There’s only so many places you can have cameras at any time, so it becomes a game of “whack-a-mole” – installation of speed cameras is covered in the Plan though. Also the second tranche of the Plan (from 2027) sees the introduction of various traffic calming measures to help lower speeds – they take time and money though, which is why they come later in the programme.

But even without engineering and enforcement, there’s plenty of evidence showing that people do slow down a little with changes in posted limits alone (roughly 2-3kmh for every 10kmh change) – and even if they’re technically not complying with the new limits, those small drops in travel speeds make a big difference to safety stats…

If keeping on top of signs is too much for you as a driver, you should lose your license. It’s basic situational awareness to note signs (and pedestrians, and cyclists, and dogs, and that flicker of movement in a driveway, etc etc etc).

Whenever safety changes are proposed, anti-change people come out of the woodwork claiming that actually the new arrangement will be less safe, as though safety-minded people hadn’t been carefully weighing up the pros and cons for ages. This comment seems like part of that pattern.

As someone whose day-job involves analysing the safety effects of speed management measures, I can tell you that almost without fail every speed reduction in NZ, urban or rural, has seen reductions in crashes and (more importantly) casualties when they’re implemented – that includes the ones already done in central Chch (down 46%) and suburban areas (down 40-80%). The behaviour of looking for a speed sign (or your speedo even) doesn’t change just because speed limits change.

Yes, those communicators have been gradually implemented in many places over the last few decades. The problem areas that remain without such indicators could benefit from a reduction in speed limit. Even if the limit is still exceeded evidence shows there is still a reduction nevertheless , which is the aim. How good would it be if arterials were set at 40kph and everywhere else 30kph. Not too complicated and not too different from current speeds when traffic is heavy anyway. The fear of nose to tails is just that, fear. The evidence tells a different story. I’m reminded of the outcry when the bus interchange was opened. Built to a design used throughout the world, the thought of having reversing busses in little ol’ Christchurch however was going to cause death and destruction. Like the Park Terrace cycleway, it proved to be nothing but a storm in a teacup. The suggestion of slowing speeds to improve safety seems to have the same effect on people. Why ?

30 everywhere it is then…

Seriously though, streets should be designed to be intuitively travelled at the intended speed. Doing 50 on a busy central or minor residential street should feel dangerous to the person driving. Width, bumps, chicanes, markings, vegetation, curbs, should be the primary communicators of speed.