In WA about 70 vulnerable road users ( pedestrians and cyclists) suffer a serious injury or a killed each year. Vulnerable road users make up about 19.5% of hospital admissions as a result of traffic accidents. One of the factors in road trauma is the travel speed. An person who is hit above around 25 - 30 km/h will suffer “unrecoverable damage”, that is, even if not killed will have permanent damage.

For that reason traffic speeds is of vital concern to cyclist and other vulnerable road users. Most cyclists need to ride on suburban roads before the reach the Public shared Path Network. In the Road User Consulting Committee (RUCC), which respresents the view of road users to the Road Safety Council, cyclists have consistently argued that lower speeds in the suburbs will create a safer environment for cyclists. However the RAC, who hosts the RUCC committee, is opposed to lower speeds.

The proposed WA Road Safety Strategy 2008 – 2012 is based on improvements in four areas:

• Safer road use behavious;
• Safer and more forgiving roads and roadsides;
• Safer speeds; and
• Safer vehicles.

View the strategy at http://www.officeofroadsafety.wa.gov.au/documents/TowardsZero_000.pdf

The strategy paper has been commissioned from the specialist Accident Research Centre at Monash University (MUARC) and suggests that if we do nothing other than the safety measures currently in place, the number of killed and seriously injured people in the period 2008 – 2020 will reach 38000. If WA implements the full recommendations, this could be reduced to 21700 – still a staggering number.

Reduced speeds in all speed zones, together with enhanced enforcement of speed limits, make up 60% of the improvement at 25% of the projected cost -a possible saving of 9700 lives or serious injuries. Worlds best practise for speed recommends 30 km/h in urban areas, 50 km/h on urban arterial road, 80 km/h on roads connecting cities and 100 km/h on highways with a  centre separation between traffic.

Mr Moir of the RAC is questioning the relationship between lower speeds and reduced road trauma. The RAC suggests measures that deal with actions by “others”, but do not tackle the internationally proven connection between speed and road trauma. The observation by the RAC that the vast majority of roads in WA already have suitable speed limits does nothing to explain the rising road toll.

There is overwhelming international evidence that lower speeds result in fewer collisions of lesser severity. In general, the faster the average traffic speed, the more collisions there are. Accident frequency rises approximately with the square of the average traffic speed. A model has been developed based on experiments with different speed limits in Sweden which states that the probability of a fatal accident is related to the fourth power of the speed. This means that a 10% reduction of mean speed results in a reduction of the number of fatalities of approximately 40%. Research (dating back as far as the 90's) proves conclusively that every 1km/h in speed reduction leads to a 3% drop in accidents. In the USA, after speed limits were raised (that was really stupid...) research showed that an increase in mean speed of 3-6 km/h resulted in an increase of fatalities of 19% to 34%.

The proposed WA Road Safety Strategy 2008 – 2012 acknowledges the limits of human tolerance to physical force (if we are hit hard enough, we will die) and the limits of human performance (we all make mistakes, but should not die as a result) by suggesting improvements in the area of behaviour, roads, vehicles and speed.

Cyclist are a lot more vulnerable than people surrounded by metal, and we are interested in your comments on how you view reduced speeds on WA roads.

We need to hear your views. Please email the BTA. When you comment, please indicate if you also drive a car. We will use your comments to inform our discussions with the Office of Road Safety.