When the US increased interstate highway speed limits from 88.5 km/h to
104.5 km/h in 1987, a noticable increase in deaths was re****ted.
"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:482a7978$0$13943$afc38c87@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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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