Advocates of higher speed limits are distorting the facts about road deaths

Fourth, the 85th percentile argument so beloved of speed advocates is also disproved by American experience. This argument holds that speed limits should be set to the 85th percentile of measured median speeds, regardless of existing speed limits. Speed advocates contend that raising the limit would simply accomodate the natural feel of the road, and bring most drivers into compliance with the new limit.

The reality is that 85th percentile speeds are usually 10 to 20 kmh faster than the limit, and represent the driver's judgement of the fastest speed he can get away with, rather than some natural characteristic of the road. American experience has been that, when speed limits increase, so do the 85th percentile measured speeds. My own experience on roads in the north of Victoria where the speed limit was lifted from 100 kph to 110 kph also concur with this observation. Even worse, America found that the proportion of extremely fast speedsters increases disproportionately.

Are recidivist drivers the reason for the plateau?

There are alternative explanations for the plateauing of crash rates, but Buckingham does not consider them. The most likely is simply that education and advocacy campaigns have reached all reasonable people, and are now stalled at a small hard core of drivers. Most population based trends follow similar patterns.

Another possible factor is that mobile phone usage, which started to become prominent in the mid 1990's, caused more crashes. Many studies have confirmed early findings by the New England Journal of Medicine that talking while driving increases crash risk four times, although mobile phone companies in America have tried to deny and obfuscate this link.

The rights of the rest of us

Crashes and run-downs generally occur when a driver fails to respond quickly enough to some unexpected event, such as a vehicle suddenly entering from a side street or a child running out from between parked cars. The faster the vehicle is travelling, the less time the driver has to avoid impact. This is indisputable.

On high speed 2-lane roads, the speedster is deadly for he or she engages in lots of overtaking, which exposes innocent oncoming traffic to combined speeds typically over 230 kmh.

Studies by professional road safety researchers in Australia have found that crashes and road deaths unequivocally decline where speed cameras are used. Evaluations by ARRB Transport Research, for example, found that fatalities declined by 74 percent at ACT sites, and by 95 percent at a sample of 28 sites in NSW. When Victoria introduced cameras in 1989, crashes dropped 46 percent over the succeeding three years. Buckingham airily dismisses this outstanding result by claiming the preceding year was unusual.

Speed advocates believe they should be trusted to make the judgement as to what speed is safe and preferable. Unfortunately, what seems safe to a business executive running late for a meeting is probably not safe to other parties, including lawful drivers, cyclists, walkers, children, parents, police and medical practitioners. That is why we have speed limits.

Public acceptance of speed cameras is high, according to the ARRB Transport Research study, with only 5-7 per cent of people surveyed saying the cameras provide no benefits. In America, a telephone survey of 6,000 drivers in 1997 found that 27 percent of drivers felt there was too little police enforcement on interstate roads and 40 percent felt that way about residential roads. Only 4 to 5 percent felt there was too much enforcement.

The pernicious elements of speeding ideology

Speed cameras attract widespread ire from speedsters for two reasons - cameras are effective and they're unbiased. They don't care whether the speedster is a politician, or is well dressed, or is driving an expensive car.

The result has been a range of attacks and rhetorical devices intended to shift blame from speeding, such as claims that drivers have better concentration when speeding and that lawful drivers are less skillful. The reality is that reduced response times don't translate to quicker or better responses. Further, it is speeding that requires less skill, not lawful driving. Any fool can put their foot down and pass other cars. It takes skill to maintain station in a fluid traffic environment, and skill to maintain a reserve of time and speed to handle untoward events.

Buckingham tries to impute the great decline in crashes from 1980 to something he calls a driving culture, which by implication is independent from road safety and enforcement programs. The fact is that the decline in crashes was shaped and driven by the very enforcement programs Buckingham is now complaining about. What's more, each time a new program such as drink driving was introduced, libertarian forces complained about and tried to stifle them. In America, driver groups still complain about seat belts and air bags. Buckingham argues that improvements in car safety created the safety improvements, yet America had the same car and road improvements, without the improvements in crash rates that we saw.

Some of Buckingham's arguments against speed cameras are blatant threats of unlawful behaviour, which sit oddly with the speed lobby's claims to wronged law-abiding citizens. These include threats to race through suburban streets to avoid cameras, to speed elsewhere to "make up time," and to use false number plates to avoid detection.

Conclusion

Buckingham's interpretation of crash statistics does not support his contention which, in any case, seems to largely represent a standard polemic of speed lobbyists. The evidence from professional road safety researchers is clear that speed cameras save lives.