If any nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson

Are you unfamiliar with research on driving/riding speed and its relationship to crashes, experienced in driving or riding, and intelligent enough to figure out that the speed kills misinformation doesn't wash when you relate it to your driving/riding experience? Would you like ammunition to use when 'hard facts' are presented that go against common sense? This is the page for you. The concept of an database with speeding arguments was originally created by Reasonable Drivers Unanimous an American organisation.

This is the site which explains why the chances of being seriously injured or killed in a high-speed collision are greater for drivers trying to be safer by going slower than the highway traffic flow and why the chances keep increasing as they go even slower. This is the page which explains why raising speed limits set too low can save lives. This is the site which explains why official nonsense is nonsense. We hope you find it useful and interesting.

Here in Australia we have our own issues to deal with although there is considerable overlap with the American and Canadian propaganda. This is the home of speed cameras, speed kills freaks being treated as sane, and more revenue raising than someone from a more civilized country could imagine in their wildest nightmare. The truth will set you free.

Are you a reasonably intelligent non driver/rider?

What haven't you been told?

The myths and arguments against them

Speed Kills

This myth is the most common 'argument' presented by the revenue raising cartel to support their position. If challenged they like to assert that it is patently obvious that going faster must be dangerous. Sure we've heard the slogan long enough to make the association between the word "speeding" and crashes and we've seen countless speeding drivers crash in those ads but...

As far as I can ascertain revenue raising kills. Only inappropriate use of speed creates a hazard and this has nothing to do with exceeding a speed limit set too low. Click here for a more mathematical look at the validity of the speed kills myth as an inherent 'truth'.

Speed limits need to be set too low because motorists always push the speed limit

The reality is that if you set speed limits too low they get ignored. If they are set correctly you not only get a decrease in crashes but you get an increase in compliance. The traditional Australian practice has been to set speed limits 10-20kph below the 85th percentile for most roads with 85th percentiles above 60kph. Thus motorists generally tend to be slightly above the speed limits. When they travel on one road (or road section) with a speed limit set 10-20kph too low to another road (or road section) with a different speed limit set 10-20kph too low they change speed in doing so but remain above the limit.

Braking distance and momentum

According to a 1996 edition of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia's journal "Recovery":
"On the highway, our lives depend on simple physics. Like gravity, Newtonian mechanics never takes a holiday, and physics doesn't care if you were about to be five minutes late for work."

This type of perspective is very familiar to us down under. That is, we're all simple physics objects and braking distance and momentum are the be all and end all as far as speed and safety is concerned. The ICBC article went on to state:

"Excessive speed contributes to collisions in two ways. First, by increasing stopping distance, speed makes it more difficult for drivers to avoid a crash in emergency circumstances. Second, in the event of a collision, the faster your initial speed, the faster your speed at impact. Damage to vehicles and people involved in a crash generally increases with the speed of their vehicles at impact."

Braking Distance When a foot gets slammed on the brake pedal and pumps away until the car stops the distance travelled before stopping will increase with increased speed. Up until only a few years ago the revenue raising cartel pretended that our knowledge of the relationship between driving speed and car crashes was limited to wild extrapolations based solely upon differences in braking distance. The reality is that:

1. Braking distances difference in ads were usually very exagerated.

2. All ergonomic research indicates that the faster you drive the more alert you become. A small measure of alertness goes a long way in driving. If we consider a small speed difference like the "10 above", a driver who is more alert can react faster. Thus if they were braking they'd brake sooner and even if they are at a disadvantage foot to floor compared to foot to floor they might already have braked down to the same or a slower speed then the slower driver at the point in time the slower driver finally brakes- in the unlikely event that that is the appropriate reaction.

3. Braking distance ads often use pedestrian crashes. Officially, almost all pedestrian crashes are caused by pedestrians and in approximately half of them the driver doesn't react at all. Thus on this ground alone braking distance is often irrelevant to preventing these crashes.

4. The relationship between driving speed and motorvehicle crashes was initially extensively studied way back in 1964! However the reality contradicts the revenue raising cartel's propaganda so they stuck with braking distance until recently. The important thing to realise with braking distance is that usually braking to a complete stop is the most inefficient last resort collision avoidance technique possible. It would take an unusually bad driver to emulate the TV ads by aiming at the pedestrian and braking to a complete stop.Therefore one should not get too hung up on braking distance in the first place. It is almost irrelevant to collision avoidance and this probably explains why the relationship between driving speed and braking distance is nothing like the relationship one gets when *comparing driving speed and crash risk*.

Ask yourself these 2 questions: If I was going to avoid a kid who suddenly ran out into my path would I keep the vehicle aimed at them and brake to a complete stop while I ploughed into them or would I swerve? Would I be more likely to react appropriately and avoid a collision with the above kid if I was more alert or less alert? For your sake and for the safety of the younger members of our society I hope you gave the right answers.

Momentum

It is easy to get dazzled by the way injuries increase in the event of a car crash in accordance with the 4th power rule. Perhaps we should all drive at 25kph- or perhaps limits should be at 0 to be totally safe.

Countless pieces have been written by members of the revenue raising cartel about the danger of 'speeding' being the result of its effect on what happens when a crash occurs. This is because over 30 years of research indicated that going above a speed limit set too low reduced the chances of crashing so they were trying to avoid discussion of crash likelihood which is obviously more relevant to the issue. They usually go on to spell out in graphic detail the effect this momentum can have. By going into detail they hope to fixate us on the momentum as if it is important to road safety in a similar manner that a magician might manipulate our gaze to stop us from noticing the important things that are happening.

But what happens if the 'speeding' driver doesn't crash? Absolutely nothing.

We need to crack down on 'speeding'/lower speed limits/introduce better technology for detecting breaches of speed limits because there is a lot of 'speed related crashes'

The concept of speed related/ speed is a major factor in/ involving speeding crashes is an interesting one. Basically it means virtually nothing because "speed/speeding" is absurdly broadly defined. It includes virtually anything and doesn't require going above the speed limit. The statistics are gathered from virtually everything but speeding ticket eligible drivers and then used as an excuse for speeding tickets. The broad definition means that it is a small step up from saying that all crashes involve speed because the one crash unit must be moving.

In any event speed related stats are certainly not the basis for arguing a drop in speed limit. America's recent raising of freeway speed limits resulted in a dramatic lowering of speed related crashes. Therefore one could argue that the presence of speed related crashes means that limits should be raised rather than lowered. The reason for the strange sounding American result is that the term "speed related crashes" is almost meaningless as indicated above and therefore totally irrelevant to speed limits. The simple fact is that American freeway limits were set well below the optimum level and crashes therefore went down when they were raised.

"In Victoria, Australia, speed cameras were introduced in late 1989... Deaths fell 30 percent in 1990 compared with 1989. The percentage of vehicles significantly exceeding the speed limit has decreased from about 20 percent in 1990 to less than 4 percent in 1994."

So said an American official in support of speed cameras and so say local members of the revenue raising cartel worldwide who want to rip off members of the public- and so say gullible speed kills freaks worldwide when they hear that story. In our Victoria instead of the usual result of more people dying when speed cameras are introduced or a slowing down in a road death rate decline there was a reduction in deaths. Clearly, it shows how ineffectual speed cameras are if supporters have to cite the exception as their ground to argue that speed cameras benefit road safety. Normally exceptions are considered to prove the rule not prove the opposite of the rule. Nevertheless, the anomalous result in Victoria deserves further attention.

The 30% figure derives from a comparison between road deaths in 1990 and 1989. It would be overly pedantic to point out that speed cameras were introduced in 1989 because they were introduced so late that year (officially anyhow- there are grounds to believe that this fact might get updated- stay tuned).

The main things to note which makes the exception proving the rule less significant are:

1. The Federal Black Spot program was introduced in Victoria in 1990. A study of the results published in the early 1990s found quite dramatic results.

2. 1989 was a particularly unusual year for road deaths(eg. 1987-705, 1988-701, 1989-776). The road deaths soared that year and there were more road deaths than any other year of the eighties. Thus 1990 represented something of a recovery from 1989.

Interestingly, W R Ellis the First Assistant Secretary of the Federal Office of Road Safety asserted that speed limits on Victorian freeways were changed from 110kph to 100kph in 1989 in a letter dated the 20th November, 1998 to one of our NSW members. The large scale reduction in speed limits away from the 85th percentile in 1989 probably explains a lot about 1989.

As regards the comparison of numbers of vehicles exceeding the speed limit in 1990 compared with 1994. If the innuendo, namely that speed cameras are wonderfully successful at slowing people down, were true then state governments would have stopped making money from speeding fines completely by now after years of speed cameras. Thus it does not provide a logical explanation.

Nevertheless the statistic makes sense when the missing fact is adduced. The missing fact is that a speed limit review was implemented in 1993 as follows:

110kph zones were introduced on selected freeways in February 1993.

60kph zones were replaced with 60kph, 70kph, and 80kph zones on the major road network.

60kph was retained as the general urban speed limit.

There was provision for designation of 50kph routes in local streets.

Research on speed limit changes always finds increased compliance when speed limits are raised toward the 85th percentile. Therefore the inevitable consequence of raising the speed limits in 1993 would be less people exceeding them in 1994 then 1990. Accordingly, adding the missing fact, namely that speed limits were raised, means that a more logical explanation for the results of the 1994/1990 comparison can be made.

An Adelaide University study found that going 10kph over the speed limit results in an equal crash risk as driving with a BAC of 0.10%.

The argument is that slight breaches of current speed limit is so dangerous that it equates with the risk of crashing that drunk drivers have. This is based on THE McClean etal study.

If this assertion were true then the roads would be paved with bodies. Why? Because almost everyone is going 10 above and almost noone is driving drunk. The drunks are involved in a sizeable proportion of the current crashes. Therefore logically if our risk was equal to their risk we'd crash just as often. With so many more of us there'd be absolute carnage. Wake up Australia!

(update) They seem to have cottoned on to the stupidity inherent in the last item. However instead of simply not mentioning the result they now express it more tactfully. Specifically they now refer to it without mentioning drunk drivers. They state that research shows that every increase in speed of 5kph doubles the risk of crashing. Of course that sounds kinda stupid too but they keep on trying.

Please note that similar nonsense is being sprouted in the UK. A body that advises the UK Parliament (perhaps based on calculations based on their unique labelling of "speed related" statistics as "contributory factor") claims that for every 1% reduction in mean traffic speed fatalities reduce 7%. Seriously! To compare this with real life take Minnesota, USA. The Minnesota Dept of Transport (MnDoT) compared July-Sept 1996 with July-September 1997. Driving speed went up from 61mph to 66mph on the Interstate. During the period there was a 20% reduction in deaths. Let's hope that the ABD can provide their politicians with more accurate information before that mythology gets people killed.

Other general illogical approaches used by the revenue raising cartel

"We're like well armed peasants outside a castle. Things are pretty tough out here. Every time we move they pour boiling oil on us.
Inside the castle their weaponry is virtually useless. They wave around their pea shooters to impress us. The pea shooters are carefully crafted to look dangerous but most of us can see through their trickery.
The situation is frustrating but not enough people are trying to get in to break the gate. They don't realize that they don't have to have boiling oil poured on them.
Nevertheless any time a head pops up above the castle wall those of us pushing the gate will stop and shoot. Eventually everyone will notice what we are doing and see that there is nothing to fear and will join us. With their weight behind us we will storm the gate. Only then will we stop getting boiling oil poured down on us."
Anonymous New South Wales member