David Wright: High speed leads to one destination

COMMENT


New enforcement measures announced by the Government last week come down hard on speeding drivers. Those caught exceeding any permanent posted speed limit by 40km/h or more will face immediate roadside licence suspension for 28 days.

The use of "anywhere anytime" speed cameras sends a clear message that drivers must keep to a safe speed all the time - not just when they pass a few well-known camera sites.

While these measures are supported by most drivers, because they understand the link between higher speeds and higher crash severity, others will go to amazing lengths to deny the obvious. Logic will be twisted, facts distorted and evidence ignored, all in an attempt to prove that driving at excessive speed is not unsafe, and, therefore, police enforcement of our speed limits is unnecessary and unjust.

A common argument is based on the fact that most crashes happen at speeds which are at or under the posted limit. If 85 per cent of crashes happen at speeds at or below the limit, the argument goes, why are you targeting people who exceed those limits?

The answer is simple - because crashes that involve vehicles travelling over the speed limit cause a disproportionately high number of deaths.

Driving too fast for the conditions is a factor in just 15 per cent of injury crashes, but it is a factor in more than 30 per cent of fatal crashes, most of which involve speeds over the limit.

In other words, excessive speed is twice as likely to be a factor in a fatal crash than it is in a less serious crash. That's because crashes at higher speeds involve higher amounts of kinetic energy, and the force of impact is much greater than at lower speeds. Crashes at higher speeds do much more damage to the human body, and are much more likely to kill you.

Yes, it is true that most fatal crashes do not involve excessive speed. It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that if 30 per cent of fatal crashes involve vehicles travelling too fast for the conditions, 70 per cent do not.

It is also true that most fatal crashes do not involve alcohol. In 74 per cent of all fatalities last year, neither driver was drunk. Does that mean that police should ease off on alcohol enforcement?

After all, alcohol was "only" a factor in 26 per cent of fatal crashes.

So should police reduce the number of alcohol checkpoints? Should the legal alcohol limit for driving be raised even higher? Should police just give drunk drivers a friendly warning, ask them nicely to try to sober up a bit and wave them on?

If not, why should police cut back on speed enforcement or give out warnings instead of tickets, and why do we still have people lobbying for higher speed limits when speeding drivers are killing more people on our roads than drunks?

Another favourite argument of those trying to rationalise their illegal speeding is to point to the German autobahn as a shining example of how we can all drive in perfect safety at breakneck speeds. At the risk of stating the obvious, New Zealand roads are not autobahns, and they were not designed to be driven safely at high speeds.

In fact, a large part of our road network was constructed under an 80km/h open road speed limit regime, with speeds set accordingly. Newer roads or those that have been rebuilt under the 100km/h regime have speeds in line with that limit. The open road speed limit of 100km/h has not been set arbitrarily - the fact is that our network is not built to safely sustain speeds any higher than 100km/h.

Those who have been to Germany may have noticed that not all the roads there are autobahns. On two-lane undivided highways equivalent to our state highway network the Germans impose speed limits of 80 or 100km/h, and they enforce them.

Even on the autobahn, the no-speed-limit free-for-all is a myth. The congested sections passing through urban centres with many on and off-ramps (that is, the equivalent of our motorways) have speed limits of 80, 100 or 120km/h.

Of course, the autobahn fan club neglect to mention this. Nor do they mention that the autobahn speed limits are strictly enforced with the use of hidden cameras.

Speed cameras are, of course, another hobby-horse for the anti-enforcement brigade. It points to Victoria as an example of how tough enforcement, including the extensive use of cameras, has failed to improve road safety. This is simply not true.

Victoria's road toll remained constant through the 1990s and it has dropped considerably this year, despite significant increases in both population and the number of vehicles.

This year Victoria is on track to record a road toll of 350 - the state's lowest in more than 50 years. Its road toll is much lower than that of New Zealand in both absolute numbers and in deaths per vehicle.

With nearly 3.5 million on-road vehicles (700,000 more than New Zealand), an annual road toll of 350 gives Victoria a fatality rate of 1 deaths for every 10,000 vehicles - one of the lowest in the world.

Our fatality rate is more than 1.6 deaths for every 10,000 vehicles - which is where Victoria was 10 years ago. If we could achieve the same reduction and bring our fatality rate down to 1, as the Victorians have done, we would be looking at a road toll this year of 280, instead of 470.

Of course, opponents of speed enforcement do not trust statistics. They will dismiss these figures as propaganda and continue to protest against "unjust laws" which penalise "otherwise law-abiding citizens".

They can rail against the law until they are blue in the face, but no amount of protest will change the laws of physics. Those are the laws which state that the faster an object travels, the more kinetic energy it carries. When the object stops suddenly that energy must be dissipated.

In a road crash the human body is forced to absorb much of that energy - and it doesn't cope very well. Bones break, internal organs are crushed, brains slam against craniums, spinal cords snap and hearts stop beating.

Speed doesn't kill, but the sudden stop does. That's not a slogan, and it's not propaganda. It's the truth - and the truth hurts.

* David Wright is Director of Land Safety.


Herald Feature: Road safety