Snapper wrote:
> Here's a beauty.
>
> http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23661161-5000117,00.html
>
> It refers to the soon to be opened Eastlink tollway in Melbourne's east.
> The state budget was handed down the other night and as re****ted, the
> government expects revenue to rise based on patronage of this new road.
>
> It will have banks of fixed speed cameras, mobile police patrols and
> roadside car speed cameras.
>
> Now, as Mitchell pointed out, the government and police drum into us
that
> speed cameras aren't about revenue. Rather, they're about "saving
lives".
> Cameras are set up where there are known hot spots for crashes, and
> problematic excessive speeds.
>
> However, Eastlink, a brand new multilane, modern, state-of-the-art
divided
> carriageway, hasn't even opened.
>
> So, folks, it IS about revenue. The government budgets for it. No
> government will concede that it is about revenue raising. No government,
> to put their mouthes where their money is, will plough speeding fine
> revenue back into road safety programs. Rather, it goes into
consolidated
> revenue.
>
> Speed cameras are an easy fix for a problem that they don't address -
but
> they think that we're conned into believing that it does address the
> problems.
>
> It's like any pubic servant. They'll do what they can to get out of
doing
> a day's hard work. By saying that "speed kills" they get off from
actually
> getting off their fat lard arses and doing something that WOULD reduce
the
> road toll, and casualty crashes.
>
Somewhat at a tangent, but relevant, is this article from the US
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
The primary conclusion is that speed limits have little effect on
speeds, but to the extent that they did, the effect was counter
intuitive in that an increase in the speed limit lead to a a reduction
in accidents and vice versa.
My own experience on my recent trip to Dubbo was that outside of towns,
the limit of 110km/h was reasonable. Some sections were 100km/h for no
readily apparent reason. I tended to comply with the 110km/h limit, but
not the 100km/h limit.
Approaches to towns were annoying. The limits were reduced to 80
unnecessarily soon, and then usually to 50 (not 60!) in the built up
areas, even though we were still on a major road.
One section, just outside, Manildra was posted at 100km/h, but the road
was narrow, and the surface bad. I expressed the view, and my co-driver
agreed, that the limit was actually too high there, and I didn't drive
that fast.
Sylvia.
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