Alternative headline: National to spend $30m to sacrifice some of your lives so our trip is slightly faster.
The changes have been endorsed by transport researchers and street safety advocates as effective measures to help reduce the number of Kiwis killed and injured on the roads.
That’s all there is to it.
I personally have not noticed significant changes in travel times due to the reduction in speed limits, which may just be because of where I live (Transmission Gully and the Kāpiti Expressway have definitely cut travel times, more than offsetting any difference in speed changes on other roads).
I found it hard to get recent data, but found this interesting (vs National’s claim that Road to Zero isn’t working):
Deaths peaked in 2017, but really dropped in 2020 and 2021 (presumably COVID related). Then we have 2022 which was 374 deaths, the highest since 2018. But what was the rate compared to the distance traveled? I haven’t found a 2022 VKT number, but it would be interesting to see. Also, one off blips in data don’t mean that a programme with a 30 year plan isn’t working. In fact, given COVID, I don’t think you could judge the programme at all for at least another few years.
Now if someone says “we shouldn’t spend this money on X because it could save even more lives spent on Y” then ok cool. But I think we all know if they cut Road to Zero it will be to pay for the lack of money they allocated for their promised road projects.
Given how many things have happened regarding our roads the last few years, such as new motorways and expressways opening and safety upgrades to existing roads, as well as modern cars getting constantly safer, I don’t think we have enough evidence to say lower speed limits did anything conclusively.
I’d agree, but ultimately lower speed limits aren’t about reducing the number of crashes caused by excessive speed. It’s about accepting crashes will happen, and reducing the damage when it does happen.
It’s a broad brush and we may never be able to tie one thing to the outcome.
I think this is an important point that is missed a lot. The reduced speed limits aim to reduce the harm of serious crashes. Any data needs to include the number of crashes to the number of crashes that have serious harm and death, then compare these to other years.
Fatalities per distance travelled is a good way of looking at that though.