Researchers at Purdue University, in Indiana USA, have done a study into motorists’ attitudes towards posted speed limits. In results sure to make the front page of Bleedin’ Obvious Weekly, the researchers found that the majority of drivers have no problem breaking a posted speed limit by a small margin, and see no risk in doing so.
The university conducted a study of just under 1000 motorists and found that few people actually believe that the ’speed limit’ figure signposted on roads is an ‘absolute limit’. They consider it more a guideline.
The study found 21 percent of motorists think it’s perfectly safe to exceed the speed limit by 5 mph (8 km/h). Another 43 percent saw no risk in going 10 mph over (16 km/h) over, and 36 percent reckoned it was ok to drive 20 mph (32 km/h) over the speed limit.
The cause, in America at least, is attributed in part to legislation introduced during the ‘first oil shock’ of the 1970s that reduced highway speed limits across the country to reduce America’s fuel use and dependence on imported oil. Telling people then that speed limits were not safety-related, but to serve another purpose, resulted in a disconnect.
It is compounded because road engineers (and regulators) set artificially low speed limits on roads. And everyone knows it. Paradoxically, regulators set the limits artifically low because they know that a percentage of people will continue to drive above the posted ‘limit’ if they feel they can get away with it. The limits also lazily relect the fact that conditions on a road can vary; with changing traffic ‘loads’, weather conditions, light and other variables.
How many times have you been all-but alone on a freeway in perfect driving conditions yet forced to travel at the same posted limit as when in bumper to bumper traffic?
And here’s the problem: few drivers actually believe that all speed limits relate to ’safety’, and not to something else - like an opportunity to collect revenue from speed cameras.
Australian drivers, like their American counterparts, have a casual attitude towards minor speeding. This ‘low level civil disobedience’ has got to the point where the NSW government is reportedly soon to reduce the demerit points penalty on low level speeding (exceeding the speed limit by 0-15km/hr), taking it down from three points. (Something they had increased only a few years ago.)
To my thinking, the fact that many of our modern, smooth, straight, wide, video monitored, motorways have a speed limit which is under some of our old crumbling highways is what, in my mind, creates the biggest speed/safety disconnect.
Why are Sydney’s M2 and M7, both created within the past ten years and still as smooth as a baby’s backside, set with a speed limit of 100 km/h when the crusty old F3 connecting Sydney and Newcastle has a speed limit of 110 km/h? (Anyone commuting on the F3 needs to see a physio at least once a week.) In Victoria, the Hume freeway is now set at 110 km/h, but when opened in the ’80s had a more-sensible 120 km/h limit. The extension to the Monash freeway to Warragul is set at 100 km/h, but so are narrow broken-shouldered bush back-roads.
And don’t try telling me that dawdling along at a mind-numbing 110 km/h is safer than travelling at 120 or 130 km/h on the long freeway sections of an intercapital drive.
The ’speed limit’ system needs to be completely overhauled. Freeway speeds should be increased, and metropolitan speeds should be applied more consistently and discerningly.
[ Wired ]
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Not wrong. Cars are safer these days and on the new highways that are 4 and sometimes even more lanes wide its easy to exceed these speed limits.
there are always going to be those who driver recklessly but a majority of people i think drive at a speed they feel safe at whether above or below the speed limit depending on conditions and their vehicle.
I’m the opposite actually.
I feel that the vast majority of people have bought into the hype, and think that the speed limit is some kind of government guaranteed assurance of safety.
There’s so many people I see driving way too quickly for the conditions, but at the posted limit, but will get upset when the conditions change and others speed by them.
Demerit points and penelties shoudl be applied for speeding by a certain percent rather than being 10 k’s over the limit on a 110 kph freeway (9.1% over) and in a 40 kph school zone (25% over). On the Freeway there’s a neglegable different in safety however in the school zone you’ve significantly increaced your speed and significantly reduced you’re ability to stop and/or swerve in time to avoid an accident (all things being relative).
I’d like to believe that sanity has won out in NSW and they’re reducing demerit poitns on lower speed offences because they’ve realised that the smart and fair way to do buisiness is to be relatively leanient towards those who speed by small amounts but to come down like a tone of bricks on those who are over by stupidly large ammounts.
However what’s far more likely to be the case is that someone’s sat down with an excell spreadsheet and worked out that they’ve significantly increaced the number of people loosing their lisence on points. They’ve probably worked out that by keeping the fines at the same level but reducing the points for such offences they can keep more of these people on the road and speeding by small amounts thereby significanrly increacing their total revenue.
The draconian approach to speed limits has actually made me a worse driver.
There have been a couple of instances where I was slow to react to a sudden change in traffic because I was looking at my speedometer trying to make sure I wasn’t more than 3 kmh over the stupid limit… no accidents or anything, but certainly a less-than-smooth experience for my passengers.
Yeah, I’d say so too. You can’t fine people for driving if they’re not allowed to drive.
Sure you’ll be able to bust some people for driving without a license, but you won’t be able to get money from the vast majority of people out there who are basically honest, law-abiding citizens and would respect a license loss….and obviously those are the people you want to get off the roads.
SARCASM MODE: Off
I agree with you that the “one size fits all” approach, doesn’t necessarily always fit—particularly in rural areas. Up until the late 1970s, in NSW (and until 2005 in the NT), once you left urban areas, the rural speed limit was usually “derestriction”. There was no set speed limit and the onus was on the driver to select a safe speed to drive at. Given the highly variable conditions of rural roads, I believe that this is a sensible approach. Not only is there variance in the roads’ conditions, but also that of the drivers and the vehicles. Obviously a truck wouldn’t be able to take a corner at near the same speeds as a sedan, so why do they have the same speed limit?
In urban areas on the other hand, there seem to be too many different speed limits. It used to be that, in town, the speed limit’s 60km/h. Nowadays you have 50km/h zones, 40km/h zones and there’s even talk of introducing 30km/h zones too now. You have to worry about determining the speed limit and looking at your speedo instead of observing the road and travelling at a safe speed. Almost all of the sub-arterial roads around me have recently been reduced from 60km/h to 50km/h and of course, soon afterwards, I spot police cars parked on the side roads with a lidar gun pinging drivers for going a few km/h over the new reduced speed limit. Why is a speed limit that was considered OK for a number of decades suddenly something that is an offence? Cars are getting safer and safer yet speed limits are going down and down. The 60km/h (or 35MPH as it was then) urban speed limit was introduced in the 1960s when cars probably took twice the distance to brake and didn’t implement measures to minimise the impact on pedestrians. Why is then that now with those safety measures implemented that the speed limit has gone down? There’s calls now to reduce it further from 50km/h to 40km/h and even 30km/h. What next? 10km/h… well, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I think this image illustrates how logical speed limits in NSW are… http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/9913/sptu3.jpg A six-lane divided arterial road (in this case, the Princes Highway) is zoned 50km/h whereas a narrow windy road without lane markings is signed as 100km/h. No wonder people don’t have respect for speed limits. The government’s Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices states: “Experience and research in Australia and overseas has demonstrated that arbitrarily imposed limits that are too low attract poor levels of compliance. Actual speeds remain at the same levels as before unless massive and continued enforcement is undertaken. However, realistic and credible speed limits will be observed by the majority of road users”. Frankly, I don’t believe NSW’s speed limits are either “credible or realistic”. It also states that “a major factor in the determination of a speed limit is the prevailing traffic speed, as measured by the 85th percentile speed or by the upper limit of the 15km/h pace”. From what I’ve seen, in NSW, when those numbers show that the speed limit is set too low, it’s just ignored and the resulting recommendation is generally to just increase police enforcement of the speed limit. Speed limits in this country are seriously out of touch with reality.