Speed kills. It’s the message that we’ve had driven home for decades by law enforcement and the government. But it’s time to have a serious discussion about speed limits in Australia without the hysterics and put some cold, hard facts into the debate.
I’m not opposed to 130 km/h speed limits on the sorts of very remote highways where you’ll usually encounter like 20 vehicles max in an hour. But busy motorways where you measure vehicles per minute, like the Bruce Highway between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, or the motorways up and down the east coast between Brisbane and Sydney, despite being the most well-maintained, are just far too busy for such high speeds to be appropriate. It’s more appropriate on the roads that head out west with road trains.
But a much, much more sensible policy, if we’re looking at changing how we set our speed limits, would be to lower the speed limits within cities. Local streets and shopping high streets should be 30 km/h. Other roads should be adapted to be better for pedestrians and cyclists, including narrowing the amount of space given to cars if necessary, and a commensurate lowering of speed limits from 60 or 70 to 40 or 50. That’s still more than your average travel speed in a car is anyway thanks to traffic and lights. So you’d be adding safety and comfort for people outside of a car*, without actually negatively affecting those inside a car very much.
* and I do so hate how so many people talk about modern cars as being so much “safer” than old ones, while they completely ignore the increased danger they pose to cyclists and pedestrians—especially children. Modern cars are not safer.