Nearly 2000 Canberrans booked for speeding in 2018, as Police ask locals to slow down

I made a similar request but for some reason it hasn’t appeared. To me it appears the police disproportionally target speeding because its easy and ignore other serious aspects of dangerous driving. For example I’d question the comparative likelihood of an accident with someone driving 90 in one of our 80 zones in dry conditions outside of peak times vs someone doing 70 in that same 80 zone in peak times but only maintaining a half second gap behind the car in front.

Previous analysis of such breakdowns has revealed that police are likely to tick the speed box regardless of circumstances, while many independent analyses have shown that driving too slowly is a far greater contributor.

Usually a camera at the bottom of a hill where they can catch anybody a few over because they haven’t ridden their brakes all the way down, or on dead straight stretches of road directly after a speed transition.

You can personally think whatever you want, but you can’t really argue against statistics, and statistics say that speeding causes more accidents.

My reading of the statistics and explanations is that excessive speed is a contributory factor in crashes. The cause is often something different. They target speed both to mitigate consequences and because it is easy to establish with available technology which is fair enough.

My problem with the road safety enforcement arrangements is there is almost a negative result from a failed strategy and they appear clueless to devise alternative approaches.

Wellington Sludge can you provide your Stats for Canberra crashes and speed at collision time, to match your claim that it’s a bigger Cause than poor driving at Canberra roundabouts and intersections.

A quick Google search suggests that the majority of ‘crashes in Canberra’ are at Intersections and Roundabouts and at peak times and places where traveling above the posted speed limit is not physically possible.

I believe speeding is a problem and the largest proportional cause of accidents Australia wide, but Canberra may have different stats than the over crash represented regional areas.

And what statistics are these? There have never been any released for the ACT showing the true causal factors for each type of crash. A quick look at the stats for 2016 shows 307 of the 611 casualty crashes were right turn/right angle or nose to tail collisions. Now while some of these would have involved exceeding the speed limit, the vast majority would be driving without due care and attention. When you add in others like sideswipes and animal strikes the argument that speeding causes more crashes is just factually incorrect.

Many independent analyses in many nations have shown that the police tick the speeding box regardless of the circumstances.