I sometimes wonder why bother with a 50K limit if the slower speed is likely to cause people to rush to try and get places sooner.
Would people be driving a lot faster if the speed limit was removed?
Or are they feeling restricted by the speed limit and are just responding to restrictions in a typical way (ie. complain, complain, complain until they are removed?).
Personally, I find 50K too slow. I regularly find myself just above the 50 mark, or approaching 60 before I catch it during my regular scan and slow it down.
Why bother with a 50K speed limit if its just going to slow people down, and cause them to try and rush?
I don’t rush anywhere. We leave plenty of time for any arranged appointment, such as today, I went for a nice drive to Westfield Tuggerah, as part of winning a entry into the final draw of SeaFM’s Car Bingo competition.
I didn’t win the Suziki Swift (they look small, compact, and ugly to me), but indeed came close to a win with just 2 numbers to go on 2 of the games being played.
It was a fun trip, near incident free trip there, with just a slight problem slowing down at one of the roundabouts (hit the brakes hard, didn’t slow down, my shoe was partly grabbing the accelerator I think as I was braking hard).
The trip back was pretty smooth! Wet trip back, with rain, but conditions overall were nice, and traffic was good.
Back to where I was however. Limiting traffic to 50K is only really reasonable where there is a significant recognised risk of accidents occurring.
Many of the streets (such as The Entrance Road) can easily be raised to 60K and in my opinion, not cause a problem to any other road user, assuming the driver is awake, as they should be behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.
People really don’t let a moving object under their control run off by itself, when it weighs in over 900KG, do they? Surely people have enough common sense to maintain control of such a heavy moving object?
I find 50K boring. You travel along, nice and steady, with the message that is there to go a little faster since there’s nothing that can be considered a perceived hazard. Sure, there might be a pedestrian, that might jump out on the road, but when I’m driving, I’m not looking at my car. I’m looking for the idiots out there that might hurt my fantastic car. That includes the blood of a pedestrian jay walking. And I remain confident that I can perhaps go 10 – 20K faster and still respond adequately to a pedestrian crossing the road, or another car suddenly braking.
Fatigue becomes an issue when you have speed limits. People don’t drive the conditions like they surely would if there was no speed limit, but instead, they drive to the speed limit, spending time focusing on the speedo, time which is better spent on getting from A to B, safely, at a smart speed. One can assume a licenced driver has the intelligence to slow down where vision is limited, slow down where the road might be unsafe, slow down when an unknown event is possible?
The speed limits to me, just seem like trying to patch a possible problem with accidents related to moving objects moving too fast. Perhaps the issue needs a different resolution, rather than limiting speeds for road users, limit licensing of road users to those who can demonstrate they can handle a moving object safely at any safe speed that suits the conditions at the same time as allowing for adequate responses to possible hazards..
Surely that’d work, right? – Probably wrong, but it’s not that far fetched an idea.
Enjoy!