Tasmanian speed limits to reduce to 90kmph

[SSD-85]

Aww Geez, I was going to visit Tassie one day....

[tex]

Flappy, our biggest motoring group (non enthusiast group) has been all over that angle for the last couple of years.

Their constituents are 'normal' everyday Jack and Jill motorists. Tasmanian coffers are already over represented the by kurbside revinue stream.

But that's not what this about (regardless of my avatar)

This is way beyond that, this has greater ramifications.

[geckoGT]

"The Council is investigating these changes because expert advice indicates that lower speeds will lessen the number of serious crashes. On average we could expect to save 4 lives and 13 serious injuries every year on Tasmanian roads," Mr Gledhill said.

Ask them to make this "expert advice" open to the public, not in abbreviated form but the whole report.

"Speed is the most contributing factor to injury in the event of a crash, the forces that are exerted on the human body at impact are closely related to the speed.

This can be offset by the increased likelihood of crash due to fatigue.

"International and national research shows that a reduction of 1 km/h in speed can lead to a 2-3% reduction in casualty crashes (which is where people are either injured or killed).

I would like to see the stats on this and what speed ranges the largest difference in injury severity occurred. I would agree that a large difference will occur at 50-60 km/h for example, but a crash into a solid object at 90-100 km/h will make very little difference to injury rates as injury will occur at both speeds. This is due to the fact that even at 90 km/h, it far exceeds the crash protection mechanisms of even the safest modern car.

"By travelling 10 km/h slower, you could reduce your risk of being in a casualty crash by 20-30%," he said.

Again, is this at the 90-100 km/h range or is this a stat found at lower speeds and what roads were those statistics found on, urban, rural or combination?

Mr Gledhill said that a high proportion of casualty crashes in Tasmania occurred on rural roads.

As they do in all states due to increased speed and fatigue primarily. A 10 km/h reduction in speed may save a life or two in a crash but it may cause 20 more crashes. This phenomena has been experienced in the NT since they dropped the rural speed limit in 2006, they have seen an increase in the rural road toll (one of few states to increase).

"From 2005 to 2009, 45% of fatalities and 41% of serious injuries in Tasmania occurred on rural roads," he said.

Again, in line with all other states.

"The benefits of reduced rural speed limits have already been experienced first-hand in Tasmania.

"Results from Australia's first rural safer speeds demonstrations, in the Kingborough and Tasman Municipalities, have shown that reduced limits have had a positive and substantial impact upon the local community.

What were the reductions and how far were people traveling. A reduction in local speed limits will not induce the fatigue issues a statewide reduction will so this evidence is flawed.

"For both sealed and gravel roads, over 80% of those surveyed either considered the new reduced limits to be appropriate or preferred further reductions.

Who was surveyed and what were the demographics of the survey group?

Mr Gledhill said that the slower speeds would add very little to travel times.

"Research has shown that, if travelling at 90 km/h instead of 100 km/h, the increase in travel time on average is about 6%," he said.

Which equates to a 6% increase in fatigue and therefore fatigue related crashes, the offset of those few lives saved commences.

"That means if your journey was supposed to take an hour, it would only take an extra three and a half minutes.

And statistically you are more likely to crash within 5 mins from your place of residence, will that figure now be 8.5 mins?

"There is also the added benefit of significant savings in terms of vehicle operating costs and greenhouse emissions. Fuel consumption increases significantly at speeds over 90 km/h. For example, travelling at 100km/h uses 10% more fuel than travelling at 90km/h.

What a load of utter garbage, this depends on the car. My typhoon sits on about 8-9l/100 km at 100 km/h, 90 km/h makes no difference, it actually appears to sit a bit higher at 80 because it does not get into top gear.

"Driving at lower speeds will also reduce wear and tear on tyres and brakes, which will save you money on maintaining your vehicle.

Clutching at straws here, with that speed reduction the saving here would be miniscule and not noteworthy. If they were talking a reduction from 200-100 it would be a point but not 100-90.

Mr Gledhill said that some roads would retain the 100 km/h speed limit and that this would be evaluated as part of process.

For now.

[tex]

Gecko, thanks, we're going to need reasoned responses from as many people as possible.

[wrongwaynorris]

Originally Posted by STANI

...... why

Maybe the girls are outrunning their brothers in their cars now .

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by tex

Gecko, thanks, we're going to need reasoned responses from as many people as possible.

No worries mate, you have my support on this one.

I am all for the compliance of road laws by all road users yada yada yada, but I see this as a large mistake. I think that when it comes to rural road safety, too much emphasis is placed on speed and not fatigue.

We had a lot of experience with government departments with our roster reform and we found one thing was very clear. Government departments have this wonderful knack to find some obscure stat that may not even be relevant in the context in which they are using it. They then use phrases such as "strong evidence supports", without providing the complete evidence for the scrutiny of the target audience.

I think we should all oppose this move for Tas, what happens there will then be ammo for our state governments (unless it backfires on them).

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by tex

Thanks Norm.

I am fortunate that I have a very close friend in state politics, holds a senior role, and I will seek his counsel in the next few days.

Career suicide.

[XD 351 Ute]

Sad to see but this has already started in Queensland.

The 90 km/h stretch either side of Gympie, and a 'fatigue' section north of Gin Gin are two areas I know of.

With the weather wreaking havoc on the roads, anywhere where there is a pothole smaller than the size of a Mighty Boy, the local limit has been reduced to 80, even 60 km/h in our area.

I'm quite sure there is more to come.

Idiocracy at it's finest........

Ed

[GTENVY]

Originally Posted by 4Vman

We all know tasmanians can swin... We have Adelaide to prove it..!

(joke people).

Sometimes they even make it as far as W.A.

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by mick_1010

That is absolute insanity! Who voted for those jokers?!!

Tasmanians

[csv8]

Just like Captain Bligh,in Queensland..Every K Over is a Killer Campaign. I am sorry for all the people I have killed..doh !! how stupid is that campaign !! Watch Anna follow Tassie!!!

[gunner]

Originally Posted by tex

We have a panel of experts that are touting every 1kmph reduction in road speed equates to at least a 3% reduction in road trauma. Please.......

So 10kmph will equate to 30% reduction in road trauma.

Gotta love the logic. So say they reduced all highways to 50 km/hr they'd reduce road trauma by 150%?

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by gunner

Gotta love the logic. So say they reduced all highways to 50 km/hr they'd reduce road trauma by 150%?

It just saves the the money and trouble of fixing the roads...

[ltd]

Like Bob Brown reading Hustler magazine, this doesn't make any sense.
Then again, it's typical of the sleezy government in Tasmania right now.
My parents live there, it's the first they've heard about it so it's likely the local media aren't doing their job; or are being paid not to. (If not many know about it, not many will lodge a submission of protest before the due date).
Cynical you may ask? Well, yes. Let's face it. In the states as well as federally we seem to do things which erode many of our freedoms and give the governments control of our lives. It's disgusting.

[flappist]

Originally Posted by XD 351 Ute

Sad to see but this has already started in Queensland.

The 90 km/h stretch either side of Gympie, and a 'fatigue' section north of Gin Gin are two areas I know of.

With the weather wreaking havoc on the roads, anywhere where there is a pothole smaller than the size of a Mighty Boy, the local limit has been reduced to 80, even 60 km/h in our area.

I'm quite sure there is more to come.

Idiocracy at it's finest........

Ed

Well both of those are fairly crap roads but the Nambour-Kunda freeway is a brand new 4 lanes separated by fences and a huge ditch with no intersections at all and it is 90km/h.

Really it is just "UnAustralian"......

[nuthin' fancy]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...14/3092423.htm

[flappist]

Originally Posted by csv8

Just like Captain Bligh,in Queensland..Every K Over is a Killer Campaign. I am sorry for all the people I have killed..doh !! how stupid is that campaign !! Watch Anna follow Tassie!!!

Well Anna can visit Tassie all she likes soon. And while she is down there maybe she can watch the Premier of QLD dragging us back from the abyss she has pushed us into..........

[Brazen]

Its not just fatigue. The lower limits will make people become less focused on driving, they will zone out, become distracted, and get frustrated. Its just pure stupidity.

A year ago there was a push to lower the maximum limit in the Adelaide Hills - no matter what the quality of the road, on the basis of expert opinion from DTEI (Dept of Transport). Please request the full reports spouting these stats for Tasmania, as the DTEI report for Adelaide Hills was utter utter garbage. It looked like a 12 year old had written it (some sheets were hand-written and made no logical sense at all).

Amazingly enough it gave no consequences to driver behaivour to people driving at a lower speed! It never once dealt with the issues of fatigue, complacency, boredom, frustration etc... But I expected as much as DTEI's job is to build roads not conduct complex studies on driver behaviour and accident statistics.

Im telling you of the experience of the Adelaide Hills, as the most effective weapon was to get a massive groundswell of public opinion coupled with a systematic argument against every (flawed) point the reports made. There were petitions held by mums at shopping centres who have to travel large distances who were asking for signatures. People were constantly emailing the local government telling them of their disgust.

For a policy backed by the state government and initially supported by the mayor and the majority of councillors, amazingly in the end only one councillor voted for it, the 30 or so others voted against as the argument for it was plain stupid and politically unpalatable.

[DanielXR8]

My submission to RSAC below. I will also be raising this with my local member. I encourage any other Tasmanian based forum members to get on to this.

Dan
------

Dear Sir or Madam,
I read with a sense of disbelief the recent article in respect of lowering the speed limits in Tasmania.

Ah so it isn’t the lack of driver skills, or the complete lack of understanding of most Tasmanians to know how to drive properly? No its a speed problem again.

Funny how I lived and commuted in Kingborough for over a year during this speed trial and it wasn’t ever a speed issue I was concerned with. When on a motorcyle, people who routinely wandered onto my side of the road when they cut corners, those who turned in front of me, those who just didn’t see me and tried to merge into me. Those I followed with clearly unroadworthy cars, with no indicators, brake lights and bald tyres or the endless unroadworthy trailers I saw, improperly hitched and outright dangerous. Nor the trucks and utes with their improperly secured loads being strewn across the roads. The countless drivers with no understanding of lane discipline, who routinely drop two wheels into the dirt at speed or cut every corner, wandering across unbroken lane markings like they don’t exist. Who on dirt roads, have no idea to slow down and anticipate traffic on blind corners. The ones who can’t move to the left or the right of the lane to turn correctly and block traffic behind them, while pointing their wheels into oncoming traffic, so if they are hit from behind, they are guaranteed to cause a multicar pileup. No they were all just fine, as long as they weren’t doing over 90. Well here is the interesting fact, none of them were and all of them were a far, far greater danger to me and my family on the road, then doing 100 km/h ever will be.

The thing is I will be just as dead at 90 km/h when some idiot with no driving skills wanders over to my lane and takes me out as I would be at 100. In a car if my family did survive such a collision (not an accident!) some if not all of us would be suffering from serious and probably permanent injuries. Excuse me if I don’t sound that enthusiastic about that either. I don’t want that future for my kids. Time to fix the problem, which is the reskilling and retesting of all Tasmanian drivers, theory and practical exams. Including basic defensive driver training, that is tailored to our roads and our climate (rain, ice, fog and snow) and teaches at least the 90% of Tasmanians some basic road craft.

Wont make as much money, infact I’m betting it would cost some, and we know the pollies won’t be pleased when half the electorate find out they don’t know how to drive and can’t get a license renewal automatically, but it really would make a positive difference to the road toll. So isn’t that the goal?

But that isn’t politically palatable, so we are left with this nonsense, that doesn’t stop accidents, but somehow hopefully reduces the severity of them. I trust a representative of the RCAS will be at my funeral to explain to my family how the speed reduction made a difference when the unskilled and ignorant driver took me out in an “accident” or left me a paraplegic and a liability to my family for the rest of my life. No I didn’t think so. Nor dare I say will they explain how the speed reduction reduced the odd fender bender and made a huge positive difference in the state revenue collected from speeding fines, which was what it was all about.

Dear Sir or Madam, as you can probably determine by now I am angry, very, very angry that my life and my families life is worth playing these games with. If you are serious about road safety, then take the real steps that are needed and put them to the politicians, consequences be dammed, otherwise don't turn this state into Victoria. Road safety should never be allowed to be dumbed down to what you are making it. That's why so many bad drivers are on our roads already. because we won’t address the cause – the driver. They think they can do whatever they please, brain in neutral and car in gear, because organisations such as yours has taught them, that as long as they keep the speedo under some magic figure, they are safe.

They aren’t and you are lying to them if you proceed with this proposal.

Please register my complete and total opposition to this proposal.

Yours sincerely,

[Fev]

Awesome post Daniel!

[dylancox]

Originally Posted by gunner

Gotta love the logic. So say they reduced all highways to 50 km/hr they'd reduce road trauma by 150%?

If they are so hell bent on reducing the road toll, they should ban all vehicles and put us all on horsecarts instead. If there are motor vehicles travelling at any rate of speed, controlled by humans, there will be accidents, and sadly there will be casualties, it's just a fact of life. What they can do is reduce human error through driver education.

[joolz]

Maybe Governments should start educating drivers more rather than make the speed limits lower to cater for the people who simply shouldnt hold a licence. Basically my copper cousin says in Victoria they make the roads for the worst possible driver, hence the stupid 80km/h limit on the Monash from the tunnel to High st....

[dylancox]

Originally Posted by joolz

Maybe Governments should start educating drivers more rather than make the speed limits lower to cater for the people who simply shouldnt hold a licence. Basically my copper cousin says in Victoria they make the roads for the worst possible driver, hence the stupid 80km/h limit on the Monash from the tunnel to High st....

Hmm for the worst possible driver. Come to think of it, can we thank the 'Equal Opportunity Boards' for all this, where companies are fined for not having disabled wheelchair ramps?

[DivHunter]

Originally Posted by Brazen

Its not just fatigue. The lower limits will make people become less focused on driving, they will zone out, become distracted, and get frustrated. Its just pure stupidity.

A year ago there was a push to lower the maximum limit in the Adelaide Hills - no matter what the quality of the road, on the basis of expert opinion from DTEI (Dept of Transport). Please request the full reports spouting these stats for Tasmania, as the DTEI report for Adelaide Hills was utter utter garbage. It looked like a 12 year old had written it (some sheets were hand-written and made no logical sense at all).

Amazingly enough it gave no consequences to driver behaivour to people driving at a lower speed! It never once dealt with the issues of fatigue, complacency, boredom, frustration etc... But I expected as much as DTEI's job is to build roads not conduct complex studies on driver behaviour and accident statistics.

Im telling you of the experience of the Adelaide Hills, as the most effective weapon was to get a massive groundswell of public opinion coupled with a systematic argument against every (flawed) point the reports made. There were petitions held by mums at shopping centres who have to travel large distances who were asking for signatures. People were constantly emailing the local government telling them of their disgust.

For a policy backed by the state government and initially supported by the mayor and the majority of councillors, amazingly in the end only one councillor voted for it, the 30 or so others voted against as the argument for it was plain stupid and politically unpalatable.

They don't even build/maintain the roads, Downer EDI do.

[Brazen]

Originally Posted by Fairmont99

They don't even build/maintain the roads, Downer EDI do.

Downer EDI has a contract with DTEI

[Brazen]

Originally Posted by Fairmont99

They don't even build/maintain the roads, Downer EDI do.

Downer EDI has a contract with DTEI, so do a few other firms. Our work deals with many of their contractos.

[BFZ Wagon]

What have Tassie got to worry about. It barely has a state population of 500,000. The Gold Coast Tweed area has 570,000 people and it's a LOT smaller area than Tassie.

It looks like it's just another excuse to keep the people down. Lowering speed limits won't change anything, nor will it help. If anything, it will probably just make people more impatient and mad.

I remember back in 1989/90 when I lived in Tassie and the state speed limit was 110 km/h. How times change eh.

[gtfpv]

not happy about this TEX . what can we do about it ?

[gtfpv]

aside from all the safety excuses they use . i'm just angry because today our vehicles are light years ahead on safety compared to 30 years ago when speed limits were higher . our society/ those running it have become DUMB. it hurts more when you think international licenced people and tourists are the ones that cause so many accidents etc etc etc etc.

[388cube_edxr8]

Originally Posted by BFZ Wagon

What have Tassie got to worry about. It barely has a state population of 500,000. The Gold Coast Tweed area has 570,000 people and it's a LOT smaller area than Tassie.

It looks like it's just another excuse to keep the people down. Lowering speed limits won't change anything, nor will it help. If anything, it will probably just make people more impatient and mad.

I remember back in 1989/90 when I lived in Tassie and the state speed limit was 110 km/h. How times change eh.

I see a pattern emerging here. It appears that every 10 years, the speed limit is dropped by 10 km/h. By the year 2050, Tasmania will have a state wide speed limit of 50km/h. By 2100, the limit will be 0km/h. Yep, zero. But it will be worth it, because fatal accidents will drop by 300%.

We need to fight this with everything we have, not just the idea, but the notion itself that this sort of thing is ok.

Remember, you can prove anything with statistics, 43% of people know that.