Crumb
c/world · by Veserr@sh.itjust.works · 76d

New Zealand Minister said lower speed limits are ‘anti-car ideology’ – a new analysis shows they saved lives

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-06-2026/simeon-brown-deemed-speed-limit-cuts-anti-car-ideology-a-new-analysis-shows-they-saved-lives

158 points · 27 comments · view on lemmy.world

27 Comments

unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de · 63 pts · 76d (12 replies)

They are anti car ideology and thats a good thing :)

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -28 pts · 76d (11 replies)

I don't think you realise how rural parts of NZ are, there's a big chunk of the population for who public transport will simply never be an option.

Attitudes like yours only serve to piss off a large chunk of the population.

kungen@feddit.nu · 33 pts · 76d (5 replies)

Rural people aren't usually the ones getting reduced speed limits though, no?

I live in a city and I drive daily. I don't feel any animosity against reduced speed limits, especially when it's obviously done to save lives. What logical reason would you have to be driving 50+ in a highly populated zone?

Carbrains need to realize that they have an attitude problem, or they will never learn.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -7 pts · 76d (4 replies)

They very much are, there were a number of roads that got reduced from 100 to 80, for example, in the same push for slower speed limits, most of them with no real justification. Side roads that were the responsibility of the local council remained at 100, meaning people often drove on narrower roads to avoid the lower limits.

There are likely some justified speed reductions being thrown in the bin along with the silly ones, and that's mostly on our previous government.

grue@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 76d (1 reply)

Sounds to me like either incompetence or malicious compliance on the part of the department implementing the reductions. Maybe work on fixing that instead of using it as an excuse to rail against the concept entirely.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 76d

Nah, it was very much an inflexible policy. Previously, the relevant departments had been doing very well with implementing targeted speed reductions in response to known hazard areas.

And we're going back to that again, fortunately.

farmgineer@nord.pub · 7 pts · 76d (1 reply)

Our rural roads here in Japan are 60 at most, with most being 40 or 50. I don't think I'd feel safe going a whole lot faster than that. Certain divided, multi-lane roads can get up to 80, but those are different to what I'm thinking of going to actual individual houses.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -5 pts · 76d

NZ has a similar land area to Japan, with five million people, mostly in urban areas, whereas Japan has something like a hundred million. We've got rural roads that are dead straight for kilometres, and you can drive for 10-15 minutes without a car coming the other way.

There are also much more winding roads where actually driving 100 would be suicide, of course.

I seriously wonder if some of the people here have ever been outside an urban area.

inari@piefed.zip · 3 pts · 76d (4 replies)

Respectability politics never gets anywhere anyway. Let the carbrains get mad, there's no avoiding it.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 76d (3 replies)

I was genuinely hoping to have some type of intelligent discussion here, I live in NZ, and I know for a fact that public transport just isn't an option for a large chunk of the population.

But instead you've responded with "hurr durr car brain."

I don't know what I was expecting.

ms_lane@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 75d (2 replies)

The general thinking from .ml types is that you should only ever be living in a city, anyone not living in a city is scum and doesn't deserve to get around. They think food comes from packets materialised by Stalin himself.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 75d

Either that or community gardens.

But yeah, very out of touch with the reality of rural life, or even living in a small to medium sized town.

AINeMyot@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 73d

Are these .ml users in the room with us right now?

ryokimball@infosec.pub · 21 pts · 76d (1 reply)

Ford Prefect: "I thought cars were the dominant lifeform. I was trying to introduce myself."

FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 75d

He wanted to be liked. Had he picked the name Insurance Company he’d have been thrown into the sun

Gullible@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 76d (8 replies)

Interestingly, it’s about adhering to expectations more than anything else. If you have a road that seems to be fine to travel at a certain velocity and the speed limit is significantly lower, people will still speed and therefore create massive velocity differences between themselves and those obeying the law, causing dangerous circumstances.

For example, a highway has a posted speed limit of 25. Some will still attempt to use the road for the purpose that it was paved and posted, so now you have some driving 25 and others at near-highway speed. The difference in velocity is the issue.

The solution? Just paving, signing, painting, etc. correctly. Glad New Zealand found the proper signage

Nautalax@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 76d

Driscoll was born in Ireland but living in Croydon, Surrey with her husband and children at the time of her death. She had planned a three-day trip to London to attend a League of the Cross festival. She was in the company of her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy and was crossing Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London when she was struck by the driver of a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company that was being used to give demonstration rides. One witness described the car as being driven at "a reckless pace, in fact, like a fire engine".

Although the car's maximum speed was 8 miles per hour (13 km/h), it had been limited deliberately to 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h), the speed at which the driver, Arthur James Edsall of Upper Norwood, claimed to have been travelling. His passenger, Alice Standing of Forest Hill, alleged he modified the engine to allow the car to go faster, but another taxicab driver examined the car and said it was incapable of exceeding 4.5 miles per hour (7.2 km/h) because of a low-speed engine belt. The collision happened just a few weeks after a new act of parliament had increased the speed limit for cars to 14 miles per hour (23 km/h), from 2 miles per hour in towns and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.

It’s interesting how cultural speed expectations are. So back in 1896 a car going 4.5 miles per hour was really booking it - and I have no doubt it probably was a poor judgenent to reach such speeds considering the poor state of the roads with ample pedestrians and horse carriages going everywhere, lack of rules and training and because the roads were not at all optimized for car travel. But now that ‘reckless’ pace would get you causing an accident for the opposite reason.

Enforcement surely plays a part, too. If you know the speed limit and that you’ll be busted for sure for going a hair over in a particular stretch, then you’ll probably be on your best behavior. If it’s literally never enforced such that everyone is accustomed to going as fast as seems prudent to themselves, though…

pHr34kY@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 76d (6 replies)

This. Safest speed is the same speed as everyone else.

I was recently driving down a road that had its speed limit dropped from 100km/h to 60km/h. My wife just did 60, and I told her to speed up so she didn't create a hazard.

30 seconds later, a local Commodore whips around us on a solid line on a windy road. It had a closing speed of about 30km/h. Everyone agreed it was quite dangerous, but she refused to accept that I was right.

I'll add a pic. A country road in Victoria, Australia that had no set limit (read: default 100km/h) in 2018.

Gullible@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 75d (4 replies)

I find it a little funny that you were downvoted for understanding defensive driving. But I can understand why she would be uncomfortable driving any faster. That road looks thin

pHr34kY@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 75d

She's only scared of cops and cameras. Otherwise she'd be doing 110.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 75d (2 replies)

We have a lot of roads like that in NZ too, just barely two lanes wide. Locals will absolutely do 100 on them though.

pHr34kY@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 75d (1 reply)

I drove a Yaris from Greymouth to Queenstown and it was a really good drive. The whole side of island had one road and it was empty. All the bridges are single-lane.

Not one speed camera the whole way.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 75d

I've done that drive a few times now, it's one of the most incredible parts of the country.

And yes, that's a state highway, considered one of the country's main arterial roads, and it has one lane bridges.

SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 75d

I'm with your wife. She was 100% correct. The criminal in the Commodore created the danger.

NM_Gringo@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 76d

He said that like it was a bad thing.

Takeshidude@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 76d

It's a feature not a bug

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 76d

So, the previous Labour government made some very rash decisions around speed limits, based around the idea that slower is safer, less crash energy etc. This involved lowering speed limits in urban areas, but also on the open road, in many cases from 100 to 80. Obviously, this doesn't help vehicle vs pedestrian crashes, and a vehicle vs vehicle, or vehicle vs stationary object is still bad news.

This pissed off a lot of people, because they have places to be and shit to do, and our overall road toll actually got worse during this time.

The incoming National government reversed these changes, and it seems like a handful of them may have been worthwhile after all. This is kinda on Labour though, because they made so many silly changes that the few good ones got thrown out at the same time.

Overall, we should be looking at our speed limits on a much more case by case basis instead of the broad changes we've been making in the past. It's getting better, with an increasing number of speed limit changes being made at dangerous intersections, for example, and immediately returning to 100, rather than reducing the speed limit on an entire road, for example.