Science tells us that setting speed limits below the 85th percentile results in more accidents than setting speed limits at the 85th percentile. However governments can't resist the temptation to set speed limits at least 10-20 kph below the 85th percentile because the result is millions of dollars worth of speeding tickets. The deaths that result from these unnecessary accidents and the deaths that result from focusing law enforcement resources on safe drivers may be just numbers to the authorities. They compile them as a road toll and compare the numbers with whichever other numbers make them look best. However the numbers are made up of people who have died- people with lives that are tragically cut short. Their families suffer unbearable pain when they lose their loved ones. These families do not deserve to endure so much for the sake of government revenue.
One obvious mechanism by which revenue raising makes roads more dangerous is that by having speed limits that result in police booking safe drivers it makes police unable to effectively apprehend reckless speeders and drunk drivers.
A friend of mine lost her mother to a drunk driver. The setting was Brisbane 1967. My friend's brother picked up her mother from her new job at a cannery in his rusty old FJ Holden and proceeded to take her home. She had been excited to get the new job and she must have been exuberant at that time because it was only days into the job.
As my friend's brother proceeded into an intersection after waiting for the car in front to turn right, her mother said something to warn him about the car heading straight through a stop sign on the opposite side of the road and about to plow into the side of his Holden. The other car connected with the area from the petrol cap to the rear bumper bar. The impact of the drunk's car temporarily lifted the side of the Holden into the air and fatally injured my friend's mother.
My friend and her family never got over the tragic loss of this wonderful woman. To this day her mother's name sends a chill down my friend's spine.
On that tragic night in 1967 a police officer knocked on my friend's door and told her that her mother had been in an accident. She watched in a daze as his car departed. She rushed to the hospital. There she found her brother pacing the hallway with haunted eyes. They waited in terrified silence.
When the doctor allowed them to join her mother my friend tried to comfort her mother by holding her hand. Her suffering when she realized that her mother didn't even know her hand was held and that her mother was breathing her last breaths through a tube in her crushed face cannot be described in words.
The drunk driver wasn't stupid. Neither was his Barrister. When he stood trial for dangerous driving, the defendant claimed that my friend's brother was speeding. He claimed that he had stopped at the stop sign and then edged out slowly. However he couldn1t avoid the speeding car that he claimed crashed into him. His barrister cleverly implied that the wrong person was standing trial for dangerous driving.
There was good reason to take this approach. To explain why there was good reason requires some background. 1967 was only a couple of years after radar was introduced. Thus it is safe to guess that politicians were pretending that the new revenue source was related to safety. It is also safe to guess that this sounded a whole lot more credible to drivers at that time when speeding tickets didn1t cost a fortune. The reason it is a safe guess is that in recent years Federal Office of Road Safety community attitude surveys on road safety always find Tasmanians as a group to have more sympathy for speeding ticketing than other Australians. Tasmanians get a good deal with speeding tickets. They only have to pay half as much as many mainlanders. This probably goes a long way to explaining their attitudes.
Thus the 1967 low price speeding tickets combined with government propaganda would have probably meant that many people thought that exceeding the speed limit was dangerous.
Therefore in the 1967 climate where exceeding the speed limit was seen as a danger and someone on trial lied about the speed of the other vehicle, the judge's thinking was led by the defendant's barrister. It was easy for the judge to imagine that the speeding car must have caused the accident not the slow responsible defendant who was clearly disgusted to witness the same dangerous driving behaviour that the government had just started to crack down on in recent years (hand on heart) to make the roads safe.
The honourable judge imagined the dangers of speeding so well he overlooked the fact that the defendant's story didn't fit the facts. Accordingly he urged the prosecutor to enter a nolle prosecui (to withdraw the charge). The prosecutor complied with the urging. The defendant got off and was never tried again. The man whose negligence caused great suffering to my friend and her family escaped justice because of a greedy government and their radar propaganda. (It is also possible that, on the night, were police looking for erratic drivers instead of gathered around radar traps they might have apprehended the driver before the fatal accident.)
Australia continues to have disproportionately high numbers of road users being slaughtered on the roads compared to more modern countries where they set speed limits more reasonably. In those countries governments focus on safe roads rather than the banal speed kills slogan. We can have reform here and as God is my witness I'll do my best to see it achieved. Australian governments violate many rights of motorists but the most important right motorists have is our right to life. Every time greedy politicians, motorvehicle insurance companies, and radar distributors chant "speed kills" the National Motorists Association Australia will chant "85th percentile". As our numbers grow we'll shout louder and louder until sanity prevails. It can be done and we will do it.
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