Alternative headline: National to spend $30m to sacrifice some of your lives so our trip is slightly faster.
The changes have been endorsed by transport researchers and street safety advocates as effective measures to help reduce the number of Kiwis killed and injured on the roads.
That’s all there is to it.
I recently drove SH6 over the Whangamoas. Most areas that were once 100 are now 80 or lower (except the closest part near Blenheim). I was towing a trailer, and it did not add any appreciable time to the trip, but made the whole drive much less stressful. No more Utes up my arse because how dare I not do the full 100 on the windy as fuck road. So from my personal experience I like the change.
It also helps that 80 is right around the most fuel efficient speed, which is nice now that petrol is $3+
Considering how windy that road is I really don’t get why the locals went so feral about it being lowered. Even the straighter bits of roads have enough of an up-and-down that you can’t see oncoming traffic so you can’t overtake slower vehicles.
$100 says the locals still overtake on blind hills.
Also, going fast is manly, by lowering a speed limit you’re essentially cutting off their balls.
Imagine seeing someone driving, and the first thing that goes through your mind is “mmm, genitals”.
Ditto the Napier-Taupo. There’s a section on the Western side that’s 80 well after it needs to, and ditto at the bottom of the Esk Valley - but all of the rest of it just isn’t a 100km/h road, despite what the munters in their Hilux’s think.
I drove that road just before the new limits came in, my impression was the sections that needed to be 80 already were, and a competent driver could easily travel at 100 on the rest.
It’s also worth noting the road was in appalling condition, with a number of spots of flushing, as well as a ridiculous amount of potholes. I managed to wheelspin going up a hill at 80 kmh, the traction was that bad.
Exactly. Plus there are plenty of passing bays. I pulled over regularly to let people pass, no one had to wait very long behind me. I even got 2 toots!
If it were fit for purpose each location they changed it, that would be great. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who (for example) thinks changing the road from Featherston to Masterton to 80kph is fit for purpose. Especially the Featherston-Greytown section which is probably the straightest and best maintained piece of road in the Wairarapa.
The only thing it’s done is force more traffic onto side roads which are still 100.
Also, well I appreciate the frustration of having others up your arse (ha) there could also be something to be said for pulling over if/when you are in a slower vehicle (e.g. towing a trailer) - not saying that you don’t pull over, but the amount of people that don’t, even with slow vehicle bays (or worse speeding up at passing lanes) makes the whole thing more dangerous.
Hello. It’s the only walking and cycling route through a densly populated(by rural NZ standards) area. It’s also a very busy road that can be a pain to turn on and off. I’d rather they built a shared path, improved the busy intersections as they are doing, and left it at 100. But in the absense of that, this is an improvement.
I can’t speak for Wairarpa so I leave that to you.
I always pull over. I have a wife and kids who all get car sick, so I take it pretty easy generally. But my point wasn’t about me having people behind me doing 80 in a 100 zone - that would be understandable. My point was, previously large stretches of the road were uncomfortable at the posted limit, but even doing the limit angry locals would ride your arse only to Hoon past on a blind corner and speed off. My anecdotal evidence is the reduced limit has cooled people’s driving temperament noticably. I even got two toots for pulling over, and a couple of hazard light flashes - something that hadn’t happened in a long time before the limit reduction.
My partner actually purchased a little thumbs up light with a button we can hit when driving to thank the folks that do pull over.
I’m sure this whole situation depends on the particular road in question. On the remutakas the only people I’ve ever seen passing on blind corners are motorbikes which is incredibly stupid and suicidal. But there is a big speed differential between people who know the road and people who don’t - understandably so - but plenty of inconsiderate drivers (both slow and fast too). Generally trucks are the best at pulling over
I’d have thought the speed limit between Featherston-Greytown is more due to the volume of traffic on a relatively narrow road, due to how not undulating or curvacious it was. Particularly as there’s been a decent number of collisions due to people turning on from the side roads etc.
Not sure I’d describe it as narrow, certainly not compared to other Wairarapa roads, or Wellington roads either for that matter. It’s got a wide median on both sides the entire way. If I could figure out how to post a picture form the mobile client I use, I’d add a picture to demonstrate. I do understand what you mean about the side roads though.
In the Carterton to Masterton stretch they’ve now put roundabouts in 3 different locations and a wire divider down separating the two sides - although I know some locals are unhappy as there is now a lack of turnaround areas - which presumably is to deal with the side road issue, but still the limit is (theoretically when complete) also 80 even with upgrades, again pushing more traffic down side roads.
I meant more in comparison to a proper double carriage-way or whatever, but ive not driven it for a long time and it sounds like the Carterton to Masterton stuff is way new from my last trip. I assume that area is still 100km/h with those extra protections in place?
Nope, they’ve lowered it to 80, and we’ve been told that they weren’t going to increase it. The council said that Waka Kotahi was looking to lower all rural roads to 60 which would be pretty slow in such a big area in the Wairarapa. Hence I’m keen for a policy change to return roads that are designed for it back up to 100.
60 for rural roads in the wairarapa would be utterly ridiculous, most of them are dead straight and can easily accommodate 100kmh traffic.
I personally have not noticed significant changes in travel times due to the reduction in speed limits, which may just be because of where I live (Transmission Gully and the Kāpiti Expressway have definitely cut travel times, more than offsetting any difference in speed changes on other roads).
I found it hard to get recent data, but found this interesting (vs National’s claim that Road to Zero isn’t working):
Deaths peaked in 2017, but really dropped in 2020 and 2021 (presumably COVID related). Then we have 2022 which was 374 deaths, the highest since 2018. But what was the rate compared to the distance traveled? I haven’t found a 2022 VKT number, but it would be interesting to see. Also, one off blips in data don’t mean that a programme with a 30 year plan isn’t working. In fact, given COVID, I don’t think you could judge the programme at all for at least another few years.
Now if someone says “we shouldn’t spend this money on X because it could save even more lives spent on Y” then ok cool. But I think we all know if they cut Road to Zero it will be to pay for the lack of money they allocated for their promised road projects.
Given how many things have happened regarding our roads the last few years, such as new motorways and expressways opening and safety upgrades to existing roads, as well as modern cars getting constantly safer, I don’t think we have enough evidence to say lower speed limits did anything conclusively.
I’d agree, but ultimately lower speed limits aren’t about reducing the number of crashes caused by excessive speed. It’s about accepting crashes will happen, and reducing the damage when it does happen.
It’s a broad brush and we may never be able to tie one thing to the outcome.
I think this is an important point that is missed a lot. The reduced speed limits aim to reduce the harm of serious crashes. Any data needs to include the number of crashes to the number of crashes that have serious harm and death, then compare these to other years.
Fatalities per distance travelled is a good way of looking at that though.
Have you read the entire article? I’m absolutely not a National fan but they’re not saying that they will reverse all changes, only there were it’s safe to do so. Essentially what the current plan is, perhaps at less places.
Also, they want to focus on other things than speed, eg on alcohol testing.
National will encourage police to increase the use of breath testing and we will fix roadside drug testing legislation so police can effectively test drivers for drugs.
I’m from The Netherlands where we have an absurd focus on speed, and speed testing. It has got nothing to do with safety where they are testing, it’s just another tax.
I’ve got my license 25 years or so and have only been tested for alcohol once. Never in my ten years in New Zealand. That’s crazy. One in five fatal crashes is caused by alcohol.
I think it’s generous to take what they say at face value. They often slap on this sort of handwaving away of the predictable negative outcomes of whatever they’re proposing to roll back. It’s not actually backed up with anything - it’s just designed to let them have it both ways.
Kinda like their tax cuts they say won’t be inflationary, and their foreign buyer ban relaxation that they say somehow won’t lead to house prices going up.
the predictable negative outcomes of whatever they’re proposing to roll back.
The evidence that lower speed limits actually helps is pretty tenuous, and there’s also the lost time and productivity to consider.
It seems to depend on where you count your costs and benefits, and who is included in that.
Research seems to say that lower speeds are beneficial to society overall in a range of ways, National only seem to be counting car drivers and their right to continue taking up most of our public road space at the expense of everyone else.
OK, but this is talking about urban speed limits, whereas National’s focus is mostly on open road limits.
No it isn’t, they’ve said they’re rolling back both
They’ve said they’re rolling them back unless it wouldn’t be safe to do so, and most of their press talks about open road limits.
It sounds like most of the urban limits will stay.
Im from Germany and greatly prefer driving in the Netherlands to Germany. Traffic simply flows in NL, whereas in Germany you’ll always have some fanatics driving 250+ kph in the left lane, causing hiccups in traffic flow. Plus the roadrage is real in D.
Guten tag :) I have always preferred driving in Germany, I’ve found them the best drivers in Europe when we did road trips. As people can go 200+ km on the left lane, they anticipate much better. I remember Dutch people were called NL, Nur Links, as they would stick too long in the left hand lane. Also found that people were more polite in Germany.
But perhaps it’s all perception then!
Goede middag!
Seems like a classic grass is greener on the other side thing :) I guess if you have to deal with traffic on a day to day basis, you’ll end up hating it either way.
I’m just envious of the Dutch. The infrastructure is simply amazing. Everyone has near equal rights, be it cars, bikes or pedestrians. And the OV is just leagues ahead of the ÖPNV in Germany!
Anywho, this is a NZ community, so I should probably shut up :D
Yes I did read the article, thanks for the opening ad hominem.
As I’ve said in another reply:
Greater speed makes every collision and accident worse.
We can save lives, already involved in collisions, by reducing the speed at which those collisions happen.
There is exactly one action you can take to mitigate the severity of someone else’s mistake in a collision: reduce your speed.
How many lives, including your own, are worth taking to satiate your need for speed?
Yes think we’re on the same page. I have absolutely no need for speed anymore (I did when I was younger, I admit), I just don’t think it makes sense to limit speed on certain roads at 100km / hour like the Kapiti Expressway. It should be 120km/h IMO. Police is checking for speed there very often as it’s an easy cash grab, but I hardly see them in 50km/h areas where it’s much less safe to go over the limit.
Yeah I think we are on the same page, nobody argues harder than two people who agree with eachother.
When I was a testosterone charged teen/20yo speed was all important. I grew out of it, many do not.
And yes, modern divided highways/motorways can and should be higher limited. Most are not modern nor divided. The Waikato expressway is 110km/h. It’s great.
Also, if I hit a pole at 120km/h then the impact speed is 120km/h. If I have a head-on at 80km/h then the impact speed is 160km/h. So physically segregating traffic is the most effective infrastructure change to make, it is slow and expensive and impractical in most places.
Lowering limits on old crappy roads is the cheapest and therefore most efficient option.
Also, if I hit a pole at 120km/h then the impact speed is 120km/h. If I have a head-on at 80km/h then the impact speed is 160km/h. So physically segregating traffic is the most effective infrastructure change to make, it is slow and expensive and impractical in most places.
I also initially thought that was the case, but it’s not! http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/collisionmath.html There’s no difference between 80km/h against a pole or wall vs 80km/h head on.
Fascinating! TYVM for that.
Though, I’ll argue that even in my flawed examples having double the number of vehicles in the collision is still worse: double the casualties. It’s just technically the same as two vehicles having independent collisions.
Oh, also: it improves the effectiveness of lowering the speed limit versus infrastructure upgrades.
Neat.
How many lives, including your own, are worth taking to satiate your need for speed?
Lol, we’re talking about driving at 100 kmh here. Tad melodramatic, don’t you think?
It’s been years since I was tested for alcohol, although I’m not often on the roads at typical drink driving hours.
Might be where you’re living or when you’re driving? I’ve had a few breath tests heading home from work around the times you’d expect people might be heading home for tea after an after work drink.
I’ve driven at times when people are expected to drink, at night, at Friday afternoon, etc. Never tested once. And I’ve probably been speed tested thousands of times.
I’ve been tested twice in the 30 years I’ve been driving. Both of them before I was 20.
I assume there’s confirmation bias in that I’m not driving at the same times in the same places as I was 20 or so, but I’ve never even seen a breath stop since.
Plenty of WoF stops though, and one child seat compliance stop.
Interesting! I’ve never seen a WoF stop or child seat compliance stop.
Sorry, registration not WoF.
Yeah, the child seat one was a real surprise.
Do you do much driving after dark? When I look back, I think every alcohol checkpoint I’ve been through has been after dark. And I’m pretty sure they check WoF (not rego) at the same time since it’s right there on the driver’s side, but I haven’t seen a checkpoint specifically for WoF (or rego). I have heard of people getting tickets for no rego after having sweeps of car parks done, but I don’t think this is police-led.
Hardly drive at all actually, compared to when I was younger. Generally night time driving is “home from the restaurant”.
My experience is very anecdotal and definitely had selection bias for my small amount of travel.
I’ve had both (in the far north).
To be fair, I’ve been tested several times this year alone. All of them were in the morning, twice when heading to work and once when dropping the kids off at school.
I thought the timing was extremely weird tho
I’ve been trying to follow this story and the evidence underpinning the decision. That is based upon te published data for killied and seriously injured.(KSI). Any alternate approach at this time is not providing evidence, that I have been able to pick up. It seems more like a power / votes opportunity rather than a well founded argument. Despite it being unpopular, like when we mandated seatbels in 1983,I still suppot the reduced speed limits unti the evidece says otherwise.
There should be more focus on alcohol in my opinion. Speed is always a contributing factor but not often the causing factor. Keeping distance is another one many people need to understand better.
But lowering speed limits is easier and also brings in easy money as speed testing is very efficient.
I think it’s worth understanding why they are targeting speeds. It’s not revenue collection. Road to Zero is the idea that people make mistakes, and they shouldn’t have to pay with their lives.
In the past: They weren’t paying attention, hit a truck, it’s their fault they died.
Now: They weren’t paying attention, hit a truck, how could we have prevented it? Let’s install a median separator.
Basically, accepting people make mistakes, and looking for ways to stop this meaning they have to die.
The reason they are targeting speed is related to this. If you get drunk and drive and hit a power pole, if you do drugs and drive and hit a power pole, if you use your phone while driving and hit a power pole, if your kid distracts you and you hit a power pole, these are all different causes but the result is the same. You hit a power pole.
Now if you’re driving at 100KPH, the result of this accident is that you or someone in your vehicle probably dies or gets a life-long injury. If you’re driving at 80KPH, chances are you walk away from the crash, or at least can recover fully within a few months.
The idea of reduced speed limits is simply that people are going to make mistakes, people are going to crash, and when this happens we should prioritise life over saving 3 minutes on your commute.
Exactly this.
Greater speed makes every collision and accident worse.
We can save lives, already involved in collisions, by reducing the speed at which those collisions happen.
I’d rather we address the underlying cause of these accidents, personally, rather than just saying “shit happens”
As a young taco enthusiast once asked - - porque no los dos?
It’s not a binary issue - - you could address both sides of the problem. Do more to reduce the likelihood of accidents, but also minimise the damage done by accidents. Since there’s no magic on/off switch for car accidents, while we figure out the right settings to reduce them, maybe it’s wise to use strategies that minimise the damage done by them.
Thanks for your insights! I think we’re on the same page, I agree that some roads should be 80km/hour instead of 100. And indeed, risk of an injury crash seems to double from 80 to 100. I don’t mind the couple of extra minutes.
I just see the police checking for speed too often on roads where it’s easy to go over the limit, like the Kapiti Expressway, where I believe they should focus on e.g. 50km/h areas, checking for red light runners, alcohol, and tailgating.
Interesting! I have never seen police on the Transmission Gully/Kāpitiexpressway stretch of road except for police travelling along it. Never seen a speed trap.
I also think we are headed for a future with police playing a smaller part in speed detection (and cameras playing a bigger part).
We could probably keep many of the 80kph roads at 100kph if you had confidence people would actually drive at 100. Camera enforcement will play a big part in future I feel, the culture change to get people sticking to the posted speed limit.
In The Netherlands, speed traps are done by a separate unit, they’re not police officers. It’s also fully automated and a separate speed tracked process within the legal system, anything below 30 km/h is fully automated & car owners are automatically invoiced and assumed in the wrong if caught in a speed trap. You have to go through many loops to appeal. It’s a massive cash grab system and seen as just another tax as it’s used to pay for completely unrelated things, like free school books.
While most people adhere to the limits, many people still exceed the limits as it’s mostly safe to do so.
The low road toll there is mainly contributed to the very safe roads, and e.g. no crossings and traffic lights at 100km/hour roads, like here in NZ.
One problem NZ has is that things are far away from each other, and it’s mountainous.
That means we spend a lot more time driving long distance than people in The Netherlands, and this driving is largely on long, windy, poor quality roads. The roads are poor quality because we need so many of them compared to the population.
We have less than 20 people per km^2, vs The Netherland’s 500+.
Yep true, think my comparison is not entirely fair. Also, in NL the taxes are a lot higher; e.g. road tax / month for a petrol car is what we pay here per YEAR, diesel cars are even more expensive. Plus, there’s an additional tax on new vehicles.
That’s a very long winded way of saying fixing the underlying issues is too hard, so we’re just going to slow everyone down.
Road to Zero is a 30 year plan with a multifaceted approach. There is progress on things like camera detection of phone use and people not wearing seatbelts, but technology and culture changes take time. Speed limits don’t take time, and help towards the goal.
Road to Zero is not some new idea someone at Waka Kōtahi thought up. It’s something in use in many countries around the world with it’s origins in the 90s.
The chart that Dave posted is pretty inconclusive, in my view. It don’t think you can compare this to seatbelts, the evidence for seatbelts working is overwhelming.
A chart summarises the data. The outcry against seatbelts at the time was similar to the antivax arguments, which are based upon views rather than just data.
I have to agree the chart is inconclusive. COVID messes up the later years which also happen to be the ones after road to zero started.
I think National claiming it isn’t working is a bit ridiculous though, like investing in shares, seeing the price drop in one year, then deciding investing doesn’t work.
National to actually spend money on safety upgrades and road maintenance, rather than the band-aid solution of lowering speed limits.
Seriously, the evidence this actually works is tenuous at best, and that’s assuming people actually follow the new limits.
There’s also a number of routes, the new Kapiti expressway for example, that could handle much higher limits, and in fact frequently do handle vehicles travelling much faster.
Speaking to media today, Hipkins claimed it appeared National was simply re-announcing what the Government’s stated position was.
Labour are also saying this is more or less their policy, so it doesn’t sound like they will be much different at all.
Yep totally agreed. 100 feels so slow there. Should be 120 or so.
I’m all for lowering speed limits in urban areas.
Also there should be more focus on other things like alcohol testing, fatigue, keeping distance, etc. But speed is easier to test and brings in cash.
I can tell you from experience that 130 on the expressway doesn’t feel particularly fast either.
Fortunately you rarely see police north of Paraparaumu on that road.
30m is nothing in government budget. It’s so funny how they always mention the cost cause they know how tight we all are with money.
It would pay for quite a few teachers or nurses.
And it’s never just the sticker price when the polits burble this kind of nonsense in the media.
Based on a quick search of treasury’s budget publications I’ll assume 2022’s total government revenue to be 150b. 30m is 0.2% of that.
Holy shit! They’re prepared to dump 0.2% of the whole budget on a political football.
As much political football as when it was implemented.
There’s always going to be things that other parties remove and I think 30m is not an amount we should be freaking out over.
I’d rather they didn’t do it but it doesn’t worry me if they do.
The only upside that I can see to reverting back to old speed limits, is the marbre maintaining vailability of childrens organs for a transplant. As ever, more porer pedestrians killed than welthy pedestrians who live outside the towns and cities.
Urgh, it’s class war all the way down.
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Hey there, for me from the other side of the world further proof that things are largely the same everywhere.
