As a key risk factor to road safety, we know that over speeding on the roads leads to a higher risk of crashes and a higher risk of death or serious injury on collision. The facts are clear, if you speed, you have less control over your car, less chance of braking on time and more chance of death on collision. However, in the Northern Territory of Australia, proposals to reintroduce ‘unlimited speed limits’ on rural roads has caused an uproar amongst road safety campaigners.
It is clear that fatal crashes show a key correlation between speed increases. When speed is increased, fatal crashes also rise.
Recently, YOURS HQ was contacted by campaigners from Australia’s Northern Territory calling on international campaigners to unite and take a stand against the proposal to re-introduce unlimited speed limis. Back in 2006, unlimited speed limits existed in the Northern Terrority. This unlimited speed approach was repealed after the release of statistics from a damning report that found that three times as many people were killed on NT roads than elsewhere in Australia, per capita, with one person dying and nine seriously injured every week. Further, it found that 48% of fatal crashes in the country’s top end were non-alcohol related and that 2,613 cars ran red lights at 11 intersections in just 1 month.
Senior Research Fellow of Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research at the University of New South Wales, Lori Mooren has begun an online petition calling for 1000 signatures to express to decision makers that international road safety campaigners, specialists and organizations are against this move. She said, ‘The risk of fatal crashes increases by 46% with a 5% increase in travel speed. Removal of speed limits would be a murderous act. And we can predict the number of bodies..’|
