Safe Speed Forums

Five years after moving from the UK to New Zealand I am still getting used to how slow and badly people drive here, I could put up with the dawdling along if hitting power poles and other vehicles wasn't a national pastime. Anyway, this letter in a local paper caught my eye, discussing the national 100kmh speed limit past a rural school....
".....While I agree that a 40kmh restricted speed zone needs to be applied here in the interest of the safety of the children and other pedestrians, as long as the 100kmh speed limit remains, motorists have every right to travel at this speed, and therefore are not doing anything wrong"

Any (printable) suggestions about a reply? Is the writer seriously suggesting that driving at the speed limit is never dangerous, regardless of circumstances? Should he be allowed behind the wheel of a car?

Reminds me of a TV interview of a local resident after they reduced the speed limit from 40mph to 30mph on her street: "I welcome the new speed limit, it's long overdue and we're tired of people speeding down our street. However it's going to take me some time to get used to driving at 30mph now".

Hypocritical, or what?

If you start dumbing down the driving population you have to expect these things.

Cheers
Peter

I wonder if this fool has got his ideas from an advertising campaign or made this idea up himself? He is a very dangerous individual in my view.

On your observation on British driving, I've always thought we are not too bad here and certainly better than most places I've visited. If NZ drivers are better, why do you think this is?

No, you've read it backward (as I did initially).



For starters, they are obviously in the wrong, just not breaking the law. A common misconception that one. Just because it's legal doesn't make it right.

The argument against having the reduced limit: There's only a very short period of the day when children will be on the road/pavement. The rest of the time the reduced limit is penalising people when they could safely drive at the current limit (conditions permitting).

What's really needed is....

Better training of drivers.

A culture of consideration - not believing you are in the right just because you obey the letter of the law.

Clear warnings of the danger. Possibly with extra at certain times of day.

sounds like the legal & ethical training we had to do at work, the outcome of which was basically:

if it's legal, it's ethical

hmmmm

Ughhh. No wonder our country is collapsing beneath the financial burden of moral bankrupcy.

don't worry;
it's an american company.

Apologies about the confusion concerning driving standards in the UK versus NZ, New Zealand has a significant number of shocking drivers and I can't ever recall such behaviour in the UK going back to when I passed my test in 1977, (but that was in St Andrews where there aren't a large number of opportunities for such things). Anyway, I usually whitness a number of potentially serious incidents everytime I venture out onto New Zealand roads. Todays faux pas was some morons attempt to interpret turn signals at a conventional roundabout, three time I saw the same driver enter a roundabout in the left hand lane signalling right! after passing the first exit they then signalled left....to go straight on. Once could have been a mistake, but three times? Perhaps the real problem is that they weren't even aware they were doing anything wrong.

jaybkay wrote


I just didn't read it carefully enough. It's the 2nd. time I've done that in two days. Safe speed caught me out to-day.