety concerns in the NT, and then it went about ignoring its own advice and applying the highway speed limits - 110 on all but the four main highways, which have a 130 km/h limit.
The carnage on the NT roads over the past two calendar years contrasts with the rest of the nation where death trends are largely down.
A general downward trend in road deaths is understandable given the emergence of life-saving features like stability control and airbags/side curtains on modern motor vehicles.
Official figures released in its annual reports by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau show that in 2008 every state and territory except the NT recorded a decrease in road fatalities (the ACT recorded the same numbers as in 2007 - 14).
The NMAA questions how much effort NT authorities put into diagnosing the causes of deaths on the Territory's roads.
"You can't manage what you don't measure," said Gavin Goeldner, a spokesman for the NMAA.
The association is urging the NT government to urgently release detailed statistics regarding the attributed causes of the 2007 and 2008 fatalities, and to highlight black spot regions, so that this alarming trend can be understood and reversed.
The NMAA has always opposed the move to lower speed limits for fear of increased fatigue related crashes.
"We'd like to see the detail, but the coincidence of the introduction of lower highway limits with the sudden increase in the road toll is hard to dismiss," said Goeldner.
The lower limit has also been an economic calamity for the NT as it has lost its regular visits from car companies such as Porsche, which used the roads for serious hot weather prototype testing.
Unfortunately the peculiar road layouts in NT and the evident casualty increase due to speed enforcement there don't lend themselves to a "speed doesn't kill" argument in this country (or southern Australian states).In 2007, the first year of the reduction of the open road limit to 130km/h, the NT road toll increased from 42 (in 2006) to 58, up an alarming 38 percent.
Last year, the bad news continued with the death toll on NT roads increasing again, from 58 (in 2007) to 75, a hike of 29.3 percent.
The 2008 NT road toll of 75 is the worst since 1987.
During the first two-year period of the 130km/h limit, there was an increase of 33 road deaths - or more than 78 percent - says the National Motorists Association of Australia (NMAA).
Up until the 130km/h speed limit was introduced in the Territory on January 1, 2007, against great opposition from road safety experts, the NT road toll was trending downwards.
The open road limit was dumped by a cynical and soft NT Labor Government following a concerted campaign by the usual limelight junkies from down south, and an investigation by a road safety taskforce.
The open road limit was sensible in the NT with its long, straight roads and real prospects of driver boredom and fatigue. Territorians typically travel more kilometres annually than their southern counterparts.
The taskforce had found that 48 percent of deaths were alcohol related. The government acknowledged that drink driving, running red lights and seatbelt offences were the major safety concerns in the NT, and then it went about ignoring its own advice and applying the highway speed limits - 110 on all but the four main highways, which have a 130 km/h limit.
The carnage on the NT roads over the past two calendar years contrasts with the rest of the nation where death trends are largely down.
A general downward trend in road deaths is understandable given the emergence of life-saving features like stability control and airbags/side curtains on modern motor vehicles.
Official figures released in its annual reports by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau show that in 2008 every state and territory except the NT recorded a decrease in road fatalities (the ACT recorded the same numbers as in 2007 - 14).
The NMAA questions how much effort NT authorities put into diagnosing the causes of deaths on the Territory's roads.
"You can't manage what you don't measure," said Gavin Goeldner, a spokesman for the NMAA.
The association is urging the NT government to urgently release detailed statistics regarding the attributed causes of the 2007 and 2008 fatalities, and to highlight black spot regions, so that this alarming trend can be understood and reversed.
The NMAA has always opposed the move to lower speed limits for fear of increased fatigue related crashes.
"We'd like to see the detail, but the coincidence of the introduction of lower highway limits with the sudden increase in the road toll is hard to dismiss," said Goeldner.
The lower limit has also been an economic calamity for the NT as it has lost its regular visits from car companies such as Porsche, which used the roads for serious hot weather prototype testing.
That said, my experience of driving in SA, NSW, VIC and WA is that the traffic is very speed conscious and hardly hazard conscious at all. Clusters of traffic head off from traffic lights in bunches, stay in bunches, travel side-by-side for kms at a time not daring to go 1km faster to overtake in case a zealous plod is hiding in a bush 30km from just outside nowhere (and they damn well do), and I've never felt so uncomfortable and at risk amongst everyday drivers.
Added to that, everyone I know in Australia has enough points that one more speeding conviction will ban them... usually for three separate 64kph offences in 60 zones. It's ludicrous and I'm amazed there's not a much, much bigger stink about it.
Shame is, with falling road death figures in southern states, the government has all the data it needs to ignore any protest
FNG said:
That said, my experience of driving in SA, NSW, VIC and WA is that the traffic is very speed conscious and hardly hazard conscious at all. Clusters of traffic head off from traffic lights in bunches, stay in bunches, travel side-by-side for kms at a time not daring to go 1km faster to overtake in case a zealous plod is hiding in a bush 30km from just outside nowhere (and they damn well do), and I've never felt so uncomfortable and at risk amongst everyday drivers.
I'm not sure I completely agree with that. I often see Brits commenting that driving in Australia is bad ... from my perspective, having lived in both country Victoria and London, I would say that British (or at least Londoner) driving is worse. Mostly because people here treat the indicator as an option, and pedestrians on zebra crossings as targets. I agree that people have ended up completely speed conscious - ... the "side by side travel" behaviour is a consequence of people using cruise control to stop getting speeding tickets. But forget getting frustrated about not being able to overtake - you just can't speed on the highways in the southern states, you'll get nabbed every time. It'll end up that way here too sooner rather than later...Having grown up driving in an area with lots of unmarked crossings on dirt roads, and of course the old kanga into the side panels at dusk hazard, you end up pretty hazard conscious... just not the same kind of hazards as in the UK...
240vac said:
I'm not sure I completely agree with that. I often see Brits commenting that driving in Australia is bad ... from my perspective, having lived in both country Victoria and London, I would say that British (or at least Londoner) driving is worse. Mostly because people here treat the indicator as an option, and pedestrians on zebra crossings as targets. I agree that people have ended up completely speed conscious - ... the "side by side travel" behaviour is a consequence of people using cruise control to stop getting speeding tickets. But forget getting frustrated about not being able to overtake - you just can't speed on the highways in the southern states, you'll get nabbed every time. It'll end up that way here too sooner rather than later...
Having grown up driving in an area with lots of unmarked crossings on dirt roads, and of course the old kanga into the side panels at dusk hazard, you end up pretty hazard conscious... just not the same kind of hazards as in the UK...
Driving in London is particularly bad - I hear what you're saying but it's not comparable with rural Victoria. Like for like, your dirt roads are comparable to pretty isolated areas of the UK and the driving standards outside of the SE of England are generally higher with less aggression, more indicating and even some use of mirrors. Honestly.Having grown up driving in an area with lots of unmarked crossings on dirt roads, and of course the old kanga into the side panels at dusk hazard, you end up pretty hazard conscious... just not the same kind of hazards as in the UK...
The feedback I've had that's negative about Australian driving standards is perhaps tainted by the anti-speed culture being promoted there, but what I saw didn't endear me to that policy. I did feel that due to how easy it is to transgress the limit and find yourself nabbed, fixation on speed was unhealthy.
An insistence on using cruise no matter what the other traffic is doing can also be very dangerous at times, Belgium is the same and the average Brit's perception of their driving skill is equally low... That said, in towns and villages the Belgians look around them much more and are more aware of cyclists, for example, than we are.
The problem with use of cruise is that you can end up with two cars next to each other, or tailgating as the cruise adapts the vehicle speed slightly differently, and drivers seem loathe to switch it off and make space for themselves (and are too scared of a ticket to simply overtake at 5kph faster, as we can do in this country). Bunched traffic and cars side-by-side are not a good thing if Kanga does pop out to say g'day...
I fully agree on the counter-productiveness of the speed policy. On a lot of small country roads a 100 kmh limit is fine, and you probably wouldn't want to do much more than that anyway except perhaps briefly if overtaking, but on the Hume Freeway which was built for much higher speeds, 110 kmh is just silly. I do quite like that over here you can go significantly higher than that in obvious safe motorway stretches knowing that its a least tacitly OK. However, I doubt that it will last more than another year or two.
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