Speed limit will remain

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34031, 20 December 1975, Page 16

Speed limit will remain

(Parliamentary Reporter) : WELLINGTON, December 19. The new Government will not lift the openroad speed limit of 80 kilometres an hour. This seems a very safe prediction because, though j the Cabinet has not dealt' with the subject, the general! feeling in both parties is that, the lower limit has saved! lives, and is saving them. The Minister of Transport! (Mr McLachlan) said today that speed caused many accidents. He admitted that the 80 km/h driver often found himself the slowest on the highway, but said that people were still conscious of the limit. Those who drove a few kilometres above the limit! now, would drive a few ! above any increased limit. Parliament’s Road Safety Committee had a nonpartisan approach. He had been on it about 18 months, an dnow as Minister intended to work hard for more information — “but in the meantime the 80-kilometre limit will stay.” Two tickets A man in his electorate had telephoned him to complain about being caught speeding twice when there was no traffic about. He had told Mr McLachlan that the charges were “silly.” Mr McLachlan had told the man of some statistics he had just seen on accidents, but the man replied that the figures applied to inexperienced drivers and that he could handle a car at 80 miles an hour.

Just before the election Mr McLachlan had been visiting a hosoital, and had seen the man there, heavily bandaged. He had crashed.