A final draft of a report on speed limits is expected to be presented to the Australian Transport Council (of state, territory and federal transport ministers) later this year. Apparently it recommends that the standard speed limit in suburban streets be lowered to 50km/h. No doubt there will be a certain amount of needless political and bureaucratic give and take about how and when the limit should be introduced. But speed limits are of their nature of purely local application. A state or territory government could move almost immediately in some or all of its urban areas to reduce the limit.
The case for a reduction is clear. Australia has one of the highest suburban limits in the world. Sixty-two per cent of Australians agree that the limit should be lowered, according to a Federal Office of Road Safety survey. The people most in favour of the same or a higher limit are those aged 15 to 24 … the very people involved in the highest proportion of accidents.
European countries that dropped the limit saw worthwhile reductions in road injuries and fuel consumption. The minor loss of convenience of a 10km/h cut is easily outweighed by considerations of safety and residential amenity. Going below 50km/h would probably be too inconvenient.
It is a question of physics … the force of the impact increases exponentially with velocity of the impact. A reduction in the speed limit by 17 per cent will result in a much greater reduction in the force of impact. Moreover an reduction in speed results in a huge reduction in stopping distances. If one car is travelling 60km/h and another 50km/h both brake at the same time, the car doing 60km/h will still be doing 45km/h by the time the other car has stopped.