Alternative headline: National to spend $30m to sacrifice some of your lives so our trip is slightly faster.
The changes have been endorsed by transport researchers and street safety advocates as effective measures to help reduce the number of Kiwis killed and injured on the roads.
That’s all there is to it.
Given how many things have happened regarding our roads the last few years, such as new motorways and expressways opening and safety upgrades to existing roads, as well as modern cars getting constantly safer, I don’t think we have enough evidence to say lower speed limits did anything conclusively.
I’d agree, but ultimately lower speed limits aren’t about reducing the number of crashes caused by excessive speed. It’s about accepting crashes will happen, and reducing the damage when it does happen.
It’s a broad brush and we may never be able to tie one thing to the outcome.
I think this is an important point that is missed a lot. The reduced speed limits aim to reduce the harm of serious crashes. Any data needs to include the number of crashes to the number of crashes that have serious harm and death, then compare these to other years.
Fatalities per distance travelled is a good way of looking at that though.