Draft national road safety strategy

[fangq]

A new draft national road safety strategy has been released for public comment. The deadline for submissions is Feb 11th 2011.


http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roa...egy/index.aspx


Steve

[Keepleft]

Standard form blurb, most of it okay.

From the future direction overview;

Point to point speed enforcement applied to
tollways.

We need to stop building tollways then if they are so dangerous as to warrant speed cameras in the first instance.

Regardless, at the end of the day, if a national move on say 'cameras' for example creates some voter backlash, then the respective State or Territory government will soften or simply not adopt the particular concept.

NSW has recently signalled it will require signs 50 metres before the new private operated Macquarie Bank owned stationary vehicle cameras (Territory wagons), plus the usual required sign placed after the site. The federal strategy would require no warnings.

Rest of the document merely adopts ongoing UN vehicle construction regulations (safer vehicles) and road design guidelines (safer roads).

[platinumXR]

[pauljh74]

Reducing the BAC limit from .05 to .02 - is there evidence that people in accidents that have consumed alcohol are recording levels between 0.02 and 0.05? The problem would more likely be people recording levels clearly or significantly over 0.05 and a few of them would already be driving without a licence to begin with.

I read in the paper about changing speedometers again, so they don't show speeds above the highest speed limits. WOFTAM - simply use a GPS or use your brain - if speed at 2000 RPM = X in 5th gear, then at 4000 RPM it will be double. It will just make cars slightly more expensive for the Australian market and be 0% effective. Forcing car makers to implement this only for this market isn't pioneering road safety - it makes us look like fools. If it is such a good idea, why has no one else put it into practice?

Mobile phones - if people are ignoring current laws and driving along with a hand held phone to their ear, then the number of people who will break the law should hands free phone use be banned will increase exponentially. Work with the people or the laws will be ignored.

Point to point speed cameras on toll ways = cash cow. Just what we need - more speed cameras on roads with low crash rates and high traffic volumes.

I think we need less of the recent trend of upgrade the road, drop the speed limit and load it with cameras. We have high grade motorways with speed limits we see on poor one lane each way roads on the suburban fringe.

[Keepleft]

Paul; Joan Claybrook tried this in the US during it's NMSL- National Maximum Speed Limit (55mph/88kmh) period that applied shortly after the 1974 Arab oil embargo, till president Clinton rescinded it back in 1995.

Didn't work back then, drivers simply outdrove their speedometer maximum on the interstates.

Our mob will rely on ITS, speed governing technologies instead, rather than limiting a speedometer to say 130km/h. They cannot resist themselves trying this on.