30km speed limit in school zones?

GM2617 said :

wildturkeycanoe said :

Permanent cameras perhaps provided by the school that post video of offenders with their speed on a website that shames them may have some impact?

I like this idea, but doubt that public School’s will have any additional funds to implement this initiative. At least it would highlight the real number of speeding vehicles and full extent of the problem. Also provides video evidence of any other traffic / pedestrian incidents within the school zone.

I saw a program in the UK where Police waited at school zones and waved over speeders. The police had students from the schools with them. The drivers then had to explain to the students why they were speeding and apologise. It may have put a human face on the reason for school zones for drivers who apparently are indifferent to anyone else but themselves.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Permanent cameras perhaps provided by the school that post video of offenders with their speed on a website that shames them may have some impact?

I like this idea, but doubt that public School’s will have any additional funds to implement this initiative. At least it would highlight the real number of speeding vehicles and full extent of the problem. Also provides video evidence of any other traffic / pedestrian incidents within the school zone.

No doubt there will be a “trial”, the trial will be labelled as a success (without evidence) and this will become law.

Holden Caulfield said :

Not withstanding cbrmale’s point about professional couriers etc, FWIW…

1km @ 60km/h = 60 seconds
1km @ 40km/h = 90 seconds
1km @ 30km/h = 120 seconds

Maybe in some of his examples that extra time means a lot, for most of us, it doesn’t.

If you add up the school zones, the construction sites with 40km/h speed limits, the town centres now with 40km/h speed limits and you’re a courier doing more than 200km a day, yes these ongoing speed limit reductions compound to make a significant difference in the time it takes to drive around this city. In my case it was pathology couriers, and unless blood is transported promptly then test accuracy can be compromised, which puts individual’s health at risk.

It is especially frustrating when you have a route which follows the same streets three times in a day, and three times you slow to a crawl for kilometres at a time and yet there is not one single school-aged child in sight. I drove all of the routes, and driving along these deserted streets at a 40 for no reason drove me batty. And I did get subjected to a lot of road rage, but I was in a work car and I had no choice.

Not withstanding cbrmale’s point about professional couriers etc, FWIW…

1km @ 60km/h = 60 seconds
1km @ 40km/h = 90 seconds
1km @ 30km/h = 120 seconds

Maybe in some of his examples that extra time means a lot, for most of us, it doesn’t.

milkman said :

house_husband said :

How about they just enforce the rest of the road and parking rules around school zones first? Drivers who park on footpaths and block visibility, fail to give way, park in disabled spaces, drive the wrong way down one way roads, veer onto the wrong side of the road, etc.

This. No point in making new rules when we don’t enforce the ones we have now.

+1, enforcement is the problem. Until the offenders are busted and made to realize the error of their ways by monetary exchange, they will continue to speed through any zone.
Permanent cameras perhaps provided by the school that post video of offenders with their speed on a website that shames them may have some impact?

house_husband said :

How about they just enforce the rest of the road and parking rules around school zones first? Drivers who park on footpaths and block visibility, fail to give way, park in disabled spaces, drive the wrong way down one way roads, veer onto the wrong side of the road, etc.

This. No point in making new rules when we don’t enforce the ones we have now.

South Australia has had 25 km/h school zones ANYTIME children are present for years.

The only thing surprising about this proposal is that the limit is not to be reduced even further (in time, no doubt, it will, when it fails to make any practical difference).

Beyond that, it is yet another example of the “Government knows best and the public can’t be trusted” regulatory mentality which is suffocating this town.

How about they just enforce the rest of the road and parking rules around school zones first? Drivers who park on footpaths and block visibility, fail to give way, park in disabled spaces, drive the wrong way down one way roads, veer onto the wrong side of the road, etc.

so to fix this Joy Burch is introducing 30kph speed limit in some schools but 40 in others and be totally different to the rest of Australia. This women is insane .

It seems the ACT is becoming a controlled state and a Labor play toy.
There seems to be law changes because the wind has changed direction.

Postalgeek said :

cbrmale said :

The snatchy nature of a fuel injected engine coupled with no engine flywheel, motorcycle engines don’t have flywheels, would require me to ride in first gear (yes) for, in some school zones, kilometres at a time.

Where are the school zones that go for kilometres?

I used to manage pathology couriers and I mapped out all of their runs. There’s a school zone in Kaleen which is more than a kilometres long, another school zone in Forrest more than a kilometres long, a couple in Belconnen more than a kilometre long, one in Griffith about a kilometre long (two schools back to back) and a few more of similar distances. Often public ovals are included in these speed zones which make them very, very long.

For professional drivers like pathology couriers there is a cost involved with this reduction of speed limits. This government is continually reducing speed limits such as in town centres, which by observation no drivers take any notice of, and this has adverse economic consequences. Couriers, delivery drivers and tradespeople who go from job to job for a living will all take longer to do their journeys, which ultimately we all will pay for.

If we had a system like NSW where school zone speed limits were based around when school zones were actually busy, then such costs involved would be minimal. But we all will end up driving at a snail’s pace for large parts of the day when there are no children within sight.

Ultimately bad laws encourage people to break them, and this bad law will encourage drivers to speed more, even at times when it is dangerous to do so. As such, this speed limit change will be counter-productive.

sadly some of the worst driver behaviour is by parents themselves – I travel through a school zone with 2 schools in it each morning around drop off time. regularly I have people with kids coming up close behind me, parents parking too close or directly next to school crossings and then pulling out into traffic without warning.

I’m all for driving safely to account for the unpredictable behaviour of children, however I think 30km/h is a bit extreme in suburban streets.

cbrmale said :

The snatchy nature of a fuel injected engine coupled with no engine flywheel, motorcycle engines don’t have flywheels, would require me to ride in first gear (yes) for, in some school zones, kilometres at a time.

Where are the school zones that go for kilometres?

I’ll have a race with you. I’ll drive 30 kmph through a school zone and you get out and push. When you’re done post on here how long it took you. I won’t have the patience to wait around.

Lack of logic is clearly being used here. I have to admit occasionally I’ve done 60 through a 40 zone in the middle of the day, mostly due to not noticing the speed limit signs.
Dropping the limit to 30 won’t slow people down.
Put in flashing lights, use speed cameras, use speed humps or a combination, but lowering to 30 is the cheap way of making it look like you care and are doing something as a government and actually doing nothing at all.

all the money we put into speed cameras yet they don’t go in places where safety is paramount, they go in places of highest revenue (except for the stupidity of the point to point on Athllon Drive).

cbrmale said :

As well as driving my car I also have a motorcycle, and it will be almost impossible to ride that motorcycle at a steady 30km/h. The snatchy nature of a fuel injected engine coupled with no engine flywheel, motorcycle engines don’t have flywheels, would require me to ride in first gear (yes) for, in some school zones, kilometres at a time. That would be all but impossible. Being air-cooled it would also suffer from serious overheating in hot weather, so I will have no option but to increase speed in order to use second or third gear.

My response to this farce will be made at the next election, which can’t come soon enough.

Really? You overheat in the 50-100 metres of a school zone? And you cannot maintain a steady slow speed?

Check this out http://www.stayupright.com.au/

I am a broken record with this, but here goes – morons who speed through school zones are going to do it no matter what the speed limit signs say or when those limits are enforced.

Personally, if it’s during the morning or afternoon school drop offs/pick up, I’ll often do less than 40 anyway. The way I see it, I’d rather be slightly delayed than risk bouncing a small child off the bumper of my car and spending the rest of my life in jail thinking about it.

blandone said :

The government is concerned by the number of drivers speeding through school zones, so they propose to reduce the speed limit? Let’s reduce it to 30/Kph, that’ll stop em! (or slow them down..) Honestly, who thinks this stuff up?

This, basically.

Before any more knees are jerked, it’s best to start by trying to understand exactly which problem the policy makers are trying to solve.

In this case, the problem apparently is that some drivers exceed the 40 kph school speed limit – as evidenced by six drivers each day being detected in the ACT.

Potential solutions to that problem would include:
– more enforcement (e.g. disincentive to speed through greater police presence increasing the likelihood of detection and immediate consequence)
– more awareness (e.g. improved signage and potentially flashing lights as in NSW, community aweness campaign)
– more incentive to drive slower (e.g. more traffic control devices such as speed humps).

I’m not aware of the problem being that collisions (or near misses) with children are occurring at 40 kph and therefore a new limit of 30 kph would reduce the number of collisions (and near misses).

It seems to me that the best solution for problem B is being proposed for problem A. Why not just solve problem A instead? Probably because it’ll cost more to do it right. That’s usually the reason for shoddy policy.

I can ride my air-cooled fuel injected motorcycle at a steady speed for miles on end, be that 1km/h, 30km/h or 100km/h. Not sure why you couldn’t, it’s fairly basic. Keep the revs up and modulate the speed with the clutch and rear brake if you need to keep it rally slow.

cbrmale said :

As well as driving my car I also have a motorcycle, and it will be almost impossible to ride that motorcycle at a steady 30km/h. The snatchy nature of a fuel injected engine coupled with no engine flywheel, motorcycle engines don’t have flywheels, would require me to ride in first gear (yes) for, in some school zones, kilometres at a time. That would be all but impossible. Being air-cooled it would also suffer from serious overheating in hot weather, so I will have no option but to increase speed in order to use second or third gear.

You forgot to add, “I’m here all week, try the veal!”

Once the speed limit was 60 and some drivers sped. Then the school speed limit was reduced to 40 and some drivers sped. Now the school speed limit is going to be reduced to 30 and these impatient drivers won’t speed? I don’t understand the logic.

I do slow for school speed zones and as a result I get subjected to road rage. In many instances I have filmed this road rage, aggressive tailgating, lights flashing and taken video clips to the police, who did nothing. I am deeply concerned that slowing to 30 will result in more road rage being directed towards me from impatient, aggressive drivers. I would like to see the ACT Government back this up with a campaign to stop aggressive driving and road rage, rather than this half-baked, knee-jerk reaction.

As well as driving my car I also have a motorcycle, and it will be almost impossible to ride that motorcycle at a steady 30km/h. The snatchy nature of a fuel injected engine coupled with no engine flywheel, motorcycle engines don’t have flywheels, would require me to ride in first gear (yes) for, in some school zones, kilometres at a time. That would be all but impossible. Being air-cooled it would also suffer from serious overheating in hot weather, so I will have no option but to increase speed in order to use second or third gear.

My response to this farce will be made at the next election, which can’t come soon enough.

~1500kg travelling at 40km/h hitting a ~35kg child is only ever going to have one outcome. And it’s not pretty. So while it’s fine to complain that you may as well get out and push it’s also worth remembering the basic physics at play.

In South Australia, for over 35 years, school crossings generally have a 25km/h limit accompanied by flashing yellow lights at each crossing. The zones are only temporary (usually at the start and end of the school day) and for a much shorter distance than we see in Canberra.

Perhaps that approach is worth discussing as well?

Why isn’t there a rule that cars have to stop at operating school crossings? At the moment about one in two seem to, which confuses the kids no end!

Double demerits if you’re caught speeding, quadruple if you’re caught speeding and your child attends the school.

I don’t mind lower speeds outside primary schools and even high schools, but colleges! Surely they are old enough to know how to cross a road. Some of them even have driving licences.

I know there was a 12 or 13 year old hit just last week – but overall this government’s obsessed pedestrian safety, including the 40kmh zones in town centres.

Fine, go ahead, make it 30kmh around schools – as long as it’s done sensibly like in NSW. There’s no need for the limit to apply all day.

The government is concerned by the number of drivers speeding through school zones, so they propose to reduce the speed limit? Let’s reduce it to 30/Kph, that’ll stop em! (or slow them down..) Honestly, who thinks this stuff up?

I’d support double demerit points / double fines for all speeding infringements in all school zones. Leave them at 40/Kph from 8am-4pm. And install flashing lights at all school zones over the next 5 years or so.

In my day at school we were taught how to cross the road and look out for cars. This lowering of the speed limit gives the children a false sense of security and does nothing to teach them about dangers of roads and cars. Next we will be seeing a person with a red flag in front of each car walking!