Thread: 130km/h speed limits

If you can't understand the road signs then you shouldn't have a license.
It's not racist it all, it's discrimination based on ability and there's nothing wrong with that.

The standard of the road is not the reason speed limits are so low in Australia. My experience in the difference is not in the standard of the roads in Australia and UK / Europe. i do not see any real difference in the overall standard of roads. Can show you plenty of examples of very poor designed / maintained roads over here.

One difference is that over here people look out for other drivers and are courteous to each other. Applies to both car and truck drivers. This kind of behaviour just does not happen in Australia.

Think this comes from the police working on the be kind to other drivers message for decades rather than enforcing speed limits with draconian levels of zeal. As was said to me by a friend who is in the police over here you save more lives if you create the correct attitude to the subject. You can then use less resources to work on catching the true problems who are driving with excessive speed.

Originally Posted by roobar_and_custard

If the speed limit is raised to 130kph, does that mean that we have to drive that fast? I thought you drove to a speed which matched the conditions and your own skill level. That's how I drive anyway.
Sometime this means doing just 30kph in a 100kph limit, and sometimes I know I could be running at 150kph with no issue.
Trouble is that we legislate to the lowest common denominator, bypassing natural selection.
By the way, I used to do 150kph on a single carriageway with my left hand mirror in the hedge as the road was so narrow. I did that for 4 years as my daily commute in the UK. Imagine that here....

I always considered the speed limit as a MAXIMUM speed aloud on the road and as you have stated - drive to the conditions. But then my driving teacher said "you can't be under that speed by much or you'll get booked". And I've actually had young (p platers) girls tell me that I should go faster because I was only doing the speed limit and your supposed to go 10km/hr over it! Using that theory if they increase the speed limit to 130 do we have to do 140? Tell you what I've overtaken someone at that speed in the D90 and I'm not keen on holding it there EVER! I'm sure it's safe, i'm sure the car can do it all day long, but there is no way you'll catch me doing it. And plus I can't afford to pay the fuel bill.

Come to think of it! I drove from Mackay to Brisbane a few months back.... I found that when I increased speed from 100 to 110 (there is a section between here and rocky) my fuel consumption went UP big time, so much so that I drove at 100 on the way home and on every subsequent trip to rocky.

I believe that during WWII the good old USofA had a fuel shortage. I heard that they lowered speed limits to a meer 80km/h, apparently the country saved some crazy amount of fuel.

2003 I purchased a Ford Focus brand new.... my pride and joy at the time (i was 21 and bought it cash!) Reading the owners manual it stated that tyre life will DOUBLE if you drive at 80km/hr over 100km/hr. DOUBLE the tyre life from 80-100!!!! That's huge! I didn't drive that slow for 50000kms to check. If my tyre life will drop that far just getting to 100km/hr then what will happen when I go to 130?????

Between fuel and tyres I dont think I want to go that fast. I might stick to my Series..... and drive at 80

Originally Posted by 3toes

The standard of the road is not the reason speed limits are so low in Australia. My experience in the difference is not in the standard of the roads in Australia and UK / Europe. i do not see any real difference in the overall standard of roads. Can show you plenty of examples of very poor designed / maintained roads over here.

One difference is that over here people look out for other drivers and are courteous to each other. Applies to both car and truck drivers. This kind of behaviour just does not happen in Australia.

Think this comes from the police working on the be kind to other drivers message for decades rather than enforcing speed limits with draconian levels of zeal. As was said to me by a friend who is in the police over here you save more lives if you create the correct attitude to the subject. You can then use less resources to work on catching the true problems who are driving with excessive speed.

I believe you are correct. There is a big attitude problem in Australia. Of course, there are plenty of decent drivers here, but it doesn't take many of the others to spoil the mix for everyone. The two that come to mind are the stupid, who are totally unaware that their driving is causing grief to other road users, and the aggressive, who treat everyone else on the road as if they are inconvenient obstacles who shouldn't be on the same road because they don't possess their super driving skills. I believe that low speed limits contribute to people spending inordinate amounts of time in the fast lane. They are too afraid of getting pinged to put their foot down to pass and move over, so you have a type of tortoise race going on where one person is overtaking another by going 2kph faster. It's agonizing to watch sometimes.

I suppose the precedent has been set. Between this latest stunt and I beleive a Mr. Singleton several years back , A successful arguement that his vehicle was designed for above legal limits. Therefore a competent lawyer should be able to defend this speed , at least on the roads in question.

It is about time for a well overdue upwards movement of speed limits. The last changes in Queensland other than a minor adjustment due to metrication was in 1960 when the built up area limit was increased from 30 mph to 40 mph then shortly after dropped back to 35 mph. The open road limit was changed at the same time from 50 mph to 60 mph. Roads and cars have improved exponentially since then. Just look at the improvements in brakes and tyres alone.

Main and arterial roads in cities should be limited access and no parking any time and speed limits increased to 80 kmh. Two lane sealed highways can be safely increased to 120 kmh in most cases and multi lane divided highways to 140. The outside lane outside urban areas should be dedicated as an overtaking lane and savage fines levied for using it otherwise.

Originally Posted by Eevo

we should be given the option.

if you want to do 100 (and stay in the left lane) we're not going to stop you.

If people finally learned to keep left unless overtaking this would work to some extent.

But even now we have the option to do 80 or 90 say in a 100 zone but, if you do, you invoke the rage and foaming mouthed rants from people who complain that you "...can't stick to the speed limit!!".

Once people get it into their heads that the speed limit is a limit, not a target then things might change.

As an extra bit, whenever I am with someone who complains about another driver "not sticking to the speed limit" I always ask them what their current BAC is? It is at the limit of what's allowed? What about their credit cards? Are you up to the limit on those? Generally I get a "That's different / not the point." kind of response but don't get a decent explanation of what exactly the point is.

I am bemused by the relevance of "land discipline" - only a tiny percentage of Australia's highways, let alone other roads, have any choice of lanes. The number of posters talking about the need to keep in the left lane just emphasises how urbanised is Australia's population. At best the highways here have occasional passing lanes.

A second observation is that in my view, a more important priority for speed limits is to increase the speed limit for major highways where these pass through towns from 50 to at least 60, with appropriate roadworks where needed. This is, of course not by any means uniform - I think, for example of two very similar towns, Leadville and Morongla - the first has a limit of 50, the second 80. As far as I can see, the only relevant difference is different shires!

The Newell Highway has had the speed limit dropped from 110 to 100, the raised again after a new state government was elected. Neither change appears to have made any difference to the accident rate or the death rate, which sort of questions the importance of relatively small changes in speed limits.

Perhaps related though is that a few days ago three B-doubles were booked at speeds in excess of 120kmph on the Newell near Coonabarrabran.

As to the actual causes of road deaths - I always seem to come back to two sets of published statistics - random breath tests invariably find less than 1%, usually less than 0.1% of drivers tested above the limit. Compulsory BAC tests for all drivers involved in fatal accidents find (depending on which state or date is used) that 20-50% are above. Taking these together clearly suggests that the problem is not speed, not fatigue, not inattention, not driver education, not vehicle safety, not road conditions, or anything else but alcohol.

But all of the above is irrelevant to the question of speed limits on major freeways such as the Hume. And in this case I do not see a problem with the proposal, although I do not agree that speed limits should not be enforced (but current enforcement is in some places ridiculous); the problem is the speed limit in almost all cases.

John