Highway Patrol (NSW)

[asagaai]

Originally Posted by new2ford

That (ACT to Campbelltown) is an outstandingly-built section of motorway. I'd rate it better (for sightlines, general conditions, traffic volumes etc) than the fairly new Prague-Nuremburg motorway that I drove every week in Europe a couple of years ago. On that, minimum speed that everybody drove at was about 130 with some in the German section doing 200 or so. The speed limit was reduced to 120 around busier interchanges. No signs of carnage. What exactly is this "speed kills" safety issue that they go on about?

However, I can see a few real safety issues on the Hume motorway that the HWP and the road safety experts choose to ignore.

- Failure to keep left unless overtaking: imho a very dangerous practice due to the frustration and need for dangerous maneouvring it causes.

- The suppression (through speed limit enforcement) of the ability to execute a quick burst of speed to overtake and get well clear of an obstacle. For example in Europe with a slower-moving truck you will accelerate past it and get well ahead quickly before moving back to the right (our left) and resuming your speed. The police have no problem with that. Here, because of the "regime", people will spend ages creeping past a slower vehicle moving at little less speed and then cut them off pulling in front of them, all out of fear of being pinged. I feel sorry for truck drivers who set their speed by GPS putting up with these overtakers on over-reading speedometers. It's both frustrating and quite dangerous.

- The general monotony of highway hypnosis and taking longer to do a journey (Australia is a big country, some forget) as a result of holding an artificially low speed for so long, leading to loss of concentration and even microsleeps.

This post is spot on.

Speed kills- so innane- yes, like saying producing life = death- such a disingenuous correlation.

For over 10 years I managed a Compulsory Third Party practice managing litigated motor accident claims involving personal injury in accidents in NSW. My job was to investigate the causes of accident, using factual investigators and accident reconstruction engineers and mechanical engineers and see whether my client insurer had to cough up the dough.

Handling many hundreds of cases including catastrophic accidents with deaths involving motor vehicles, semi trailers, trains and vehicle collisions at crossings, and single vehicle accidents; I make the following observations of causes of accidents in descending order of priority:

• Most serious accidents involving inappropriate and usually high speed also involved intoxication of alcohol and/or in combination with other drugs, and driving inappropriately, and was often coupled with failing to wear seatbelts.
• Most general accidents- involved fatigue- (heavy fatigue equates to driving while intoxicated) and simple carelessness and inattention- ie playing on mobiles, not keeping sufficient attention on car gap in front, inattention changing lanes,
• Some accidents involved driving at speeds (under listed speed) that was unsuitable due to factors such as fog, heavy water on roadway etc.
• A number of accidents caused by mechanical and design issues (defective steer tyres blowing out), worn tyres in wet weather, defective designed roadways (water running across high speed corner from access roadways), tarmac stripping from roadway in heat, poor roadway signage.
• Cases involving inappropriate speed that was the major causative factor with no alcohol/drugs out of hundreds of cases I can count on 1 hand, and involved a drag race between 2 vehicles late at night, and a case of 2 guys pushing a ute on unsealed roadway loosing it on corner and passenger not wearing a seatbelt ended up a paraplegic. There were a couple of others whose details escape me.

So, based on handling some 500 odd cases, my experience of those cases were that alcohol and fatigue/inattention and mechanical/design issues were the major factors.

Speed of itself accounted for some 1 to 2% of these claims.

I think politicians should commission an inquiry of CTP claim portfolios over the last 8 years to get some meaningful insights, they may not like the results if they like the speed kills= topping up treasury funds mantra.