The push to dramatically reduce speed limits in residential and high-pedestrian areas has gathered pace with NSW and Belgian scientists saying it would save lives.
It comes just a few months after the release of Perth research that showed reducing speed limits to 30km/h would curtail crashes and fatalities — without big delays in travel times.
And it has prompted Road Safety Minister Michelle Roberts to consult the community before introducing slower urban speed limits as part of a new road safety campaign.
“We recently worked with the City of Vincent to implement its 40km/hour speed zone trial and we have since had expressions of interest from other inner-city councils including the Town of Victoria Park,” she said.
“We led the way here in WA when I introduced a 50km/hour default speed limit in 2001.
“And what we saw was a 21 per cent reduction in casualty crashes in the first two years.”
The NSW/Belgian research used data from 20 studies in six countries and found lower speed limits led to a big reduction in pedestrian fatalities.
The risk fell from 50 per cent with a 57km/h speed limit to 5 per cent at 28km/h.
“Therefore, assuming a vehicle travelling at the speed limit will slow down by at least 25 per cent prior to impact, speed limits for areas with high pedestrian activity should be set to 30 to 40 km/h,” University of NSW’s Jake Olivier said.
The findings were presented to the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine last week.
The research found reduced speed limits should apply in high-pedestrian active areas, including parts of the CBD, shopping strips along roads in suburbs and country towns and sports venues that often had crowds crossing roads.
“Pedestrians struck in vehicle crashes are the largest group of traffic fatalities worldwide — and excessive speed is the biggest factor in such crashes,” Professor Olivier said.
“Even an impact speed of as low as around 30 km/h is equivalent to what you would experience if you fell off the roof of your house.”
Raphael Grzebieta, from UNSW school of aviation, said the recommendations were in line with international best practice.
“The speed limits we propose for high active areas are commonly used by best-practice countries — such as Sweden, Netherlands and the UK — that have the lowest road fatality rates,” he said.
“Our urban limit of 50 km/h is simply much too high.”
In a paper delivered at a major transport conference in Perth last year, local transport planner Tim Judd found that reducing speed limits to 30km/h on smaller suburban streets added less than a minute to average local car trips.