As reported in the Herald and elsewhere, the police will be getting stricter on speeding in the holiday season, starting now and running right through until the end of January. They’ll ticket anyone who exceeds the speed limit by more than 4 km/hr, whereas usually they give 10 km/hr leeway. This is “the first time the reduction has been extended beyond a long holiday weekend”.
The police reckon that “research over the past five years shows there’s been a greater reduction in speed-related deaths and injuries when the lower limit has been in force” – that is, the reduced tolerance seems to already have paid off when it’s been in effect.
I haven’t seen the research, and I wonder how much of the reduction in deaths and injuries is due to the enforced lower speeds, and how much is due to the wide publicity the changes have been given – getting the dialogue out there, and making people think more about their choices of how fast to drive. If anything, the second is more important, and it’s important to keep that momentum up and continue to work towards a safe driving culture.
It wasn’t mentioned in the Herald article, but I did see it on the news I think – the police have said they will certainly consider applying the 4 km/hr tolerance permanently, depending on how the next two months go, and after a fuller evaluation of the case for doing so. This could be a positive move.
I found some interesting data on the Ministry of Transport website recently: they’ve been surveying driver speeds since 1996. As explained here:
The speed surveys are designed to monitor changes in free speeds of vehicles in both 100km/h speed limit areas and main urban 50km/h areas. Free speeds are speeds attained when the vehicle is unimpeded by the presence of other vehicles (i.e., there is some distance between a vehicle travelling at a free speed and the vehicle in front of it) or by environmental features such as traffic lights, intersections, hills, corners or road works. By monitoring the speeds of unimpeded vehicles this survey measures driver choice of speed.
The data shows that since 1996, drivers have become much less likely to speed, or to speed excessively. In 1996, 15% of drivers exceeded 115 km/hr on the open road. Today, 15% of drivers exceed 102 km/hr. There are similar results for urban roads with a speed limit of 50 km/hr – the 85th percentile has changed from 64 km/hr to 56 km/hr.
These are the MoT’s graphs, and there are several others if you follow the link. Those labels are a little hard to read, but the blue line is the mean (average) speed, and the green line is the 85th percentile, i.e. the speed exceeded only by 15% of drivers.
So, some real progress has been made since the 90s. Let’s hope it continues.
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Remember, it’s not a ‘fine’, it’s a voluntary tax. If you choose to exceed the speed limit, then you are choosing voluntarily to pay tax to do so.
A ‘fine’ has connotations of victimhood, whereas a voluntary tax properly recognises the power people have to make choices.
Voluntary tax my arse. At 4kph over the limit most people are not choosing to break the law, the chances are that the road dipped slightly and the vehicle speed crept up a little without the driver realising it had happened.
How many people are there who know how to drive a car yet don’t know that it speeds up when you go downhill?
How many speed cameras are there set up exactly at the start of a hill to catch people who don’t have a chance to slow down? None I’m guessing. These are people who know füll well they are speeding, just as all the people who drive illegally in bus lanes in Auckland or park illegally everywhere in Auckland know what they are doing they shouldn’t be. People take a gamble, complaining about it afterwards is just pathetic. Why not adopt the Swiss system whereby the tax is proportional to your income above a certain level, that will make people think twice.
“How many speed cameras are there set up exactly at the start of a hill to catch people who don’t have a chance to slow down? None I’m guessing.”
You’re guessing wrong. This is a classic place for the police to set up camera vans to catch people out who don’t slam the brakes on as they coast down the hill and their speed creeps up a few kph….
Examples: Bond Street in Kingsland (frequent site of the camera van to catch you at the bottom of the hill over the motorway).
Triangle Rd in Massey.
Southern Motorway heading down from the Bombay Hills just before SH2 exit.
SH1 motorway southbound in Wellington with the variable speed limit signs as you coast down the hill towards the coast
Speed cameras on hills are a great revenue earner for the govt with unsuspecting drivers watching the road instead of having their eyes glued on the speedometer…
“Bond Street in Kingsland (frequent site of the camera van to catch you at the bottom of the hill over the motorway).”
What do the vans look like these days? I cycle that way every day and have never noticed a cameravan on Bond St.
I’ve never seen a camera on Bond Street and the one you mention in Wellington is there because cars end up going way over the speed Limit and there’s more than enough time to slow. You claimed that police put cameras in spots in which the driver has no chance to correct themselves, none of those examples are such an example. There are large signs in Wellington warning of cameras coming in, Bond Street you have plenty of time to make sure you’re maintaining a safe speed for everyone else. Why should anyone walking across this bridge be at risk because someone is out of control from driving at 100km down the hill. The more speed cameras the better IMO, I’ve driven for years and never had a ticket. If I can manage this and have driven in all the places you mention, why is it so difficult for someone else to also not drive safely and within the Limit?
“the chances are that the road dipped slightly and the vehicle speed crept up a little without the driver realising it had happened.”
That’s what brakes are for.
My father-in-law, one of those elderly drivers who only drove locally but whose caution frustrated everyone else on the road, proudly came in one day waving a speed-camera ticket. :Don’t tell me I’m a slow driver, ha ha”. He had been snapped in the dip of Parrs Cross Rd, Henderson. And yes, he could have applied the brakes, but he didn’t drink, drove only in daylight, and certainly wasn’t a danger to anyone.
“wasn’t a danger to anyone” that statement is incorrect in so many ways, the fact of the matter is that someone in a car is a danger for everyone. You’re in charge of a piece of metal with the power to kill. You are by definition a danger to everyone else in your vicinity. It’s about time this fact was recognised.
Sorry bbc, I didn’t realise you knew my father-in-law. I’ll give you the benefit of sleep deprivation, but no, he wasn’t a danger to anyone. Again, to give you the benefit of the doubt, you may perhaps be thinking that a moving car is a potential danger to someone who steps out in front of it. Well yes, of course. But that isn’t the driver.
Whoops, don’t know where the smiley face came from, but actually that was how he looked that day. Should of course have been “Don’t tell me…”.
People also seem to forget the police do issue tickets for obstructing traffic as well during the summer break too. There’s penalties for driving unreasonably slowly and for exceeding the speed limit.
yes, there are those laws, but I’ve seen cops pass (going in the other direction) drivers towing caravans with 20 or more cars queued behind and have yet to see one take any action
Actually, the speed limit for vehicles towing light trailers is 90km/h. This is seldom kept to, and even more seldomly enforced. Be a little bit more patient, please. If they’re going slowly they’re probably only just breaking the law.
One thing I’d like to see is large speed limit signs on trucks, with a _90_ sign on the front and rear. Very frequently I’m tailgated by trucks doing 100km/h on crowded motorways. This has to change.
“Actually, the speed limit for vehicles towing light trailers is 90km/h. This is seldom kept to, and even more seldomly enforced. Be a little bit more patient, please. You’re quite right, but the Road Code has a sidebar on the pages related to towing that reads “IMPORTANT If you are towing a trailor or antoher vehicle, check your mirror often to make sure you aren’t holding up other vehicles behind you.” All too often patience is imposed by thoughless people towing a caravan who will not pull over under any circumstances.
Too my mind this is dangerous driving, not because they are a literal danger, but because of the response they evoke from others.
You are so right Steve, people spend too little time thinking about how their actions affect others. A little consideration can go a long way; I seem to recall a saying from Primary school that went “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
Are you having a laugh? The police are anal about the limit for trailers, we are an easy target.
Also, if you have more than 5 cars behind you on open road in New Zealand you are required to pull over at the first safe opportunity to facilitate parking. They are breaking the law.
no Sailor Boy, I’m not. When I tow, I observe the 90K limit, but I also keep a close eye on the mirrors and make a point of not causing undue delay to ANY other road user. If you read my posts, my beef is with people towing who do not watch their mirrors and who let lengthy queues byuild up behind their vehicles.
My first comment on this issue was that I have frequently seen cops ignore this situation. The danger of it is that it provokes other drivers into taking unnecessary risks to travel at their speed limit.
There’s no law against driving unreasonably slowly. It’s a popular myth, and I think it has something to do with the driving test, where for ages (and probably still) you’ve failed if you didn’t drive within 5kph of the limit, in order to prove you can drive safely at that speed. It’s not a target for normal driving, though.
The law says you have to allow traffic behind to pass, when practical, but a lot of the time it isn’t practical.
The law says you can’t unreasonably impede traffic without letting people pass where it is safe to do so. I think a lot of confusion arises from us not having an effective ‘keep left unless overtaking’ rule on motorways, but you just can’t do that on our road designs. I can only recall one reported incident of the obstruction of traffic rule being enforced, and from memory it was a slow driver causing a massive tailback in the holiday break.
We do have an enforceable keep-left rule on motorways (and everywhere), it just isn’t often enforced. Nor would there be much point – New Zealand doesn’t really have free-flowing intercity motorways where you’d use the right lane to pass trucks and so forth. Every motorway we have is because there’s just that large a volume of traffic using it, and thus most people are “overtaking” most of the time.
I’d imagine it would be a complete nightmare to enforce on the Northwestern heading into the city and in other places where the right-most lanes actually take you to completely different destinations than the left hand lanes. I’m not familiar with the rule where you have to keep left on a multi-lane road – out of curiosity, do you have a link I can have a squizz at?
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM302188.html sections 2.1 and 2.3, plus the definition of “multi-lane road”.
But the big thing is the exception for passing on either the left or the right. So it would be pretty hard to meet the elements of the offence unless there are no other cars around, in which case – why bother giving you a ticket?
Having been overseas for 10 years, that has certainly been one of my observations coming back, people drive allot slower than they used to.
66Km/h in a 50k zone is shocking. Especially given most of the 50K zones in nz should really be 30K zones. 116 on the open road seems a bit more tolerable.
In the borough of Camden where i lived in London, just before i left they decided on a 20mph(32kph) speed limit everywhere in order to improve safety and encourage more walking and cycling. Trials showed a 54% reduction in accidents.
http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/transport-and-streets/traffic-management/speed-limits.en
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20617833
And New York is headed down the same road:
http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/new-york-city-may-say-twenty-plenty.html
It really is a no brainer and would greatly increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists in an urban area. As it only applies to residential areas, not arterials, it would only affect 5-10% of the average motorists journey.
I don’t think a world where 200+ people die every year in horrific collisions (let’s not call them accidents – they’re almost all preventable) is an acceptable one. Our goal must be zero deaths and serious injuries, as quickly as possible. We’ve been rather lax in enforcing things that we know work.
Importantly, energy is the square of mass times speed. So a car moving at 110km/h instead of 100km/h will have 21% more energy to be absorbed, by the vehicle, occupants, and another vehicle. If that vehicle has better energy absorption properties, good, but there is a limit to how much can be dissipated. That the top quintile is now at the previous mean is a very good thing.
If you travel at 100 instead of 110 you will be on the road 11% longer meaning you have a 11% higher chance of being in an incident 😉
The chance of an accident will have lowered if everyone is travelling below the speed Limit, and the chance of dying too. I’d rather take longer to be sure I’ll be around when I come home and also that I myself don’t kill anyone through my own negligence and rush to get home to watch 3 mins more of TV.
10% longer, not 11.
I knew someone would notice that slip up!
“Importantly, energy is the square of mass times speed. So a car moving at 110km/h instead of 100km/h will have 21% more energy to be absorbed, by the vehicle, occupants, and another vehicle”
Unfortunately, something that is not taught in the driving test. Rather they only focus on the don’t speed message and not the why.
That unchanging math also describes the energy consumed to get that extra 10kph. If we all slow down we waste less fuel as well as having more chance of surviving the journey.
A very handy by-product of the safety message. Tell them it will same them money.
grr. ‘save’.
Nice post John and shows that our attitudes driving speed are definitely changing. I wonder what the causes are, I assume enforcement is playing a big part and probably a greater awareness of the impacts of speed from the likes of advertising.
Of course the message still takes a while to get through to some and a good example is the heralds motoring guy yesterday lamenting the changes as making it more difficult to overtake other cars who are doing 100km/h. There is definitely mentality in some that they have to be in front of everyone else.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/motoring/news/article.cfm?c_id=9&objectid=11164624
In many places there are calls for urban speed limits to be reduced to 20mph (30km/h) using the slogan 20’s plenty. http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/new-york-city-may-say-twenty-plenty.html
Also note from that article the comments about Toronto where the chief medical officer has said speed limits in residential areas should be dropped to 30km/h. Now infamous Rob Ford – who used the slogan a few years ago that he would “end the war on cars” and who has been busy getting the council to do things like removing bike lanes to squeeze more traffic lanes on to roads – has dismissed the idea as “nuts, nuts, nuts,”
Oh and today’s cartoon is quite apt too, the motoring industry increasingly push speed and power of vehicles despite the likes of speed limits making it pointless. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11165165
Personally I think they should modify some of the speed limits if they are going to be so strict in enforcing them. Why for example is the same speed limit in place on the Waikato Expressway where a median divides traffic as on a narrow road where a thin white line divides traffic? Why is there the same speed limit on a wide major road in the city as a small suburban cul-de-sac?
I do agree with this sentiment. The Northern motorway from Albany to the tunnels is in the same category. The actual risk to life is pretty low. I would rather they concentrate on undivided state highways. Speed cameras can take care of motorways and can easily be left at 109 or so.
Also, and I just checked the NZTA website for this, under 10 km/h is a $30 ticket. Not life changing considering the acknowledged risk in vehicle speeds.
I’m not sure about the northern motorway but I always see more cops on the waikato expressway than on the more dangerous roads – I guess that is where the revenue is highest…
The Waikato Expressway has had more deaths than any other road in New Zealand (and the Waikato the highest per capita road deaths in NZ). There’s a good reason they’re being tough on speed and safety there.
The actual terminoligy is speed restriction, not limit.
The way the law is in NZ is that an rural road should let users drive up to 100km/h with any restrictions lower than that needing a robust argument as to why it should be less. That restrction needs to take into account the limitation on the freedom of movement that any restrictions impose.
Maybe something like the following:
Open road divided: 110 km/h
Open road undivided highway standard: 100 km/h
Open road undivided not highway standard: 90 km/h
Open road high crash area: 80 km/h
City main road: 50 km/h
City suburban road or main road through shopping centre: 40 km/h
City road with high pedestrian usage (e.g. most of Auckland city): 30 km/h
City shared space: 20 km/h
Shared space is supposed to be 10km/h or somewhere around walking speed. Other than that I agree. The likes of Parkuranga rd with 60km/h limits within such proximity to residential dwellings is nuts.
Problem is with how you define highway standard. Very much the case that many parts of our highways aren’t suitable for driving at 100km/h
You’re right Matt. 100km/h roads should either have a barrier (be it wire, Armco or concrete) or at least have a visual barrier like there is being tested on Karaka Rd. http://goo.gl/maps/2eQiM. This has been based on a tested Dutch idea I believe.
A wire barrier is only a worthwhile divider if it’s installed with the recommended 1m deflection space on each side. SH1 at Kapiti has a wire divider so, by this definition would be suitable for 100km/h, but it has no deflection space so any vehicle that hits the wire is still going to intrude into oncoming traffic.
It really needs to be a hard divider because of the momentum of vehicles travelling at those speeds, so it’s either wire with really large (and space-wasteful) buffer zones, or it’s concrete/Armco.
wire barriers are intensly disliked by motorcyclists, as they present a worse danger than armco if a motorcyclist should hit them
It’s better than no divider. If a motorbike crashes against a wire divider then what is the difference if they cross the centre line and hit an oncoming car? This isn’t all about the person who crosses the median but to me it is more about the innocent person coming the other way.
I agree. Global changes to road rules that so obviously need to be applied locally are usually bad (but it ticks the “I’ve done something about it” box for politicians”).
Setting the correct speed limit for a road is actually quite complex and best practice is based around the starting with setting the speed limit at the speed of the 85% percentile of free-flowing traffic. There is no direct correlation between the speed limit and road deaths. The best example is when the USA Federal government removed the national limit of 55mph in 1995 when the change in road deaths in the half of the states raised the speed limit being the same as road deaths in those that did not.
For most serious problems there is a simple solution . . . that doesn’t work.
The 4km/hr tolerance is probably illegal and will almost certainly fail when it is challenged by someone (and it will be). Why? Because NZ uses the Australian design standards for vehicle instrumentation, and they are clear http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2007C00025 –
18.5. SPEEDOMETERS AND ODOMETERS (ALL VEHICLES)
18.5.1.1.2. indicate the actual vehicle speed, for all speeds above 40 km/h, to an accuracy of ± 10 percent
This 10% margin of error is the origin of the 10km/hr tolerance at 100kph. Anyone travelling at 105kph can reasonably claim their vehicle instrumentation showed them travelling at 100kph, and the courts will believe them.
And every vehicle I’ve driven recently while using GPS as well shows an indicated speed (on the speedo) of around 108km at 100 km/h. Which means that if you get a ticket for over 104km/h, you will be driving at an indicated 110 to 114 + km/h. If you get a ticket, you are speeding. All manufacturers build cars will the tolerance set this way around.
+1 Most NZ car magazines used to show the variance in speedo readings at 50 and 100kmh for cars they reviewed. I don’t have a recent Autocar but they definitely used to.
GPS devices are rapidly becoming a common accessory in cars. In high-end models they are often built-in as standard.
Given that the accuracy of GPS is steadily improving as the technology advances I wonder if there may come a time when a ‘margin of error’ in the speedometer reading becomes irrelevant. Law enforcement agencies may well conclude that if you have a high precision speed measuring device in your car then claiming an inaccurate speedo is no longer acceptable in a court of law.
My own GPS ( a dashboard mounted Garmin) records details of any journey I make ( speed, direction, location and so on ) in a form that can, if I wish, be downloaded onto my computer when I get home and then displayed as a printout. I only discovered this facility recently but I suspect most units will do something similar. It may be useful someday if I am ever accused of speeding or of being somewhere that I am not.
The only issue with GPS is deflection when going up or downhill. Depending on devices it can add or subtract 3 or 4 km/h (at 100km/h) from the actual speed.
Don’t they take the altitude change into account when working out your speed?
I would expect modern GPS systems to account for altitude, but even if they don’t, NZTA’s design rules for 100 km/h state highways recommend 3-8% grades, depending on terrain. So at a 5% grade (~2.85deg slope) the difference in length between the horizontal and the hypotenuse is <0.5%, meaning the GPS speed at worst will read 0.5 km/h low at the open road speed limit. Nowhere near 3-4% and always lower, never higher, as it makes no difference whether you're going up or downhill!
I can show you on my Tomtom that it changes while the Speedo stays dead still.
I believe you Bryce, but that will most likely be some artefact of the device as the trigonometry doesn’t back it up. Errors can accrue from the number of satellites in view (preferably >4), average speed over the last few seconds, and the Doppler shift effect. If in doubt, use the lower figure!
Don’t worry, I do :-).
I can already remember a case in the paper a couple of years ago where the judge took the vehicle GPS log over the police speed gun evidence
Although the speedo has a tolerance of 10% the number shown is never allowed to be slower than the actual speed. Thats why all speedos read higher than your actual speed so that in the worst case it will tell you your actual speed. They also have a limit on how much they can overstate your speed.
My speedo is set to actual speed, made possible by changing the wheel size. I always notice the difference when passing those roadside speed indicators. In my car the speed is an exact match, but when I drive someone else’s car, it always differs.
I passed one of those roadside speed indicators on a trip and it said I was doing 50 when my speedo said 58. Later I got a speed camera ticket for doing 105 and my speedo said 105 (I happened to be looking at the speedo when the wife said ‘I think we just passed a speed camera’). I’m not sure if my speedo is inaccurate at lower speeds only or if that roadside speed indicator was reading too low.
Would anyone actually challenge a $30 ticket and no demerit points?
Think of it as a ‘reminder’ 🙂
Ah, but isn’t whether or not you were speeding, it is whether our not you can convince a judge you had a reasonable belief you were not speeding….
I can’t believe how low the speed limit is in NZ and yet people still crash into each other. There is every chance Kiwis are the worlds worst drivers. Let’s face it, we can’t even cross the bridge in safety without movable barriers.
Yes I totally agree that speeds in residential areas should be well enforced and possibly lowered but there should be no reason the motorway speed limit shouldn’t be 140. Motorways are essentially straight roads, how hard can it be to drive at only 140kms in a straight line?
Of course if Kiwis would just observe the very obvious rules like stop at red lights, not overtake when you can’t see what’s coming we could slash road accidents.
We have to set the limits at realistic levels to allow for a wide range of driving skills. It’s just the way it is. Also, you have to be aware that if someone is happy to drive at 90 km/h, having vehicles doing 140km/h creates a safety issue. That 50 km/h difference, even if the vehicles are travelling in the same direction creates a hazard.
Actually that situation isn’t an issue until you realise that New Zealand’s drivers are largely unaware of the 3 mirrors installed on their cars to ensure they do not pull into the path of traffic from behind.
Yes but also we need to consider the quality of the road design, which is often very poor at reinforcing an appropriate speed for users of vehicles with much more power and acceleration than ever needed for the quotidian task of getting around (as opposed to racing in a controlled environment by skilled drivers).
The one thing that worries me about this is police resourcing. If a cop is on the side of the road issuing a ticket to someone who has marginally exceeded the speed limit what is going undetected. Personally I’d like to see police take a more holistic approach to road safety rather than just focus on speed. For example a focus on red light running. It’s a abnormal week that I don’t see at least half a dozen cars running red lights.
Have a read of this http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/roadcrashstatistics/motorvehiclecrashesinnewzealand/2011/ and you will see that they are focussing on where the most harm comes from.
I think they are being too simplistic with their targeting. Almost every accident can be classified as excessive speed – that doesn’t mean that forcing people to drive at 104 on the motorway instead of 110 is going to save lives.
Why not decrease the speed limit on the dangerous roads instead?
They aren’t forcing people down from 110 to 104 though. The maximum legal speed on a 100k road is still 100. Always has been, and always will be.
Well maybe they need to change that limit in places if they are going to change the tolerance (effectively forcing everyone to drive well below 100 km/h).
100 km/h is very low on a divided road by international standards – even the speed nazis in Australia have a 110 limit.
In a country where over 200 people die in horrific collisions every year, 100km/h is plenty.
Australia’s 110km/h only applies to their interstate highways, which are unlike almost any roads in NZ.
Christ, it is an abnormal DAY when I don’t see half a dozen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country
If we were to follow the general worldwide trend we would raise some of our expressway and motorway speeds and generally lower all other open road speeds.
The new RoNS, such as the Holiday Highway, are being designed for an operating speed of 110 kph. I suspect it won’t be long before 110kph is announced as the official limit on some of these roads.
That might be a way to improve the economics of toll roads. If you are prepared to pay the fee for using the road then you are allowed to drive at higher speeds. After all, many people are already willing to risk a speeding fine for going fast. This would simply legitimise it on certain designated roads.
Actually the biggest killer on NZ roads is people crossing the centreline into oncoming traffic, be that cause by speed or reckless driving or inattention or failing to drive to the conditions. TBH, if we were serious about making a huge dent in our road toll we wouldn’t be blowing our cash on pointless RoNs – we would be installing continuous median barriers on at least the busiest state highways.
As it is, New Zealanders are terrible drivers. In particular, I constantly astonished at the failure to drive to the conditions. 110km/hr is not fast on a nice sunny day on the Waikato expressway. But it is suicidal in torrential rain at night on the Napier – Taupo highway.
Have you driven in Southern Europe/SE Asia? I lived and drove in Romania for 3 years and compared to that NZ drivers are like my Grandma after she took a valium. My Romanian wife went back recently and it took her a week to gather the courage to drive in Bucharest where she grew up.
The centre area of the road, that I normally think of as, you know, the centre of the road, is apparently to anyone driving a Merc or BMW in Romania actually a passing lane. I found this out driving to Sibiu from Bucharest and my wife was laughing for ages at my girlie like scream. She thought it was normal.
We are not bad drivers by world standards. We just drive too much and have too many cars.
Those Roadside speed indicators seem to read too low I’ve found. I know the speedometer in my vehicle will read 50km/h with GPS reading out 48km/h, Almost every time I pass one of those speed indicators while my Speedometer is reading 50km/h (and GPS reading 48km/h) those signs will typically say 45km/h. Suspect they don’t account for the angle at which they measure the speed of passing vehicles.
(My above reply was meant to go under JimboJones post, I don’t know why it didn’t do it this time despite clicking on the Reply link on JimboJones’ post)
It does seem to be the case that most Kiwis are incapable of following the simplist road rules, like red lights and no overtaking. Shame because if we all just observed the basic rules of the road we could safely drive at 200 km per hour.
And race cars never crash at speed, of course. Nope, never happens. Nobody ever dies in motor racing, and those extensive safety features that are impractical an every-day cars are 100% perfect every time.
Pull your freaking head out!
Sure, it’d be easy. After all the lastest Corolla comes with ground effect skirting and blown exhausts to suck it to the road at 200kph on those Coromandel hill roads. Or the new model Hyundai with a rear wing that allows the car to generate twice its own weight in downforce. Why, those cars that you see on the track are virtually identical to the ones we buy on show-room floors!*
*They haven’t and haven’t even been close since 1997-1998 when modern rally cars split from the Group A rules. There is almost no top-level race series on earth where the competition car bares any resemblance to a car the average man can buy on the street anymore. Physics doesn’t give a shit if you’re doing 200kmh in a GT3 Cup car or a road-going Skoda, and neither does whatever you hit.
Oi, you, leave natural laws out of this! Don’t know know that it’s all about poor driving and bad attitudes? Physics schmysics!
I can count on one hand the number of cops ive seen this year parked up with a radar gun. That includes over 1500km traveling up and down the North Island in one week during the school holidays. Just saying
I can count on 1 hand the no.of cops with radar guns and speed camera vans I have seen today. 4 on the Northern Motorway between Albany and Puhoi, one of the “safest” roads in the country. Surely the cops should be targeting drivers driving at excessive speeds on single carriageway roads with no median barrier.
FWIW, Seems fewer drivers this time around appear to be taking note of the lowered enforcement tolerance. With my speedometer needle on 55km/h (GPS speed 53km/h) driving down a 50km/h zone, more cars are up my back or overtaking me (if on a multi-lane road). There have been two cases while driving on a two lane (one lane each way) residential street where I’ve just pulled over to the left to allowed an anxious driver behind me to pass. May be it’s just the routes I’m taking or has the deterrent worn off?
I know I’m late to comment on this blog but some of the comments on here really bother me. The fact that most comments on here support lowering the tolerance levels show that common sense certainly doesn’t equal good sense.
For those that use the energy on impact argument consider the following:
1 – We could decrease the speed limit to 90% and have a similar reduction in energy released. Hell we could reduce the open road speed limit to 50km and in theory that would “reduce” the energy released on impact to 25% of that released when crashing at 100km.
2 – The energy on impact argument assumes that you are hitting an object at 110km, in reality you are most likely to have already slowed down significantly in a crash
I doubt those that say the energy consumption will be less have considered the driving behaviour changes this may bring. This policy may very well lead to an increase in periods of accelerating and decelerating which increases fuel consumption, I haven’t seen any research released on the impact of driving behaviour.
Lets consider other factors that the policy makers should consider:
1 – Cars are significantly more safer now than they were when the 100km speed limit was set. They can break faster and straighter, have stability control, additional safety features such as crumple zones and air bags
2 – Our roads are safer. The Hamilton to Auckland expressway is perfectly safe to be driving at 110km (hell 120 km will be safe). If you crash on that road at 110km then speed is most likely a minor at best contributor to the crash.
3 – Speedometers vary wildly in accuracy. Its not surprising to see a difference of 8 or 9km between your speedo in the car and those speedometers that you sometimes see on the side of some roads. My experience has been that most cars speedometers are slow so this can have two effects; some people will get tickets from repugnant cops for doing 105km when their car speedo says 98 km. The flip side to that is on busy roads the average open road speed will be less than 100km – potentially as slow as the person with the fastest reading speedo. If the front car’s speedo says 100km when in reality it is going at 92km, then everyone behind it goes slow.
4 – I quite often find myself doing 110 km when trying to do 100 km, all you need to do is have your cruise control set to 100km, then go up slight hill then on the downhill you will find yourself speeding before the car adjusts. This 4km maximum speed differential is definitely within most cars margin of errors.
5 – Say this policy change results in a million people losing 6 minutes every day for the 2 month period, this will result in a total of 686 years of lost time (about 8 ½ peoples average life spans). Also, who knows how much the additional stress and frustration of getting stuck behind more slow vehicles costs society in things like health costs.
Due to point 4 above, I am very certain that this law is about a few uniformed pen pushers drive to increase revenue, as the cost to society. This is a poor decision. We have to set the bar somewhere and this drive to lower the bar is ridiculous, I fully believe the speed limit needs to be increased on most highways.
I agree with some of your points – your numbers in point 5 are way out of whack, though. For starters, as shown in the graph in the post, at least 85% of drivers are now driving at less than 104 km/hr anyway.
Secondly, a person would have to drive 190 km to lose six minutes driving at 104 km/hr instead of 110 km/hr. The average car does something like 33 km a day, or 12,000 km a year.
Adding those factors together, you must be overestimating your years of lost time by at least a factor of 10, and probably much more. That is, even one life saved would probably be worth the change.
Some other interesting comments in the Herald’s Sideswipe section today – one reader has “crunched the numbers” on overtaking a car which is travelling at 100 km/hr, and speeding up to 104 km/hr to do so, and how long a passing lane is needed to do that.
Most of the 70+ comments are along the lines of “if they’re already doing the speed limit, why do you need to overtake them”?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sideswipe/news/article.cfm?c_id=702&objectid=11166395
To provide a bit of balance John, there are also comments where a bit more thought has been applied – by the minority unfortunately – which allude to the common phenomenon of drivers dawdling along until they reach a passing lane or other straight stretch, speed up to 100km/h or more, then slow down again. But the main point of the article was TED (time exposed to danger), something many chose to ignore.
As for CharlieBrown’s comments above, I agree he’s got #5 wrong, also there’s an error in the middle of #3 implying that a speedo may read slow, whereas they almost always read fast, as discussed above. Disclosure: I have had only one speed camera ticket ($30) – entering a rural town and coasting down from open-road speed; had obviously only got down to 55km/h within the discretionary tolerance distance, so a fair cop. But I also understand that unmanned cameras have never had a speed tolerance, rather that tickets are issued to the 15% worst offenders, so I must have chosen a slow day!
That is a 100% natural thing to do. People driving to the conditions will drive slower when the road is narrow and winding. When it straightens out and gets wider with the extra lane then they drive faster. When it narrows down again and starts to get bendy they return to slow driving.
I don’t see why anyone would expect any different.
Is this a wind-up Nick, or do you really not understand what is being said? [Hint: it’s about road courtesy]. I sincerely hope it’s the former, although sadly there’s not a /sarc tag in sight.
Police radar from a moving vehicle is not accurate enough to enforce a 4 km/h tolerance, Stalker Dual and Stalker DSR radar units used police patrol cars are accurate to about +- 3km/h http://www.stalkerradar.com/pdf/006-0433-00_Stalker_DSR_specifications.pdf If anyone is ticketed under this insane tolerance, write a letter to the police infringement bureau, asking for it to be waived. If this is not done, you can write a written submission to the court, without having to appear, most judges will throw a case like this out. Secondly, Police claim they are reducing the road toll by enforcing a lower speed limit, but how can they be sure this is not due to advancements in vehicle safety, such as dynamic stability control?