Lowering speed limits can help save lives

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Change can be difficult. But often, once unpopular decisions are implemented, it can be hard to believe there was ever resistance.

This is especially true with road safety and should be remembered as Victoria grapples with how to reverse a shocking increase in people being killed in road crashes.

As of Monday night, 257 people had died on the state’s roads so far this year – 40 more than this time last year and 50 more than the five-year average.

Most of that increase has been on our rural roads (153 deaths so far in 2023) but casualties on Melbourne’s road network also remain unacceptably high at 104 this year and 106 in 2022.

As The Age detailed in the first of its Home Safe series on Saturday, people living in Melbourne are twice as likely to die in road crashes as those in Barcelona, London, Berlin and Tokyo.

This is partly a symptom of our sprawling urban boundaries and car-dependent transport network. However, overseas experience shows that even with the city and lifestyle that we have, more could be done to save lives.

Motorist deaths in Melbourne have fallen by half over the past decade, but there’s been no reduction in deaths among pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicycle riders over the same period.

It is in this context that City of Yarra councillors voted last week to expand a trial of 30km/h speed limits across all of Fitzroy and Collingwood, other than major thoroughfares and pending state government approval.

A growing number of major cities including London, Paris, Toronto and Barcelona are adopting 30km/h limits on their streets and say it has made their cities safer. The World Health Organisation has called for it to be the maximum where vehicles mix with pedestrians and cyclists. But Victoria Police’s chief commissioner, Shane Patton, scoffed at the plan last week, saying he was not aware of any evidence that it would reduce road trauma. “I think no one is going to obey it … it’s ridiculous,” he said.

Patton’s view – although perhaps widely shared – may have been a shock to Victoria Police’s fellow members of the Victorian Government Road Safety Partnership, made up of the Transport Accident Commission and the Transport, Justice and Health departments.

The partnership told a state parliament inquiry into road trauma earlier this year that successive studies had shown that 30km/h was the “maximum impact speed for a healthy adult before death or very serious injury becomes increasingly likely”.

Someone hit by a car at 50km/h has a 90 per cent chance of being killed, compared with a 10 per cent chance at 30km/h, those studies show.

The submission said that setting and enforcing safer speeds to reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes was “critical to reducing trauma” among pedestrians and cyclists, while the TAC’s head of road safety told the inquiry that 30km/h zones had been adopted “with some really quite great success” overseas.

It is worrying that the key government agencies tasked with tackling our growing road toll are not on the same page.

Patton should be well across his partner agencies’ advice about the rules. Or at the very least, not expressing views that contradict it.

In fairness to the chief commissioner, there has been a long tradition of resisting changes that eventually save lives.

Dr John Birrell, the crusading police surgeon (from 1957 to 1977) who was instrumental in making Victoria the first jurisdiction in the world to enforce mandatory seatbelt wearing in 1970, said he was considered by some as a “mild crank or a zealot”.

Even groups that supported seatbelt wearing told the joint select committee on road safety, which ultimately recommended the new laws, that making it compulsory was “unrealistic, could not be enforced or was an infringement on the liberty of citizens”.

Random breath testing was equally unpopular when it was introduced in 1976 in Victoria and then other states.

After overcoming fierce resistance, these measures (along with the reduction of Victoria’s default urban speed limit to 50km/h in 2001) have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives and reduced Victoria’s road toll from its grim 1970 peak of 1061 deaths.

Our road toll has plateaued over the past decade, though, even as the best-performing cities and countries continue to drive theirs lower.

At this rate, Victoria will almost certainly miss its stated goal of reducing deaths and serious injuries by 30 per cent by 2030.

Correcting that trend will require investment in safer road infrastructure, strict police enforcement, the adoption of safer vehicle technologies and all Victorians taking the care and responsibility when behind the wheel.

In some circumstances, it may also involve reducing speed limits as a necessary step that has been shown elsewhere to be effective in saving lives.

Fitzroy and Collingwood are busy suburbs close to the CBD, and serve as a helpful template for the type of medium-density living that Melbourne must embrace to have any chance of housing a population set to grow to 8 million by 2050.

Part of that shift is to make walking (including to and from public transport) and cycling a safe and sustainable alternative to driving.

The state government should approve the expansion of the City of Yarra’s 30m/h trial zone and then follow NSW’s decision to add 30km/h to its speed limit guidelines so it can be used beyond just trials, where appropriate.

Patrick Elligett sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.

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