Opinion: Unreasonable speed limit changes risk losing public road safety support

It seems there has been a review of Victoria’s speed limits recently. As a result limits have been slashed statewide, presumably in the name of road safety. As usual we can pour one out in remembrance of some of our favourite driving roads, sections that flowed enjoyably with a 100km/h limit now relegated to tedious transport at 80km/h, but it’s the highway bits I want to focus on here.

This recent speed limit review came to my attention during a trip to the Bryant Park Hillclimb circuit to shoot some videos for the MOTOR YouTube channel (go watch them, now!). It lies around 100 minutes east of Melbourne and the drive has always been an easy one, a wide, well-maintained dual carriageway with either a 100km/h or 110km/h limit, bar a couple of small stretches through towns. No longer.

Large swathes have been cut to 80km/h for no real obvious reason. I suspect it’s to do with traffic entering from side roads; no doubt there has been an accident or two and the authorities have decided to ‘fix’ the problem by cutting the speed limit.

This is despite the vast majority of side roads having well-sighted entrances and the one that doesn’t has a temporary 70km/h limit triggered by side traffic, an intelligent solution.

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Theoretically, this should have increased travel time markedly, but in my experience (I’ve made four or five recent trips out this way) it hasn’t because the response from motorists to the lower limit has been to simply ignore it. The sign may switch to 80km/h – though the change has been recent enough that if you’re in a modern car the head-up display or sat-nav will still say 100km/h – but the vast majority are continuing to sail along at the old limit.

You can’t really blame them. Presumably most of these folks are residents who have travelled this road for years and 2020’s law-abiding citizen travelling at 99km/h is 2021’s menace to society, facing three demerits points and a $363 fine. It’s evidence of an interesting human trait, however, one that’s been vividly illustrated by the recent pandemic and the associated restrictions.

In general, people will abide by rules and regulations if they find them reasonable. Case in point, the pandemic. Wear a mask and don’t gather in groups, sure thing, but compliance soon slipped once a ban on visiting family was instated.

Similarly, 50km/h in urban environments, 40km/h in school zones, no problem at all, but when you reduce the speed limit by 20 per cent on a major highway ‘just because’ you’re going to lose the crowd. I’m not necessarily saying that’s right or wrong, it’s just facts.

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I also don’t wish in any way to trivialise the need for improved road safety, as there’s a physical, mental and economic toll of people being injured or killed on our roads, but the current approach is doing precisely nothing.

In 2011 Australia’s road toll was 1277, of which 770 were behind the wheel/handlebars (the others being passengers, pedestrians or cyclists), whereas as of September 2021 the respective numbers were 843 and 575. They’re damning figures when you consider that half the population has been heavily restricted in its movement courtesy of lockdowns.

Extrapolate that data over 12 months and you get 1124 lives lost, of which 767 will be drivers or riders. Those are lower numbers than a decade ago, which is positive, but are improvements of 9 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively worth crowing about? At the moment authorities are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

You can improve the escape hatches, upgrade the life boats and strengthen the hull, but none of that is nearly as effective as ensuring the captain has the skill and experience to miss the iceberg in the first place. This isn’t the first column to say this and sadly I expect it won’t be the last, but driver education is the key if we ever want to get serious about road safety.

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