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A Politician With Some Common Sense - Speed Limits


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Ran I'm not saying every speed limit is correct. And I agree that what you are saying sounds far too slow. Places like that should be considering timed lane control where different speed limits apply at different times of the day.

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Most people know how to drive to the conditions. The rest can be targeted for "enforcement" as necessary.

Completely disagree with that. I'm surprised that most people can successfully guide a wad of toilet paper to wipe their cake-hole let alone maneuver a vehicle in a safe and efficient manner based on them deciding what is an appropriate speed and manner.

You only have to see how people behave in really heavy rain or fog to verify the point. Fckn imbeciles. And what makes it even worse is that any accident or death that is determined to be as a result of driving too fast for the conditions (even if under the posted speed limit) is just classed the same as the clown doing 200km/h that finds a tree and comes to an abrupt stop.

I tried getting a breakdown of stats from our govt up here years ago and was stonewalled at every attempt so have no idea exactly what sort of representation the under limit accidents are in the total figures but I'm guessing it's a significant amount - and if they make those details public then it ruins every argument ever conceived for speed cameras.

I think the only solution is the engineered approach that that panda bloke is rambling about. We are too stupid to protect ourselves so the only way to have roads with higher limits is to make them multi-lane with crash barriers, massively wide shoulders so we don't feel closed-in, minimal gradient changes and nothing more than slight corners. I.e. the most boring road you could imagine

Or have proper driver training and frequent re-testing and realistic enforcement that essentially ignores the posted limit and takes in to account the vehicle capabilities and road & weather condition and only fine those that are being dicks. And that's extremely unlikely.

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Tab.. I always remember the first time I drove through Brisbane.. back in the days when you paid a lady at the pay station on the gateway.

P Plater.

Drove over the gateway in near cyclonic wind and torrential rain.. was scared sh*t less. Signs said 40!!! Hi wind!! Poor visibility!! Slow down.

Wasn't brave enough to slow down as the group of cars I was near were travelling at 80.. To this day I am always amazed at the stupidity of people driving that day..

Australia's road network will suffer because everything is so f*ckin expensive in Australia! Traffic controllers cost $100 an hour.. Our road network needs a lot of love before we can start increasing the speeds in a big way.

Also just FYI tab. Crash stats are recorded as:

Exceed posted speed

Not driving to conditions

However largely.it does appear they group those when reporting because it's not too often that they can really prove the exceed posted speed criteria.

I've got an 800 page crash report I analyzed for a job that kind of gives a pretty good idea of how often it's conditions dictating the unreasonable speed even though they may have not been speeding as such.

That does prove that drivers mentality is to do the speed on the sign and you're safe!

Makes it difficult to safely increase speeds thinking like that if not all drivers can do the higher end of the legal speed safely as it is.

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Oh I should also add that if you're upset about speed limits and revenue raising to contact your local MP!! Because right now the only people who are contacting them are the extremists of the other view, soccer mum and dad who lost their 17 year old to an idiot driver.

Each year I would attend maybe 10 road safety forums. I am yet to see someone (including senators who publish videos on youtube) be passionate enough to bring the idea of safer roads through higher speed limits to a road safety forum in which they can raise their issues to road safety engineers like myself, director general of transport and the commissioner of the police.

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Any chance of getting a breakdown of the "speed related crashes" or whatever the term is Panda?

But yeah they only thing that'll fix that mentality is training or less stupidity. Will have to worry about planes running in to cops before either of those things happen.

Meanwhile we'll have the Tracy Grimshaws and Harrold Scrubbys of the world advocating for more enforcement and the gullible electorate will take that as the government doing the right thing. And governments are more than happy to play along with that game as it's an easy visible 'solution' and a fantastic source of revenue.

Meanwhile cars will keep getting safer and roads will be built to better standards but we'll just accept the declining death and injury rates are due solely to increased enforcement.

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I'll dig it out once I finish mowing tab and see if I can do a bit of a spreadsheet. The report is not redacted so I obviously can't share it as it has names and regos etc.

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Firstly, sorry guys for the long post, but I was busy and didn't have time to formulate a decent response... here goes! - my responses in bold :)

Speed limit should not cater for the 85th percentile. Why?
Because roads are designed for the 85th. Read any of the Australian road guides. Either 85th percentile or posted speed +10kmh .. - Let's not get concerned with where the engineering lies because it would be silly to have an outback road with the 85th at around 200km/h but it not be engineered to take it. Country road non-signposted speed limits are acceptable, in my opinion. I'm only really concerned where I know the engineering/analysis (could/should???) might have already been done.

What's the flow on effect?
It's not a few thousand dollars.. it's billions. If we posted roads for the 85th, we would design for the 95th. If we did that we would be designing roads for people driving stupid. If we do that we blow out costs. - as per my above statement, I'm only really concerned with roads where the road is already engineered to a reasonable standard. The percentile figures of a roads engineering expenditure are not publicly available :( But you're right, billions in speeding fines are issued... maybe they could spend this on road infrastructure? You'd think that this information would be widely publicized if they were to spend the funds on the infrastructure, but I could find no evidence to where speeding fine funds are spent :(.

If we blow out costs you the taxpayer is gonna Crack the sh*ts that maintenance would be decreasing and it's bad enough already. - I'd be happy to pay for taxes for better roads. Whether I'm in the minority there, I don't know (probably am), but I believe if drivers and the general public were better educated when it comes to the benefits (see: germany autobarn engineering) of a quality built road structure and the overwhelming approval and success of such expenditure then the disapproval at paying taxes to perform such tasks may be of a smaller concern to the average taxpayer.

Now that's not to say that some roads can't be higher speeds (western qld and NT come to mind) but if you wanted to build a road anywhere near or in Melbourne that allowed the 95th centile the flow on effects would be unfathomable to most. - I agree totally here. How can we determine which roads get 95th sort of focus :( ? hard to guarantee in the sub-contracting (lowest bidder) nature of today's government contracts. (a whole separate problem, in my mind).

First off I dont disagree with a lot of what he says. He raises alot of fair points especially his statement about tightly regulated and highlt policed environments.. I disagree with it strangling the system. However I do agree that a moments indiscretion can get you caught and fined. Letme clarify the strangling point. - Good to know we are close to the same page here. A lot of resources of police (a whole DIVISION specifically) are allocated to traffic policing... I'd say that's putting at least some pressure on the HR department's ability to balance the workload of "normal" police work versus traffic enforcement.

Most people are away how choked busy freeways are... would increasing the speed to 120kmh on a busy freeway improve congestion? f*ck no. Why? Because the exit ramps are goddamn 60kmh local streets quite often with traffic signals, roundabouts or a stop sign at the end of them. Those intersections queue back to the freeways/highway very fast. You're getting people to an accident hotspot faster. Speed limits take into account very large scale traffic models which allow you to model how an entire network operates when parameters are changed. - The freeway being busy during peak times of course will largely ignore a greater limit, as this is already the case with 100km/h blanket maximums. When those roads are busy in such scenario's, the speed limit is irrelevant, so I'm not going to continue here.

Its not the 85th percentile rule. No rules. It is more of a coroners court defendable speed you can design a road to. Ill try not to use name calling but he is very uneducated in what he is talking about here. 85th centile speeds are measured with a posted limit in place. Say the road is 80kmh we do an operating speedassessment where we measure what speed every vehicle is doing and determine what the 85th of that is. please note that the 85th is usually measured at a single point (straight) of a predetermined sectionnof road. Then we do the operating speed model where you use tge 85th and you calculate based on all the horizontal curves in the road and their superelevation (crossfall) whether vehicles are overdriving or underdriving horizontal curves based on the grip coefficients needed to safely steer around the bend. Now standards change and alot of roads are goat tracks built in the early 1900's that have just continuously gotten upgraded so some very poor geometry has been built into our roads. - This I agree with. All circumstances should be taken into account before the "correct" speed limit is determined for an entire stretch of road, including elevations/camber/spillways etc etc. If the engineers know what they're doing they can accurately determine all of this data and provide a "reasonable" estimate that'll be somewhere very close to what I mentioned above; the large majority of drivers will think this "limit" is on the edge of "100% safe". I obviously have no real world knowledge or evidence to support this. I'm basing this off germany's roads and their ability to inspire confidence in safety.

The next thing the 85th is used for is to calculate how far in advance of the vehicle a driver should be able to see an object 200mm higher than the road surface and stop completely (lane locked) or safely manoeuvre around it. This is the criteria that gets expensive. Howver we are bound by standard to use rates of decel that havent been revised since 1995. But research has recently been done that suggests modern drivers have worse perception/reaction than drivers back in the 80's so the distances level out. - I agree here, totally. This data should definitely be updated (and then updated more often from then onwards). This data is not hard to obtain as analysis of new car production has never been more in depth than it currently is. Surely this data can easily be transferred onto the departments in control of signing off and designing new/improved roadways. Maybe I'm an optimist, though.

If you need to cut down a natural rise so drivers can see over it.. you cost mkre money. The deeper you cut the more likely you are to hit rock.. that sh*t is expensive to remove.. remove. - I guess cost/benefit analysis would have to be done on a case by case basis. If necessary, have the natural rises in place, but lower the speed limit as the engineering and 85th see fit.

85th speed is purely a design criteria and roads are designed so that people can travel the 85th safely. If you increase the speed ljmit to the 85th we need to design for the 95th and spend more money because people will always think they can go faster. - The only way to combat this is to have better driver education that the "limit" is on or near the "safe" threshold for a certain class of vehicle. As it currently stands, people don't generally "trust" a lot of areas as safe and therefore do what they "feel" is safe, ironically doing roughly the 85th plus or minus a bit. Because people are "thinking" the wrong thing by default is no reason to be resigning ourselves to easy decisions (lower the speed limit arbitrarily).

Lets talk about around the world vs. Australia. Now I agree that more research can go into this. Australia has a very unique road network so 'what works in the USA' doesnt always work here. Im not saying it cant be considered in some areas but lets talk european road standards. A class euro roads (freeways) are not supposed to connect to class C or D roads (local roads). In Australia we f*cking join dirt roads at T intersections to 4 lane freeways. - I see your point here. In some instances I agree. For the most part this is getting better as time goes on (from what I've seen).

This could be changed.. but this is something that needs to change in standards now, but we won't see any real difference for 30-50 years. - Agreed

Our road network just got assessed in qld for a 'speed limit overhaul'. 50 links were identified. Of the 50 engineers onky saw fit to increase the speed of 2. - I'd love to see the data on this on why they justified all 48 to not be worthy of an increase. 4% seems too low even if it were to happen by chance. Seeing data on why they actually chose these specific links would be nice, too. Did these "recommendations" get taken in by the correct people? did these limits actually increase?

50 more sections are due to be assessed soon. - Great news. But if they stick with 4% who knows.. they may as well be doing nothing, depending on how many actually make it into an "approved for change" state.

This dude makes sense so far. He just showed a 6 lane road at 50kmh. If speeds don't match engineering I agree its incorrect. However if the road is a constrained 6 lane (reduced lane widths etc) its a different situation. - How so? if a driver cannot drive within the lines (of standardized width in the given locality), then they don't deserve a license in that locality.

I thunk alot of what he says makes sense. Road speeds need to match engineering but in Australia most (please note I said most) of our speed limits are at the limits of the engineering. I know quite a few where speed limits are reactive to high crash histories. Myself I do alot of crash analysis and these reactions that alter limits are pointless as the areas I have seen it happen accidents are fatigue related. One section springs to mind though where the speed limit waz reduced to 90 and the accident rate reduced by 40%. Could be argyed that it was just a better couple years since accident rates need a 10 year history to be accurate. - I hate when a limit is changed because somebody crashes with no proof that speed was even a factor... You're right, long term analysis is required... But also I think that relying on past events and their frequency/severity to dictate the future control of such an area is unreasonable in the long term. Correct engineering and analysed limits can't prevent stupidity or human weaknesses. These sorts of issues can only be reliably investigated when the "human" factor is taken out. (this is a whole different argument, of course).

I cant put exact details but I have been involved with a lot of speed limit increases in QLD amd the NT. These roads did not match the engineering for the proposed speeds but they were assumed it was okay as they had such low traffic volumes. - I think that the amount of vehicles is something that would be considered in engineering. All factors (including fatigue inducing environments) should be taken into account, too.

Once yiu start talking roads with 10-50k vehicles a day, Australian roads largely can not safely accomodate higher limits. - Cross country roads, I would agree. Metropolitan roads, for the most part, I would disagree. I have no statistical analysis to believe either one, this is just from a country/metro living standpoint (personal experiences). The metro roads I've seen are seemingly built a lot better and have less issues that require maintenance. Country roads get not much maintenance and do seem to need it more often. (where I've lived in the past).

Completely disagree with that. I'm surprised that most people can successfully guide a wad of toilet paper to wipe their cake-hole let alone maneuver a vehicle in a safe and efficient manner based on them deciding what is an appropriate speed and manner. - Hyperbole :)

You only have to see how people behave in really heavy rain or fog to verify the point. Fckn imbeciles. And what makes it even worse is that any accident or death that is determined to be as a result of driving too fast for the conditions (even if under the posted speed limit) is just classed the same as the clown doing 200km/h that finds a tree and comes to an abrupt stop. - I agree. These stats are not broken down in any analysis data I could find. But for the most part, regular drivers know when THEIR OWN abilities are compromised by the conditions and slow down as necessary. Whether the judgment of that person is correct or not does not seem to dictate whether they crash or not, either... it's a tricky issue that I believe only better driver education would have any chance of fixing.

I tried getting a breakdown of stats from our govt up here years ago and was stonewalled at every attempt so have no idea exactly what sort of representation the under limit accidents are in the total figures but I'm guessing it's a significant amount - and if they make those details public then it ruins every argument ever conceived for speed cameras. - You will never see governments posting data about speed cameras not causing the roads to be "safer" while they're parroting this "speed kills" mantra. Governments know not to shoot themselves in the foot :)

I think the only solution is the engineered approach that that panda bloke is rambling about. We are too stupid to protect ourselves so the only way to have roads with higher limits is to make them multi-lane with crash barriers, massively wide shoulders so we don't feel closed-in, minimal gradient changes and nothing more than slight corners. I.e. the most boring road you could imagine - Ideally, yep.

Or have proper driver training and frequent re-testing and realistic enforcement that essentially ignores the posted limit and takes in to account the vehicle capabilities and road & weather condition and only fine those that are being dicks. And that's extremely unlikely. - This is what I'm advocating, exactly.

Tab.. I always remember the first time I drove through Brisbane.. back in the days when you paid a lady at the pay station on the gateway. P Plater. Drove over the gateway in near cyclonic wind and torrential rain.. was scared sh*t less. Signs said 40!!! Hi wind!! Poor visibility!! Slow down. Wasn't brave enough to slow down as the group of cars I was near were travelling at 80.. To this day I am always amazed at the stupidity of people driving that day.. - I think "exceptional" circumstances will catch even the most capable drivers out. Environmental factors are taken into account for crash analysis, from memory. These "extreme" scenario's can even catch you out when you're going >10km/h, so I don't think we should take them into account with regard to engineered/analysed speed limits, unless these "extreme" scenario's are common enough to warrant design/engineering consideration for change.

Australia's road network will suffer because everything is so f*ckin expensive in Australia! Traffic controllers cost $100 an hour.. Our road network needs a lot of love before we can start increasing the speeds in a big way. - Not even after a "big" increase with my thoughts here; most zones should not be a long way off the required limit as they currently stand, in my mind (except expensive long straight good quality highway style roads - 100 or 110km/h wayyyyyy too slow, imho). Small increases in certain areas would be a welcome change to suit what I see/experience as around the 85th percentile.

Also just FYI tab. Crash stats are recorded as: Exceed posted speed, Not driving to conditions. However largely.it does appear they group those when reporting because it's not too often that they can really prove the exceed posted speed criteria. - This is my concern... Is the "result" correctly analysed or just used as the "blanket" excuse? I guess this is something we can never really know unless you have a friend in that section of the police force. I spoke at length to the late Craig Hodge (Rudiger on this forum) who was a member of the Victoria Highway Patrol and then later multiple fatality crash analysis teams and he was a strong advocate that speed is rarely a concern for fatal crashes. If it was a factor, it was most often combined with some sort of incapacitating scenario (drugs/alcohol/visibility/environment). Unfortunately he can't be here to continue that discussion :( RIP.

I've got an 800 page crash report I analyzed for a job that kind of gives a pretty good idea of how often it's conditions dictating the unreasonable speed even though they may have not been speeding as such .- I'd be interested in reading something like this. Who did the report and who was it "directed at"?

That does prove that drivers mentality is to do the speed on the sign and you're safe! - Driver education can fix this, nothing more, IMHO.

Makes it difficult to safely increase speeds thinking like that if not all drivers can do the higher end of the legal speed safely as it is. - Darwinism? haha probably too drastic :P

Oh I should also add that if you're upset about speed limits and revenue raising to contact your local MP!! Because right now the only people who are contacting them are the extremists of the other view, soccer mum and dad who lost their 17 year old to an idiot driver. - I see your point here, but I'm also plainly aware that one person is not likely to make a difference to the local MP. That's why I'm sharing this to my friends (via FB) and also this forum to see if some common sense can be spread :)

Each year I would attend maybe 10 road safety forums. I am yet to see someone (including senators who publish videos on youtube) be passionate enough to bring the idea of safer roads through higher speed limits to a road safety forum in which they can raise their issues to road safety engineers like myself, director general of transport and the commissioner of the police. - making changes that cause money making schemes (read: speed camera's) to not make as much money as before is possibly political suicide... BUT brave politicians do definitely have the ability to succeed in Australia (I'm referring to John Howard's gun control law changes). If we were in America and had to make such changes, I would definitely think the chances of change for the better would be almost impossible as their politicians are nowhere near as brave as some in Australia :) Optimism... perhaps... Be the change you'd like to see in this world :)

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I'm gonna respond in italics.. If this doesn't show up in tapatalk boot up your computer.. Just note that I won't respond to everything as I really need to get a report finished tonight.

Largely though I don't disagree with what you are saying and I think we aren't on the same page but we are approaching the same page from different viewpoints.. I am approaching the page from the view point that I know that alot of modern roads are at their limits to safely allow their maximum speeds.. Main reasoning is that everything done to a higher standard generally (not always but mostly) costs more money.. Everything is done exactly to the standards that are current at the time the contract is awarded. If I worked in a different job I'd probably agree with everything you said.

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 8:52 PM, said:snapback.png

Speed limit should not cater for the 85th percentile. Why?
Because roads are designed for the 85th. Read any of the Australian road guides. Either 85th percentile or posted speed +10kmh .. - Let's not get concerned with where the engineering lies because it would be silly to have an outback road with the 85th at around 200km/h but it not be engineered to take it. Country road non-signposted speed limits are acceptable, in my opinion. I'm only really concerned where I know the engineering/analysis (could/should???) might have already been done.

Even then country roads being non-sign posted need to be of a high enough standard to cater for the Mean-Free-Speed (That's a term the senator completely missed in his video because he's a numpty and he found one catch phrase and ran with it). This basically reiterated what TAB said. Engineering needs to protect people because a lot of them won't do it for themselves. If we could put up a black speed sign that included a plate underneath that read 'DRIVE AT OWN RISK' I''d be all for it (considering myself and many like me can go to jail for a very long time if someone kills themselves and it gets to court). But being realistic no engineer has been successfully sued and imprisoned in australia yet, because they usually commit suicide before the end of the trial.

What's the flow on effect?
It's not a few thousand dollars.. it's billions. If we posted roads for the 85th, we would design for the 95th. If we did that we would be designing roads for people driving stupid. If we do that we blow out costs. - as per my above statement, I'm only really concerned with roads where the road is already engineered to a reasonable standard. The percentile figures of a roads engineering expenditure are not publicly available :( But you're right, billions in speeding fines are issued... maybe they could spend this on road infrastructure? You'd think that this information would be widely publicized if they were to spend the funds on the infrastructure, but I could find no evidence to where speeding fine funds are spent :(.

Victoria is a different kettle of fish. In qld our revenue from speeding is substantially less but all the speed profits are invested into SRS or Safer Roads Sooner. This is blackspot elimination/improvement projects. We'd all love to see more money but the reality is when government employees are involved it costs more to design an improvement than it does to build it.

If we blow out costs you the taxpayer is gonna Crack the sh*ts that maintenance would be decreasing and it's bad enough already. - I'd be happy to pay for taxes for better roads. Whether I'm in the minority there, I don't know (probably am), but I believe if drivers and the general public were better educated when it comes to the benefits (see: germany autobarn engineering) of a quality built road structure and the overwhelming approval and success of such expenditure then the disapproval at paying taxes to perform such tasks may be of a smaller concern to the average taxpayer.

Not related but imagine if when you paid tax you could choose where it got spent.. Everyone would say Roads/Health/Education and I'd be the richest f*cker in qld.

Now that's not to say that some roads can't be higher speeds (western qld and NT come to mind) but if you wanted to build a road anywhere near or in Melbourne that allowed the 95th centile the flow on effects would be unfathomable to most. - I agree totally here. How can we determine which roads get 95th sort of focus :( ? hard to guarantee in the sub-contracting (lowest bidder) nature of today's government contracts. (a whole separate problem, in my mind).

Tell your government I sent you and I'll kill you. Legally under freedom of information you can request road plans from your roads department. From this it's easy to determine what the 85th speed they had in mind when they designed and built it. (It tells you on the bottom of the plans). Compare that to the posted speed limit and see if there is more than a 10kmh safety buffer.. If there is start asking why that road is such a low limit.

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 9:55 PM, said:snapback.png

First off I dont disagree with a lot of what he says. He raises alot of fair points especially his statement about tightly regulated and highlt policed environments.. I disagree with it strangling the system. However I do agree that a moments indiscretion can get you caught and fined. Letme clarify the strangling point. - Good to know we are close to the same page here. A lot of resources of police (a whole DIVISION specifically) are allocated to traffic policing... I'd say that's putting at least some pressure on the HR department's ability to balance the workload of "normal" police work versus traffic enforcement.

Most people are away how choked busy freeways are... would increasing the speed to 120kmh on a busy freeway improve congestion? f*ck no. Why? Because the exit ramps are goddamn 60kmh local streets quite often with traffic signals, roundabouts or a stop sign at the end of them. Those intersections queue back to the freeways/highway very fast. You're getting people to an accident hotspot faster. Speed limits take into account very large scale traffic models which allow you to model how an entire network operates when parameters are changed. - The freeway being busy during peak times of course will largely ignore a greater limit, as this is already the case with 100km/h blanket maximums. When those roads are busy in such scenario's, the speed limit is irrelevant, so I'm not going to continue here.

Something worth noting in a road design is that when designing something as busy as a freeway the focus is on a LOS (Level of Service).. Ideally you want a freeway with enough lanes and so few interuptions you get a LOS A but the reality is these are designed for a LOS B or C.. Throw an accident in and you hit F pretty quick.. LOS is not related to mean free speed or any of the other crap. It's purely related to traffic modelling.. In which case you try to design for the mean free speed but you end up getting screwed cost wise when you need to add in extra lanes to cater for vehicle demand.

Its not the 85th percentile rule. No rules. It is more of a coroners court defendable speed you can design a road to. Ill try not to use name calling but he is very uneducated in what he is talking about here. 85th centile speeds are measured with a posted limit in place. Say the road is 80kmh we do an operating speedassessment where we measure what speed every vehicle is doing and determine what the 85th of that is. please note that the 85th is usually measured at a single point (straight) of a predetermined sectionnof road. Then we do the operating speed model where you use tge 85th and you calculate based on all the horizontal curves in the road and their superelevation (crossfall) whether vehicles are overdriving or underdriving horizontal curves based on the grip coefficients needed to safely steer around the bend. Now standards change and alot of roads are goat tracks built in the early 1900's that have just continuously gotten upgraded so some very poor geometry has been built into our roads. - This I agree with. All circumstances should be taken into account before the "correct" speed limit is determined for an entire stretch of road, including elevations/camber/spillways etc etc. If the engineers know what they're doing they can accurately determine all of this data and provide a "reasonable" estimate that'll be somewhere very close to what I mentioned above; the large majority of drivers will think this "limit" is on the edge of "100% safe". I obviously have no real world knowledge or evidence to support this. I'm basing this off germany's roads and their ability to inspire confidence in safety.

The next step to everything I said and you largely agreed with is a whole new concept.. It's called 'OVER SIGNING'.. Basically it's the belief that if you put up too many signs drivers will ignore them.. SO we might have 5km of road perfect for 130kmh attached to 5km good for 100kmh.. But we post it at 100kmh because if we keep changing the speed limit we piss drivers off..

The next thing the 85th is used for is to calculate how far in advance of the vehicle a driver should be able to see an object 200mm higher than the road surface and stop completely (lane locked) or safely manoeuvre around it. This is the criteria that gets expensive. Howver we are bound by standard to use rates of decel that havent been revised since 1995. But research has recently been done that suggests modern drivers have worse perception/reaction than drivers back in the 80's so the distances level out. - I agree here, totally. This data should definitely be updated (and then updated more often from then onwards). This data is not hard to obtain as analysis of new car production has never been more in depth than it currently is. Surely this data can easily be transferred onto the departments in control of signing off and designing new/improved roadways. Maybe I'm an optimist, though.

Optimists are good.. But optimist meet realist. I overtook an XF falcon on the way to golf course today and saw a HJ monaro on the way home.. These cars still drive on our roads and these cars still need to be catered for. Japan is one place that makes it so expensive to own a car that is more than about 5 years old that they constantly update their roads data. If australia went the NZ way and introduced an annual Warrant of Fitness.. Maybe just maybe we could start eliminating the bombs and relics from our roads..

If you need to cut down a natural rise so drivers can see over it.. you cost mkre money. The deeper you cut the more likely you are to hit rock.. that sh*t is expensive to remove.. remove. - I guess cost/benefit analysis would have to be done on a case by case basis. If necessary, have the natural rises in place, but lower the speed limit as the engineering and 85th see fit.

See comment above about changing speed limits too often..

85th speed is purely a design criteria and roads are designed so that people can travel the 85th safely. If you increase the speed ljmit to the 85th we need to design for the 95th and spend more money because people will always think they can go faster. - The only way to combat this is to have better driver education that the "limit" is on or near the "safe" threshold for a certain class of vehicle. As it currently stands, people don't generally "trust" a lot of areas as safe and therefore do what they "feel" is safe, ironically doing roughly the 85th plus or minus a bit. Because people are "thinking" the wrong thing by default is no reason to be resigning ourselves to easy decisions (lower the speed limit arbitrarily).

I don't disagree.. BUT our government doesn't have a lot of spare cash at the moment.. Driver training would be f*cking expensive..

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 10:30 PM, said:snapback.png

Lets talk about around the world vs. Australia. Now I agree that more research can go into this. Australia has a very unique road network so 'what works in the USA' doesnt always work here. Im not saying it cant be considered in some areas but lets talk european road standards. A class euro roads (freeways) are not supposed to connect to class C or D roads (local roads). In Australia we f*cking join dirt roads at T intersections to 4 lane freeways. - I see your point here. In some instances I agree. For the most part this is getting better as time goes on (from what I've seen).

This could be changed.. but this is something that needs to change in standards now, but we won't see any real difference for 30-50 years. - Agreed

Our road network just got assessed in qld for a 'speed limit overhaul'. 50 links were identified. Of the 50 engineers onky saw fit to increase the speed of 2. - I'd love to see the data on this on why they justified all 48 to not be worthy of an increase. 4% seems too low even if it were to happen by chance. Seeing data on why they actually chose these specific links would be nice, too. Did these "recommendations" get taken in by the correct people? did these limits actually increase?

I thought I typed more here.. Anyway of the first 50 on 30 were being assessed for increases in speed 20 were being assessed for decreases.. 10 got decreased, 2 got increased. Of the 2 that got increased the engineers made the call based on lower traffic volumes and drivers predominantly knowing the road (Not tourist roads etc).. Isolated elements weren't suitable for the increased speeds but 90% of the road was.. (See comment about over signing but the engineer applied it the other way this time and put his nuts on the line). These two links had to be re linemarking in their entirety to be suitable for the increased speed.

50 more sections are due to be assessed soon. - Great news. But if they stick with 4% who knows.. they may as well be doing nothing, depending on how many actually make it into an "approved for change" state.

The next 50 are all being assessed for increases but largely it will depend on the engineers.

This dude makes sense so far. He just showed a 6 lane road at 50kmh. If speeds don't match engineering I agree its incorrect. However if the road is a constrained 6 lane (reduced lane widths etc) its a different situation. - How so? if a driver cannot drive within the lines (of standardized width in the given locality), then they don't deserve a license in that locality.

Again this is easier on a computer as I can type faster and not shorten my explanations as I did on the tablet. Typically a centre lane of a 6 lane road is 4.0m minimum. This allows a car to typicall be able to manoeuvre around an obstacle and largely stay inside their lane. In a constrained situation you can reduce lane widths as low as 2.75m. THis means a driver has to stop for a obstacle. THe distance required for a driver to perceive/react and manoeuvre is sh*tloads less than perceive/react and stop. Speed limits are usually based off available sight distance and perceive/react stop if there is a constrained lane situation.

I thunk alot of what he says makes sense. Road speeds need to match engineering but in Australia most (please note I said most) of our speed limits are at the limits of the engineering. I know quite a few where speed limits are reactive to high crash histories. Myself I do alot of crash analysis and these reactions that alter limits are pointless as the areas I have seen it happen accidents are fatigue related. One section springs to mind though where the speed limit waz reduced to 90 and the accident rate reduced by 40%. Could be argyed that it was just a better couple years since accident rates need a 10 year history to be accurate. - I hate when a limit is changed because somebody crashes with no proof that speed was even a factor... You're right, long term analysis is required... But also I think that relying on past events and their frequency/severity to dictate the future control of such an area is unreasonable in the long term. Correct engineering and analysed limits can't prevent stupidity or human weaknesses. These sorts of issues can only be reliably investigated when the "human" factor is taken out. (this is a whole different argument, of course).

I agree.. But when the stupidity is a common parameter.. Speed limits get reduced.. (Bruce Highway anyone?). I personally don't fully agree as opposite argument is speed limit reductions increase 'grouping' of vehicles. Grouped vehicles are more likely to blindly follow the leader. Anyone else ever had about 6 cars behind them and pretended to dodge a branch? Watch how many cars behind you do the same.. The reality is they should be far enough back to see you didn't actually dodge anything..

I cant put exact details but I have been involved with a lot of speed limit increases in QLD amd the NT. These roads did not match the engineering for the proposed speeds but they were assumed it was okay as they had such low traffic volumes. - I think that the amount of vehicles is something that would be considered in engineering. All factors (including fatigue inducing environments) should be taken into account, too.

Once yiu start talking roads with 10-50k vehicles a day, Australian roads largely can not safely accomodate higher limits. - Cross country roads, I would agree. Metropolitan roads, for the most part, I would disagree. I have no statistical analysis to believe either one, this is just from a country/metro living standpoint (personal experiences). The metro roads I've seen are seemingly built a lot better and have less issues that require maintenance. Country roads get not much maintenance and do seem to need it more often. (where I've lived in the past).

Metro roads are built better.. But the average country road takes 4000 vehicles per day on a busy one.. A metro road can take 25000 vehicles per lane per day.. They are built better to deal with the traffic.. Greater traffic volumes = greater stupid factor.

tab, on 07 Feb 2015 - 08:15 AM, said:snapback.png

Completely disagree with that. I'm surprised that most people can successfully guide a wad of toilet paper to wipe their cake-hole let alone maneuver a vehicle in a safe and efficient manner based on them deciding what is an appropriate speed and manner. - Hyperbole :)

You only have to see how people behave in really heavy rain or fog to verify the point. Fckn imbeciles. And what makes it even worse is that any accident or death that is determined to be as a result of driving too fast for the conditions (even if under the posted speed limit) is just classed the same as the clown doing 200km/h that finds a tree and comes to an abrupt stop. - I agree. These stats are not broken down in any analysis data I could find. But for the most part, regular drivers know when THEIR OWN abilities are compromised by the conditions and slow down as necessary. Whether the judgment of that person is correct or not does not seem to dictate whether they crash or not, either... it's a tricky issue that I believe only better driver education would have any chance of fixing.

I tried getting a breakdown of stats from our govt up here years ago and was stonewalled at every attempt so have no idea exactly what sort of representation the under limit accidents are in the total figures but I'm guessing it's a significant amount - and if they make those details public then it ruins every argument ever conceived for speed cameras. - You will never see governments posting data about speed cameras not causing the roads to be "safer" while they're parroting this "speed kills" mantra. Governments know not to shoot themselves in the foot :)

Did I not end up sending the speed camera vs fatal accident slides to you once before?

I think the only solution is the engineered approach that that panda bloke is rambling about. We are too stupid to protect ourselves so the only way to have roads with higher limits is to make them multi-lane with crash barriers, massively wide shoulders so we don't feel closed-in, minimal gradient changes and nothing more than slight corners. I.e. the most boring road you could imagine - Ideally, yep.

Or have proper driver training and frequent re-testing and realistic enforcement that essentially ignores the posted limit and takes in to account the vehicle capabilities and road & weather condition and only fine those that are being dicks. And that's extremely unlikely. - This is what I'm advocating, exactly.

I would love this.. BUT it's expensive and I don't make money from driver training..

Never had any say Panda, on 07 Feb 2015 - 09:45 AM, said:snapback.png

Tab.. I always remember the first time I drove through Brisbane.. back in the days when you paid a lady at the pay station on the gateway. P Plater. Drove over the gateway in near cyclonic wind and torrential rain.. was scared sh*t less. Signs said 40!!! Hi wind!! Poor visibility!! Slow down. Wasn't brave enough to slow down as the group of cars I was near were travelling at 80.. To this day I am always amazed at the stupidity of people driving that day.. - I think "exceptional" circumstances will catch even the most capable drivers out. Environmental factors are taken into account for crash analysis, from memory. These "extreme" scenario's can even catch you out when you're going >10km/h, so I don't think we should take them into account with regard to engineered/analysed speed limits, unless these "extreme" scenario's are common enough to warrant design/engineering consideration for change.

Environmental factors are massive in crash analysis. Would you believe I met with a team of experts once to determine why a road in brisbane had the highest crash rate in the state.. 2 hours of punching figures all the accidents happened in the morning peak hour and the afternoon peak hour.. which roughly coincided with the fact it was a perfect East-West Road.. $20,000 spent on upgrading traffic signals to LED variants which are brighter and putting visors on them so you can see them in sunny conditions, accidents were almost eliminated.. Tab may even know the road..

Australia's road network will suffer because everything is so f*ckin expensive in Australia! Traffic controllers cost $100 an hour.. Our road network needs a lot of love before we can start increasing the speeds in a big way. - Not even after a "big" increase with my thoughts here; most zones should not be a long way off the required limit as they currently stand, in my mind (except expensive long straight good quality highway style roads - 100 or 110km/h wayyyyyy too slow, imho). Small increases in certain areas would be a welcome change to suit what I see/experience as around the 85th percentile.

Also just FYI tab. Crash stats are recorded as: Exceed posted speed, Not driving to conditions. However largely.it does appear they group those when reporting because it's not too often that they can really prove the exceed posted speed criteria. - This is my concern... Is the "result" correctly analysed or just used as the "blanket" excuse? I guess this is something we can never really know unless you have a friend in that section of the police force. I spoke at length to the late Craig Hodge (Rudiger on this forum) who was a member of the Victoria Highway Patrol and then later multiple fatality crash analysis teams and he was a strong advocate that speed is rarely a concern for fatal crashes. If it was a factor, it was most often combined with some sort of incapacitating scenario (drugs/alcohol/visibility/environment). Unfortunately he can't be here to continue that discussion :( RIP.

I agree with rudiger he was a very smart bloke, and his book is something I get people I work with to read when they say they want to do the crash investigation and analysis course. So they know what they are getting in to..

I've got an 800 page crash report I analyzed for a job that kind of gives a pretty good idea of how often it's conditions dictating the unreasonable speed even though they may have not been speeding as such .- I'd be interested in reading something like this. Who did the report and who was it "directed at"?

By Report I mean output direct from the governments crash report database.. It's not manipulated in any way.. Just typos put there by the police. I just input the zone of information I want data from and Bingo I have it.

That does prove that drivers mentality is to do the speed on the sign and you're safe! - Driver education can fix this, nothing more, IMHO.

Makes it difficult to safely increase speeds thinking like that if not all drivers can do the higher end of the legal speed safely as it is. - Darwinism? haha probably too drastic :P

Never had any say Panda, on 07 Feb 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:snapback.png

Oh I should also add that if you're upset about speed limits and revenue raising to contact your local MP!! Because right now the only people who are contacting them are the extremists of the other view, soccer mum and dad who lost their 17 year old to an idiot driver. - I see your point here, but I'm also plainly aware that one person is not likely to make a difference to the local MP. That's why I'm sharing this to my friends (via FB) and also this forum to see if some common sense can be spread :)

Each year I would attend maybe 10 road safety forums. I am yet to see someone (including senators who publish videos on youtube) be passionate enough to bring the idea of safer roads through higher speed limits to a road safety forum in which they can raise their issues to road safety engineers like myself, director general of transport and the commissioner of the police. - making changes that cause money making schemes (read: speed camera's) to not make as much money as before is possibly political suicide... BUT brave politicians do definitely have the ability to succeed in Australia (I'm referring to John Howard's gun control law changes). If we were in America and had to make such changes, I would definitely think the chances of change for the better would be almost impossible as their politicians are nowhere near as brave as some in Australia :) Optimism... perhaps... Be the change you'd like to see in this world :)

Sadly I agree with you because you're in victoria.. This isn't the case yet in qld.. Police in QLD are very welcome of discussions to reduce speeding that doesn't involve over enforcing. And I don't look forward to the day that mentality changes.
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My responses in bold again; I only responded to your responses :)

I'm gonna respond in italics.. If this doesn't show up in tapatalk boot up your computer.. Just note that I won't respond to everything as I really need to get a report finished tonight. - No way would I ever use tapatalk hahah PC FTW!

Largely though I don't disagree with what you are saying and I think we aren't on the same page but we are approaching the same page from different viewpoints.. I am approaching the page from the view point that I know that alot of modern roads are at their limits to safely allow their maximum speeds.. Main reasoning is that everything done to a higher standard generally (not always but mostly) costs more money.. Everything is done exactly to the standards that are current at the time the contract is awarded. If I worked in a different job I'd probably agree with everything you said. - I can agree with this assessment of the situation.

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 9:52 PM, said:snapback.png

Speed limit should not cater for the 85th percentile. Why?
Because roads are designed for the 85th. Read any of the Australian road guides. Either 85th percentile or posted speed +10kmh .. - Let's not get concerned with where the engineering lies because it would be silly to have an outback road with the 85th at around 200km/h but it not be engineered to take it. Country road non-signposted speed limits are acceptable, in my opinion. I'm only really concerned where I know the engineering/analysis (could/should???) might have already been done.

Even then country roads being non-sign posted need to be of a high enough standard to cater for the Mean-Free-Speed (That's a term the senator completely missed in his video because he's a numpty and he found one catch phrase and ran with it). This basically reiterated what TAB said. Engineering needs to protect people because a lot of them won't do it for themselves. If we could put up a black speed sign that included a plate underneath that read 'DRIVE AT OWN RISK' I''d be all for it (considering myself and many like me can go to jail for a very long time if someone kills themselves and it gets to court). But being realistic no engineer has been successfully sued and imprisoned in australia yet, because they usually commit suicide before the end of the trial. - It is my opinion that we should not cater to the lowest common denominator via engineering (just a reasonable percentage, say 85-90%), the rest must be done via proper education and the outliers will be "enforced" as necessary. Utopia??? maybe...

What's the flow on effect?
It's not a few thousand dollars.. it's billions. If we posted roads for the 85th, we would design for the 95th. If we did that we would be designing roads for people driving stupid. If we do that we blow out costs. - as per my above statement, I'm only really concerned with roads where the road is already engineered to a reasonable standard. The percentile figures of a roads engineering expenditure are not publicly available :( But you're right, billions in speeding fines are issued... maybe they could spend this on road infrastructure? You'd think that this information would be widely publicized if they were to spend the funds on the infrastructure, but I could find no evidence to where speeding fine funds are spent :(.

Victoria is a different kettle of fish. In qld our revenue from speeding is substantially less but all the speed profits are invested into SRS or Safer Roads Sooner. This is blackspot elimination/improvement projects. We'd all love to see more money but the reality is when government employees are involved it costs more to design an improvement than it does to build it. - It's good to hear that QLD is on a better track than Victoria. Can't agree more on the statement that the design/plan costs more than the actual improvement.

If we blow out costs you the taxpayer is gonna Crack the sh*ts that maintenance would be decreasing and it's bad enough already. - I'd be happy to pay for taxes for better roads. Whether I'm in the minority there, I don't know (probably am), but I believe if drivers and the general public were better educated when it comes to the benefits (see: germany autobarn engineering) of a quality built road structure and the overwhelming approval and success of such expenditure then the disapproval at paying taxes to perform such tasks may be of a smaller concern to the average taxpayer.

Not related but imagine if when you paid tax you could choose where it got spent.. Everyone would say Roads/Health/Education and I'd be the richest f*cker in qld. - LOL good one, mate. We can choose (very ineffectually) via voting in the right person, I guess...

Now that's not to say that some roads can't be higher speeds (western qld and NT come to mind) but if you wanted to build a road anywhere near or in Melbourne that allowed the 95th centile the flow on effects would be unfathomable to most. - I agree totally here. How can we determine which roads get 95th sort of focus :( ? hard to guarantee in the sub-contracting (lowest bidder) nature of today's government contracts. (a whole separate problem, in my mind).

Tell your government I sent you and I'll kill you. Legally under freedom of information you can request road plans from your roads department. From this it's easy to determine what the 85th speed they had in mind when they designed and built it. (It tells you on the bottom of the plans). Compare that to the posted speed limit and see if there is more than a 10kmh safety buffer.. If there is start asking why that road is such a low limit. - Freedom of information, eh... no wonder they dont publicize such avenues of enquiry... I'll see what I can dig up (not making any promises :) ).

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 10:55 PM, said:snapback.png

First off I dont disagree with a lot of what he says. He raises alot of fair points especially his statement about tightly regulated and highlt policed environments.. I disagree with it strangling the system. However I do agree that a moments indiscretion can get you caught and fined. Letme clarify the strangling point. - Good to know we are close to the same page here. A lot of resources of police (a whole DIVISION specifically) are allocated to traffic policing... I'd say that's putting at least some pressure on the HR department's ability to balance the workload of "normal" police work versus traffic enforcement.

Most people are away how choked busy freeways are... would increasing the speed to 120kmh on a busy freeway improve congestion? f*ck no. Why? Because the exit ramps are goddamn 60kmh local streets quite often with traffic signals, roundabouts or a stop sign at the end of them. Those intersections queue back to the freeways/highway very fast. You're getting people to an accident hotspot faster. Speed limits take into account very large scale traffic models which allow you to model how an entire network operates when parameters are changed. - The freeway being busy during peak times of course will largely ignore a greater limit, as this is already the case with 100km/h blanket maximums. When those roads are busy in such scenario's, the speed limit is irrelevant, so I'm not going to continue here.

Something worth noting in a road design is that when designing something as busy as a freeway the focus is on a LOS (Level of Service).. Ideally you want a freeway with enough lanes and so few interuptions you get a LOS A but the reality is these are designed for a LOS B or C.. Throw an accident in and you hit F pretty quick.. LOS is not related to mean free speed or any of the other crap. It's purely related to traffic modelling.. In which case you try to design for the mean free speed but you end up getting screwed cost wise when you need to add in extra lanes to cater for vehicle demand. - This doesn't surprise me at all. The issue is still a side issue and I could start a whole new thread on this topic...

Its not the 85th percentile rule. No rules. It is more of a coroners court defendable speed you can design a road to. Ill try not to use name calling but he is very uneducated in what he is talking about here. 85th centile speeds are measured with a posted limit in place. Say the road is 80kmh we do an operating speedassessment where we measure what speed every vehicle is doing and determine what the 85th of that is. please note that the 85th is usually measured at a single point (straight) of a predetermined sectionnof road. Then we do the operating speed model where you use tge 85th and you calculate based on all the horizontal curves in the road and their superelevation (crossfall) whether vehicles are overdriving or underdriving horizontal curves based on the grip coefficients needed to safely steer around the bend. Now standards change and alot of roads are goat tracks built in the early 1900's that have just continuously gotten upgraded so some very poor geometry has been built into our roads. - This I agree with. All circumstances should be taken into account before the "correct" speed limit is determined for an entire stretch of road, including elevations/camber/spillways etc etc. If the engineers know what they're doing they can accurately determine all of this data and provide a "reasonable" estimate that'll be somewhere very close to what I mentioned above; the large majority of drivers will think this "limit" is on the edge of "100% safe". I obviously have no real world knowledge or evidence to support this. I'm basing this off germany's roads and their ability to inspire confidence in safety.

The next step to everything I said and you largely agreed with is a whole new concept.. It's called 'OVER SIGNING'.. Basically it's the belief that if you put up too many signs drivers will ignore them.. SO we might have 5km of road perfect for 130kmh attached to 5km good for 100kmh.. But we post it at 100kmh because if we keep changing the speed limit we piss drivers off.. - I believe paying attention to signs is something that is not focused on enough in driver education and training, too! I guess you could easily fall on either side of the fence (logically) in this situation... too many signs is definitely going to cause a reasonable percentage of people to ignore them, but on the other hand limiting a high quality stretch of road is exactly what I'll advocate against until the end of time! haha

The next thing the 85th is used for is to calculate how far in advance of the vehicle a driver should be able to see an object 200mm higher than the road surface and stop completely (lane locked) or safely manoeuvre around it. This is the criteria that gets expensive. Howver we are bound by standard to use rates of decel that havent been revised since 1995. But research has recently been done that suggests modern drivers have worse perception/reaction than drivers back in the 80's so the distances level out. - I agree here, totally. This data should definitely be updated (and then updated more often from then onwards). This data is not hard to obtain as analysis of new car production has never been more in depth than it currently is. Surely this data can easily be transferred onto the departments in control of signing off and designing new/improved roadways. Maybe I'm an optimist, though.

Optimists are good.. But optimist meet realist. I overtook an XF falcon on the way to golf course today and saw a HJ monaro on the way home.. These cars still drive on our roads and these cars still need to be catered for. Japan is one place that makes it so expensive to own a car that is more than about 5 years old that they constantly update their roads data. If australia went the NZ way and introduced an annual Warrant of Fitness.. Maybe just maybe we could start eliminating the bombs and relics from our roads.. - NSW is on the way with regard to this (yearly RWC-style inspection) but from what I've seen it's not as thorough as it should/could be. I guess if you drive an older car you should be "driving to conditions" in a sense, as well.. that condition being that your car is not up to correct specifications for the engineering of the surface.

If you need to cut down a natural rise so drivers can see over it.. you cost mkre money. The deeper you cut the more likely you are to hit rock.. that sh*t is expensive to remove.. remove. - I guess cost/benefit analysis would have to be done on a case by case basis. If necessary, have the natural rises in place, but lower the speed limit as the engineering and 85th see fit.

See comment above about changing speed limits too often.. - Noted

85th speed is purely a design criteria and roads are designed so that people can travel the 85th safely. If you increase the speed ljmit to the 85th we need to design for the 95th and spend more money because people will always think they can go faster. - The only way to combat this is to have better driver education that the "limit" is on or near the "safe" threshold for a certain class of vehicle. As it currently stands, people don't generally "trust" a lot of areas as safe and therefore do what they "feel" is safe, ironically doing roughly the 85th plus or minus a bit. Because people are "thinking" the wrong thing by default is no reason to be resigning ourselves to easy decisions (lower the speed limit arbitrarily).

I don't disagree.. BUT our government doesn't have a lot of spare cash at the moment.. Driver training would be f*cking expensive.. - I can't agree with you here. The learner program has enforcement of quantity of hours and certain "conditions" met during those hours that are logged (in most states, if not all). Just add more criteria to this checklist and make the L's test more difficult (e.g. be more real world oriented, not just facts that are memorized temporarily for a test). Neither of those things will require a large sum to be invested.

Never had any say Panda, on 06 Feb 2015 - 11:30 PM, said:snapback.png

Lets talk about around the world vs. Australia. Now I agree that more research can go into this. Australia has a very unique road network so 'what works in the USA' doesnt always work here. Im not saying it cant be considered in some areas but lets talk european road standards. A class euro roads (freeways) are not supposed to connect to class C or D roads (local roads). In Australia we f*cking join dirt roads at T intersections to 4 lane freeways. - I see your point here. In some instances I agree. For the most part this is getting better as time goes on (from what I've seen).

This could be changed.. but this is something that needs to change in standards now, but we won't see any real difference for 30-50 years. - Agreed

Our road network just got assessed in qld for a 'speed limit overhaul'. 50 links were identified. Of the 50 engineers onky saw fit to increase the speed of 2. - I'd love to see the data on this on why they justified all 48 to not be worthy of an increase. 4% seems too low even if it were to happen by chance. Seeing data on why they actually chose these specific links would be nice, too. Did these "recommendations" get taken in by the correct people? did these limits actually increase?

I thought I typed more here.. Anyway of the first 50 on 30 were being assessed for increases in speed 20 were being assessed for decreases.. 10 got decreased, 2 got increased. Of the 2 that got increased the engineers made the call based on lower traffic volumes and drivers predominantly knowing the road (Not tourist roads etc).. Isolated elements weren't suitable for the increased speeds but 90% of the road was.. (See comment about over signing but the engineer applied it the other way this time and put his nuts on the line). These two links had to be re linemarking in their entirety to be suitable for the increased speed. - 20 assessed for decreases, 10 decreased (50% success rate) vs 30 assessed for increases and only 2 increases (6.67% success rate) ... is this a reflection on the correctness of the original limits or a reflection on the political safety of decreasing a speed limit over increasing it?

50 more sections are due to be assessed soon. - Great news. But if they stick with 4% who knows.. they may as well be doing nothing, depending on how many actually make it into an "approved for change" state.

The next 50 are all being assessed for increases but largely it will depend on the engineers. - OK, it surprises me that the engineers have so much sway over the people who actually enforce the changes (government). I'll be interested in seeing if the successrate is similar to the previous attempt mentioned above.

This dude makes sense so far. He just showed a 6 lane road at 50kmh. If speeds don't match engineering I agree its incorrect. However if the road is a constrained 6 lane (reduced lane widths etc) its a different situation. - How so? if a driver cannot drive within the lines (of standardized width in the given locality), then they don't deserve a license in that locality.

Again this is easier on a computer as I can type faster and not shorten my explanations as I did on the tablet. Typically a centre lane of a 6 lane road is 4.0m minimum. This allows a car to typicall be able to manoeuvre around an obstacle and largely stay inside their lane. In a constrained situation you can reduce lane widths as low as 2.75m. THis means a driver has to stop for a obstacle. THe distance required for a driver to perceive/react and manoeuvre is sh*tloads less than perceive/react and stop. Speed limits are usually based off available sight distance and perceive/react stop if there is a constrained lane situation. - I can understand the logic behind this, but it smells of BS to me. Surely moving out of your lane for an obstacle is preferred to hitting your obstacle straight on? (obviously many factors at play here and each situation should be taken on a case-by-case analysis). This is again going towards the lowest common denominator (and easier to raise revenue, of course) and this pisses me off. We can't prevent all accidents by lowering speed limits.

I thunk alot of what he says makes sense. Road speeds need to match engineering but in Australia most (please note I said most) of our speed limits are at the limits of the engineering. I know quite a few where speed limits are reactive to high crash histories. Myself I do alot of crash analysis and these reactions that alter limits are pointless as the areas I have seen it happen accidents are fatigue related. One section springs to mind though where the speed limit waz reduced to 90 and the accident rate reduced by 40%. Could be argyed that it was just a better couple years since accident rates need a 10 year history to be accurate. - I hate when a limit is changed because somebody crashes with no proof that speed was even a factor... You're right, long term analysis is required... But also I think that relying on past events and their frequency/severity to dictate the future control of such an area is unreasonable in the long term. Correct engineering and analysed limits can't prevent stupidity or human weaknesses. These sorts of issues can only be reliably investigated when the "human" factor is taken out. (this is a whole different argument, of course).

I agree.. But when the stupidity is a common parameter.. Speed limits get reduced.. (Bruce Highway anyone?). I personally don't fully agree as opposite argument is speed limit reductions increase 'grouping' of vehicles. Grouped vehicles are more likely to blindly follow the leader. Anyone else ever had about 6 cars behind them and pretended to dodge a branch? Watch how many cars behind you do the same.. The reality is they should be far enough back to see you didn't actually dodge anything.. - Definitely agree here. The only thing I have to say is that "stupidity" should NOT be a common parameter :) I know that driver education seems to be my "catch all" response for these issues, but to me, it is infinitely more valuable than speed enforcement.

I cant put exact details but I have been involved with a lot of speed limit increases in QLD amd the NT. These roads did not match the engineering for the proposed speeds but they were assumed it was okay as they had such low traffic volumes. - I think that the amount of vehicles is something that would be considered in engineering. All factors (including fatigue inducing environments) should be taken into account, too.

Once yiu start talking roads with 10-50k vehicles a day, Australian roads largely can not safely accomodate higher limits. - Cross country roads, I would agree. Metropolitan roads, for the most part, I would disagree. I have no statistical analysis to believe either one, this is just from a country/metro living standpoint (personal experiences). The metro roads I've seen are seemingly built a lot better and have less issues that require maintenance. Country roads get not much maintenance and do seem to need it more often. (where I've lived in the past).

Metro roads are built better.. But the average country road takes 4000 vehicles per day on a busy one.. A metro road can take 25000 vehicles per lane per day.. They are built better to deal with the traffic.. Greater traffic volumes = greater stupid factor. - Agree here, except the more volume = more stupid part. The percentage doesn't increase, just the quantity :P. The reasonable drivers still far outweigh the stupid. I also strongly believe people are more comfortable in familiar traffic situations (personal experience for evidence)... What I mean is that somebody who routinely drives in peak hour blockages at 80-100km/h is safer than somebody who drives in that sort of traffic at say 40km/h but only once or twice a year. If this is true, it means that the road conditions are evenly distributed (per capita) with regard to engineering quality affecting any given driver.

tab, on 07 Feb 2015 - 09:15 AM, said:snapback.png

Completely disagree with that. I'm surprised that most people can successfully guide a wad of toilet paper to wipe their cake-hole let alone maneuver a vehicle in a safe and efficient manner based on them deciding what is an appropriate speed and manner. - Hyperbole :)

You only have to see how people behave in really heavy rain or fog to verify the point. Fckn imbeciles. And what makes it even worse is that any accident or death that is determined to be as a result of driving too fast for the conditions (even if under the posted speed limit) is just classed the same as the clown doing 200km/h that finds a tree and comes to an abrupt stop. - I agree. These stats are not broken down in any analysis data I could find. But for the most part, regular drivers know when THEIR OWN abilities are compromised by the conditions and slow down as necessary. Whether the judgment of that person is correct or not does not seem to dictate whether they crash or not, either... it's a tricky issue that I believe only better driver education would have any chance of fixing.

I tried getting a breakdown of stats from our govt up here years ago and was stonewalled at every attempt so have no idea exactly what sort of representation the under limit accidents are in the total figures but I'm guessing it's a significant amount - and if they make those details public then it ruins every argument ever conceived for speed cameras. - You will never see governments posting data about speed cameras not causing the roads to be "safer" while they're parroting this "speed kills" mantra. Governments know not to shoot themselves in the foot :)

Did I not end up sending the speed camera vs fatal accident slides to you once before? - I remember asking you about it, but I never did get it :)

I think the only solution is the engineered approach that that panda bloke is rambling about. We are too stupid to protect ourselves so the only way to have roads with higher limits is to make them multi-lane with crash barriers, massively wide shoulders so we don't feel closed-in, minimal gradient changes and nothing more than slight corners. I.e. the most boring road you could imagine - Ideally, yep.

Or have proper driver training and frequent re-testing and realistic enforcement that essentially ignores the posted limit and takes in to account the vehicle capabilities and road & weather condition and only fine those that are being dicks. And that's extremely unlikely. - This is what I'm advocating, exactly.I would love this.. BUT it's expensive and I don't make money from driver training.. - This isn't about YOU!, haha

Never had any say Panda, on 07 Feb 2015 - 10:45 AM, said:snapback.png

Tab.. I always remember the first time I drove through Brisbane.. back in the days when you paid a lady at the pay station on the gateway. P Plater. Drove over the gateway in near cyclonic wind and torrential rain.. was scared sh*t less. Signs said 40!!! Hi wind!! Poor visibility!! Slow down. Wasn't brave enough to slow down as the group of cars I was near were travelling at 80.. To this day I am always amazed at the stupidity of people driving that day.. - I think "exceptional" circumstances will catch even the most capable drivers out. Environmental factors are taken into account for crash analysis, from memory. These "extreme" scenario's can even catch you out when you're going >10km/h, so I don't think we should take them into account with regard to engineered/analysed speed limits, unless these "extreme" scenario's are common enough to warrant design/engineering consideration for change.

Environmental factors are massive in crash analysis. Would you believe I met with a team of experts once to determine why a road in brisbane had the highest crash rate in the state.. 2 hours of punching figures all the accidents happened in the morning peak hour and the afternoon peak hour.. which roughly coincided with the fact it was a perfect East-West Road.. $20,000 spent on upgrading traffic signals to LED variants which are brighter and putting visors on them so you can see them in sunny conditions, accidents were almost eliminated.. Tab may even know the road.. - I know of several roads that could do with upgrades like these. :P What I meant was that "Environmental factors" are in their own statistically independant section due to their impact on road related incidents.

Australia's road network will suffer because everything is so f*ckin expensive in Australia! Traffic controllers cost $100 an hour.. Our road network needs a lot of love before we can start increasing the speeds in a big way. - Not even after a "big" increase with my thoughts here; most zones should not be a long way off the required limit as they currently stand, in my mind (except expensive long straight good quality highway style roads - 100 or 110km/h wayyyyyy too slow, imho). Small increases in certain areas would be a welcome change to suit what I see/experience as around the 85th percentile.

Also just FYI tab. Crash stats are recorded as: Exceed posted speed, Not driving to conditions. However largely.it does appear they group those when reporting because it's not too often that they can really prove the exceed posted speed criteria. - This is my concern... Is the "result" correctly analysed or just used as the "blanket" excuse? I guess this is something we can never really know unless you have a friend in that section of the police force. I spoke at length to the late Craig Hodge (Rudiger on this forum) who was a member of the Victoria Highway Patrol and then later multiple fatality crash analysis teams and he was a strong advocate that speed is rarely a concern for fatal crashes. If it was a factor, it was most often combined with some sort of incapacitating scenario (drugs/alcohol/visibility/environment). Unfortunately he can't be here to continue that discussion :( RIP.

I agree with rudiger he was a very smart bloke, and his book is something I get people I work with to read when they say they want to do the crash investigation and analysis course. So they know what they are getting in to.. - Solid advice. I have his book and it was relatively enlightening even after having these discussion with him. I guess the pen to paper aspect can transfer a bit more realism than a half drunken conversation up in the snowy mountains on a forum cruise :P

I've got an 800 page crash report I analyzed for a job that kind of gives a pretty good idea of how often it's conditions dictating the unreasonable speed even though they may have not been speeding as such .- I'd be interested in reading something like this. Who did the report and who was it "directed at"?

By Report I mean output direct from the governments crash report database.. It's not manipulated in any way.. Just typos put there by the police. I just input the zone of information I want data from and Bingo I have it. - Ahh, this explains a lot haha. This information isn't publicly available, is it?

That does prove that drivers mentality is to do the speed on the sign and you're safe! - Driver education can fix this, nothing more, IMHO.

Makes it difficult to safely increase speeds thinking like that if not all drivers can do the higher end of the legal speed safely as it is. - Darwinism? haha probably too drastic

Never had any say Panda, on 07 Feb 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:snapback.png

Oh I should also add that if you're upset about speed limits and revenue raising to contact your local MP!! Because right now the only people who are contacting them are the extremists of the other view, soccer mum and dad who lost their 17 year old to an idiot driver. - I see your point here, but I'm also plainly aware that one person is not likely to make a difference to the local MP. That's why I'm sharing this to my friends (via FB) and also this forum to see if some common sense can be spread

Each year I would attend maybe 10 road safety forums. I am yet to see someone (including senators who publish videos on youtube) be passionate enough to bring the idea of safer roads through higher speed limits to a road safety forum in which they can raise their issues to road safety engineers like myself, director general of transport and the commissioner of the police. - making changes that cause money making schemes (read: speed camera's) to not make as much money as before is possibly political suicide... BUT brave politicians do definitely have the ability to succeed in Australia (I'm referring to John Howard's gun control law changes). If we were in America and had to make such changes, I would definitely think the chances of change for the better would be almost impossible as their politicians are nowhere near as brave as some in Australia Optimism... perhaps... Be the change you'd like to see in this world :)

Sadly I agree with you because you're in victoria.. This isn't the case yet in qld.. Police in QLD are very welcome of discussions to reduce speeding that doesn't involve over enforcing. And I don't look forward to the day that mentality changes. - Let's just collectively hope that Victoria lessens their metaphoric stranglehold on the mantra and QLD doesn't end up more like Victoria currently is.
Edited by k31th
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