Wheels Magazine Petition - Raise the speed limit and lower the toll

[wai]

RE the argument about road engineers, I'm not a road engineer, but I am an electrical engineer who has worked on major road projects in the last 5 years with a bunch of road engineers, and they worked to a speed safety factor of at least 1.5 - so for the lay people, this means that a road with a 100km/h limit would still be safely trafficable by a "reasonable person" at 150km/h. This probably assumes favourable weather conditions, no other traffic on the road etc...

Yes, all roads have a safety factor. We do not drive on the edge of what is safe, and this is the issue. Speed limits are established for operating a vehicle in unfavourable conditions, and even then there has to be a safety factor. What factor is used is determined after carrying out a risk assessment. The problem here is that there are some who would come up with a different assessment because they are prepared to take a greater risk. A safety factor is just that. It is also referred to as a factor of ignorance, because you simply do not know the exact qualities of the factors involved. Typical or average qualities are used because the cost of establishing the precise qualities becomes too expensive and it will continuously change. That does not mean that you eat into your safety factor. No one wants to see a vehicle hurtling out of control right at them, because the driver thought he/she could take the bend at a higher speed but then realised they were wrong.

We have a variety of vehicles, and drivers with varying levels of skill. Unfortunately, many who do consider themselves to be good drivers and worthy of being allowed to drive faster, are actually no better than average as far as their skill is concerned. It is much like those who consider themselves as being great at multi-tasking. When tested objectively, they turn out to be no different to the average. It is just that they give the appearance of being great multi-taskers.

Even if you have more extensive testing before being able to get a licence, you will always have different levels of skills, and unless those who want to drive faster are prepared to have toll roads specially built for them, chances are that little is going to change.

[Tobes_WIR35]

Sorry, I should have made myself clearer. I meant that the roads were designed to be "safe" at a factor of 1.5 of the actual speed limit applied to it. By this I mean that the design safety factors were applied to the speed limit safety factor of 1.5. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, they need to account for emergency vehicles who can exceed regular limits. Secondly, they designed the roads with the full intention of the speed limits being raised in the future, as vehicles become collectively safer.

The actual speed limit that was then applied to these roads was to account for what speed was "safe" for the most "unsafe" type of vehicle allowed on our roads, with the most inexperienced driver at the wheel, in the most unfavourable conditions. In other words, it caters for the lowest common denominator.

If you want examples of countries where various types of vehicles with various types of drivers can coexist safely with speed limits higher than 110kmh there are plenty. The experiments have been done and the data is freely available

[DonJuan]

I undertook sooo many card on the M1 southbound today I don't think the limit raise will do much for oblivious driving... I wish I was a highway patrol unit, I could've made the budget today alone!


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