I'm with you Beyond. I've been a speedster all my 40 years of having a driving license. The only time I had a near accident was reasonably recently when doing 100kph and nodding off. I have always prided myself on my driving/riding vehicle placement etc and I have the driving history to support it. I think passing lanes should have a limit of 140kph.
Last month I got a ticket for towing a unloaded, single axle trailer, everything fully legal and travelling the same speed as the traffic. My speed was recorded at 101kph. The speed limit with a trailer is 90kph. $80 and 20 demerits. So lets inconvenience every other road user and make them have to over take my vehicle. No wonder there are so many inexplicable head on accidents.
Ridiculous laws like this are certainly contributing to the road carnage.
Ride no faster than your angel can fly.
What really bunches my panties about speed limits nowadays is they are insatntaneous.
Back in the day the snake had to follow you for 2/10 of a mile , you had to be over the limit all that time, and the speed you got pinged for was the lowest in that time
Which meant that a quick blip over the limit to pass some mugwump, or inadvertently rolling over the limit on a downhill wouldn't get you in trouble.
Now , it's a momentary speed on a radar , and a ticket regardless of the overall situation .
Originally Posted by skidmark
Originally Posted by Phil Vincent
Ive had this very same arguement with alot of people. For some its a simple concept, others it may as well be quantum physics..
Granted, speed will make any "incident" worse, but it is not speed that causes crashes, people making shit decisions on the road, having no concept of "spacial awareness" and generally being uncaring about the motorists around you causes crashes..
Except of course for that 1 time I might have gone over 100kmh at manfield, I exploded into a ball of flame and died.
Thank god I pay may acc levies![]()
Well sure the sudden stop can hurt, but it would appear from the results of the most thorough motorcycle crash investigation since the Hurt report that speed isn't really a huge factor in causing crashes. Surprise, surprise.
"The authors note that the typical accident speed was modest. In 70 percent of the crashes, the rider hit the car or other object at under 30 mph. Of course, the severity of injuries went up with crash speed. However, speed by itself didn't turn out to be a huge factor in crash causation. The report says: "There were relatively few cases in which excess speed was an issue related to accident causation," but notes that a speed differential--going either faster or slower than nearby traffic--was a contributing factor in 18 percent of the crashes."
There was a comment on that article that comparing a rural road in Australia to the German Autobahn is kinda silly. I agree with it in principal, but on a rural road you are much more likely to come across hazards on the road that can be much worse at speed. In my time driving around in northland I've hit hundreds of possums and barely avoided pigs, horses, quite a few cows, dogs etc. A friend ended up barely holding it together after hitting a dog that ran out in front of him at well over the speed limit and I've had a few hairy moments with possums going under the tires at a variety of license-losing speeds...
I agree that higher speed limits (or at least losing the ridiculous focus on speeding being the root of all evil) would be a good thing though but ultimately the more important factors are driver skill, maturity and responsibility.
Simply "raising the speed limit" would come with its own amount of issues. First and foremost is the appalling state of kiwi drivers who have been trained to pass a driving test and that is the extent of their skill set.
Second is the mentality of "speed kills" and the bullshit rhetoric spouted out by our bureaucrats in an attempt to be seen "doing something about it".
Red-light running is rampant throughout the country and what can be done about it? An advertising campaign with a "spin the wheel - take a chance" is about all.
It ALL comes down to the driver/rider and their skills. Speed becomes a much smaller issue in comparison
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s'like anything eh. education not legislation!
these new speeding ads really piss me off. 'at 50kms, this is where he would have stopped. at 60km... " /cue big skid and smash into powerpole.
guess what muppets, i actually watch what is happening around me when im driving and i spotted that moron getting out of his car without looking before it got to the swerving stage.
Autobahn in NZ?![]()
If you can make it on Kiwibiker you can make it anywhere.
It has happened on occasion.
Well, considering the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude supplemented with no real requirement in regards to an actual burden of evidence which goes hand in hand with the most common traffic infringement - i.e. speeding - it's not really a wonder that such an attitude might evolve over time.
Add then the, alleged, company policy of not being allowed to exercise discretion.
It is preferential to refrain from the utilisation of grandiose verbiage in the circumstance that your intellectualisation can be expressed using comparatively simplistic lexicological entities. (...such as the word fuck.)
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. - Joseph Rotblat
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