Change to speed limit not backed by Ministry

Press, 20 August 1986, Page 3

Change to speed limit not backed by Ministry

PA Wellington The Ministry of Transport says there is insufficient evidence “at this stage” to justify any further change to the lOOkm/h open road speed limit.

However, the Ministry recommended to a Parliamentary select committee yesterday that it should keep the issue under review.

Ministry officials presented to the Communications and Road Safety Committee the results of an inquiry which looked back over the year since the higher speed limit was introduced on trial on July 1, 1985.

The committee has been charged with reviewing the higher speed limit and reporting back to Parliament on it.

The report said that figures showing a big increase in road deaths after the higher limit had to be "treated with caution” as big annual variations had occurred

before. Combined fatality and injury accident statistics, meanwhile, increased .in line with recent trends.

The report said three out of four people wanted to drive within a lOOkm/h limit.

Among its findings: The raised speed limit had “no discernible effect" on a 5.9 per cent increase in ail accidents involving injury and death in the first six months of the higher limit. This increase was consistent with the trends of past years.

Fatal accidents in rural areas increased 20 per cent in the year and 10 per cent in the towns after the new limits were introduced, mostly in the northern region. However, other large year-to-year changes have occurred without any known causes, compared with fairly uniform figures showing injuries and deaths combined. “The conclusions (concerning higher fatalities) here must be regarded as

tentative and treated with caution,” the report said. The Ministry’s assistant director of engineering and research, Mr John Toomath, told the committee that if the higher limit was mainly to blame, the increase should have been seen across the whole country, not predominantly in the north.

The average speed of cars on the open road increased 3.4km/h over a two-year period including the first year of legal lOOkm/h driving. Most of this was attributable to the annual speed "creep” by which open road motoring had been getting faster for many years, he said.

Urban speed checks saw a slight increase in Auckland and no change in Wellington. There was strong public support for the higher limit. A Ministry survey in November last year of 1000 people nationally showed 75 per cent in favour of it.