Lots of crashes happen on urban streets.

A very small percentage of all crashes occur on urban residential streets of the type that are now, or about to be limited to 50 km/h in many states of Australia.

Pedestrians are particularly vulnerable on urban streets.

Pedestrian fatalities on urban streets are extremely rare, with no more than 2 or 3 per year in most states.

Young children are at great risk on urban streets

A child has more chance of being run over and killed in their own driveway than on local streets. Children should never be allowed to play on the streets.

The 50 km/h limit means that cars will now travel 10 km/h slower than before.

Throughout the world studies have shown that a similar reduction in urban speed limits produces a reduction in average speeds of no more than one or two km/h.

The introduction of a 50 km/h default urban speed limit in Melbourne on 22 January 2001 resulted in a 40% to 46% reduction in pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries.

The 40% to 46% reduction was purely an estimate based on extremely suspect methodology.  In the 12 months after 22 January 2001 the Melbourne pedestrian fatality rate increased by nearly 78%.

MUARC promised to revisit their analysis every six months, however over 12 months has elapsed since the release of the report and no follow up study has been released.

When a car hits a pedestrian it is usually the car driver’s fault.

In over 75% of cases the pedestrian is completely at fault and the driver has little or no chance of avoiding the crash.  In over 30% of cases the pedestrian is drunk.

The only way to avoid hitting a pedestrian who walks in front of you is to panic brake and hope you can stop in time.

It is far better to swerve and miss the pedestrian altogether than to panic brake and skid straight into them.

You can stop in 10 metres less distance at 50 km/h than at 60 km/h.

This is true if you have a very poor reaction time and bad braking technique.  If you have an acceptable reaction time and good braking technique the difference is only 6.5 metres.

Police will rigorously enforce the 50 km/h speed limit.

The volume of traffic on 50 km/h roads is so low that is not cost-effective for the police to enforce the limit, whether by speed cameras, hand held laser or whatever.  A cynic might suggest that there is no money to be made in the back streets.

50 km/h roads are safer roads.

The only reason that this is sometimes true is because much of the traffic is diverted to other higher-limit roads, resulting in reduced traffic density on the 50 km/h roads.  However what is nearly always overlooked is that the increased density & congestion on the other roads leads to more crashes on those roads, and the overall crash rate actually goes up.