The result of the speed-camera test in the ACT makes depressing reading. This week the Minister for Urban Services Brendan Smyth issued the results saying that about half of Canberra’s drivers do not obey speed limits. The tests were taken on Belconnen Way, where 80 per cent of drivers kept a steady 70km/h to 75km/h speed in a 60km/h zone; Tuggeranong Parkway where drivers averaged 15km/h over the limit and the Monaro Highway where more that 40 per cent of drivers exceeded the speed limit, to name the worst sites.
Equally depressing is some of the reaction. Some people argued that the speed limit was too low, especially on Belconnen Way. However, in the places on Belconnen Way where the 60km/h limit applies, houses abut the road. There were the usual cries about revenue raising.
The trial was to test new digital equipment not used before. Mr Smyth says the cameras will go into force later in the year. Good.
Yes; speed cameras are revenue-driven. But it is not the amount of money netted by the fines that counts. Rather it is the huge amounts of money saved by speed cameras working as an effective deterrent to speeding so that the accident rate is reduced, or at least the damage done on impact is reduced.
The number of people shown to be speeding does not indicate that the speed limits are too low. The fact that people die and are injured on the roads with the present limits, if anything are too low. The results indicate that the full introduction of the cameras is now more urgent.
Australia has done reasonably well in reducing the road toll in the past two decades. The typical annual death toll has been cut from around 3000 to around 1800, despite more drivers and cars on the road. But let us not congratulate ourselves on making safer cars and roads and for driving more safely. The lion’s share of the increase must be put down to increasing the certainty of getting caught for offences. The deterrent has been in enforcement, not in higher penalties. Behaviour has been changed by increasing the risk of penalty for misbehaviour. Sadly, compulsory seat belts, radar, speed and red-light cameras and random breath-testing have done more to reduce the road toll some new-found altruistic desire to drive more safely out of concern for our fellow road-users.
Unfortunately, these weapons of law-enforcement have come with a cost of reduced civil liberties and an inflexibility which usually results in equal fines for all offenders irrespective of past record.
There is a good argument in Canberra for decreasing the speed limit in suburban streets to 50km/h, or perhaps even 40km/h. This is not the huge impost on time and convenience that it might seem. It does not take very long to get on to an arterial road where the limit might be 60km/h or higher. And in any event, traffic jams are rare in Canberra. The lower limit within suburbs would make them much safer, particularly for the elderly and young children. That is a price worth paying for the minor inconvenience of slowing down for the first and last parts of a journey.
At slower speeds drivers have more time to react to danger and in the event of a collision the lower speed causes fewer injuries and deaths. The balance of convenience lies in favour of lower limits.