One back - down, so far!

[Lou Girardin]

Just read in the Herald that the Minister of Pleece ( George - Mumbles - Hawkins) has said that they won't drop the speed tolerance from 10 to 5 km/h. A small win, but a win all the same.
If everyone keeps the pressure on these clowns, they will cave in.
Lou

[bungbung]

That's good news, but...

What about the spectre of hidden cameras? After the Waikato trial ended with the expected lack of results, is it not plain to see that these are purely for revenue gathering?

[What?]

Interesting that my local MP, Tony Ryall, is taking Paul Swain on full force, asking why the road toll has gone up during a year in which takings from speeding fines are at an all-time high. It is not lost on Mr. Ryall that an awful lot of those fines were generated by cameras...

[750Y]

Originally posted by What?
Interesting that my local MP, Tony Ryall, is taking Paul Swain on full force, asking why the road toll has gone up during a year in which takings from speeding fines are at an all-time high. It is not lost on Mr. Ryall that an awful lot of those fines were generated by cameras...

nice to hear...

[merv]

Yep we all know it not necessarily anything to do with whether you are going slightly over the limit or not, those that crash aren't thinking about the speed limit when it happens. Wkid could tell us about this.

It's all to do with what's right for the conditions. I can't see if I'm doing 100km/hr on the Wellington motorway I'm perfectly safe, yet mysteriously if I dare go over 100 I'm instantly unsafe like as if some magic change occurs. I believe if the police stopped ticketing people for speed I doubt they could even tell if it had any effect on the road toll, but sure as hell they would gather less revenue.

Germany knows this by having no limit on the autobahns. Other forms of transport travel way over our speed limits and people don't die because of speed alone.

[Lou Girardin]

Some stats for the year to June;
1.48 million traffic tickets
850,000 speeding tickets
500,000 of those were camera generated.
Yet the road toll has gone UP!

Can those f-wits in Wellington spell FAILURE!
Lou

[Slim]

It's shocking that the magic little number for road deaths holds so much power.

If it was expressed as a percentage of total road users, they might find that it's actually going down. But that won't get approval for hidden cameras, lower speed tolerance or other equally frustrating knee-jerk reactions from government, will it?

[SPman]

Originally posted by Lou Girardin
Can those f-wits in Wellington spell FAILURE!
Lou

The only word they can spell is VOTES!

[marty]

good call slim. there is a valid argument of increase speed = increase in fatalities,- check the jump out when the limit went from 80 - 100, but i personaly think it's an attitude thing, coupled with roading design. how many head-on fatals have there been on the motorway between orewa and mercer (100km of 2-laning) in the past few years? none. a couple of k's south of the 2 laning though there are multiple 3,4,5 person fatalities.

i found a link in the LTSA site (called 'fascinating facts!!!') and have pasted a few of them in here........

The first known fatal crash in New Zealand was on February 22, 1908, when a car swerved to avoid hitting a horse in Christchurch. The car managed to avoid the horse, but it hit a tram. A passenger was thrown from the car and died in hospital a week later. Speed was considered a factor in the crash, with the car estimated to have been travelling at 30 mph (48 km/h).


The number of drivers increased sharply in the 1950's, with vehicle registrations rising from about 450,000 in 1950 to about 730,000 by 1959. More motorists meant more crashes, with a 50% increase in the road toll, from 232 in 1950 to 349 at the end of the decade.


The original "shock" advertisements of 1975 generated a huge response by posing the loaded question "Is a person who drinks, then drives, then kills someone any better than a person who molests a young girl or napalms innocent Vietnamese?"


Speeding infringements were introduced in 1970, highlighting the growing recognition of the impact of speed on crashes. But the real clampdown came in 1974, when the open road speed limit was dropped from 60mph (96km/h) back to 50mph (80km/h). This was a reaction to both skyrocketing world oil prices (the price of fuel shot up from 49 cents a gallon in June 1973 to $1 a gallon 20 months later, and there were rumours the world was going to run out of oil by 2000) and to the record-high road toll. The effect of the lower speed limit on the road toll was immediate, with a 20 per cent recorded in 1974.



The increase in the open road speed limit from 80 km/h to 100 km/h in 1985 undoubtedly contributed further to the already rising toll. The number of road deaths shot up to 747 from 669 the previous year, and rose to 795 by 1987.



http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/fascinating-...-roadtoll.html

[MikeL]

Fascinating facts, indeed. A pity there's at least one major blunder (makes you wonder about the rest of their data): the open-road speed limit was never 60 mph except possibly for a short time on some designated motorways. It was 55.

[merv]

Originally posted by MikeL
the open-road speed limit was never 60 mph except possibly for a short time on some designated motorways. It was 55.

Nope the limit was 60 on more than just designated motorways as those that travelled the straights of the Wairarapa and the West Coast road from Christchurch will remember and I am sure there were many more. The joy of seeing a 60 sign instead of the diagonal black bar for 55 was great until the oil crisis hit in 74.