Is over-emphasis on speeding killing us?

COMMENT

Against the backdrop of a 7.6 per cent increase in the national road toll so far this year, new research published last month indicates that Australia’s strict speed enforcement may actually be increasing – rather than reducing – the risk of car crashes.

Just as concerning is the questionable research on which authorities base their zealous policing of low-level speeding, the unscientific crash analysis that leads to speeding being one of the leading causes for road crashes and the increasing revenue gleaned from low-level speeding infringements.

Using a driving simulator, the University of Western Australia tested 84 participants to see if lowering speed enforcement thresholds would have any effect on a driver’s mental and visual abilities.

Knowing they could be fined for travelling one, six, or 11km/h over a 50km/h speed limit, participants were given a peripheral detection task to measure their mental and visual workload while driving in the simulator.

They were also given a questionnaire which asked how difficult or demanding they found the experience of driving under the different enforcement conditions.

The stricter speed limit enforcement levels resulted in drivers rating the experience as more demanding and also reduced their peripheral vision.

Dr Vanessa Bowden, one of the authors of the study, said: “Our overall finding was that stricter speed enforcement may impair a driver’s ability to detect hazards, especially those on the side of the road, because drivers are dedicating more attention to monitoring their speed.”

The UWA research adds to existing cracks in speed enforcement, a pillar of road safety programs nationwide.

All nine state/territories jurisdictions (which are responsible for policing speeding) use the 1997 study by Kloeden et al called ‘Travelling Speed and the Risk of Crash Involvement’ to justify their focus on low-level speeding enforcement.

The never-repeated 20-year-old study assessed 148 crashes in suburban Adelaide in 1996 and concluded that: “In a 60km/h speed limit area, the risk of involvement in a casualty crash doubles with each 5km/h increase in free travelling speed above 60km/h”.

The study’s results have since been questioned under peer review.

John Lambert, ex-Manager of Road Safety Research at VicRoads, said that he “had concerns about the concept of an absolute relationship with speed and crashes”.

He re-analysed the original data and surmised that driver selection of travel speed is based on many factors, with the prevailing speed limit and speed enforcement being only two of these factors; in a 60km/h zone, average free speeds on dry days during daylight hours exhibit significant variability and a more consistent approach to the data is to use speed differentials from the mean speed.

For the authors of an academic paper to respond to a peer review is unusu-al in academia, but Messrs Kloeden and Haley did exactly that in September 2003. Defending their methodology and conclusion, the pair of academics also made some telling points:

“…A large enforcement tolerance sends the message that the speed limit is a target speed rather than an upper limit (as implied by the use of speed limit). To the extent that a large tolerance leads to higher speeds, it increases the number and severity of crashes which is why we recommended that it be reduced or removed.”

It is worth noting that all of the speeds the study assessed were estimated, yet the conclusion (that 5km/h over 60km/h doubles the risk of a casualty crash) has been taken by all nine state and territory governments as a speeding ‘fact’ (for example, in NSW).

Speeding is responsible for 30 per cent of fatal road crashes, according to the various authorities, and this figure is gleaned from actual crashes where police have attended.

However, the way the information is gathered is unscientific. The actual speed of crashing vehicles cannot be determined from standard reports so estimating methods are used in all states.

Some of the parameters for giving speeding as the reason for the crash can be compelling, such as if the vehicle or vehicles were detected by police as speeding prior to the crash.

Yet other circumstances in which can police tick the speeding box do not stand up well under any form of scientific rigour.

For example: “While on a curve the vehicle jack-knifed, skidded, slid or the controller lost control” or “The vehicle ran off the road on a bend or turning a corner and the driver or rider was not distracted by something, or affected by drowsiness or sudden illness, and was not swerving to avoid another vehicle, animal or object, and the vehicle did not have equipment failure”.

The catch-all sentence in the protocols for assessing speed-related crash is this: “Police said the vehicle was travelling at excessive speed”.

Then there is the governments’ pecuniary interest in low-level speeding.

Of the $86 million revenue in speeding fines Victoria took in just three months from April to June 2016, a total of 303,312 fines were issued and 233,574 of them – 77 per cent – were for drivers detected at less than 10km/h over the speed limit.

Governments argue that speeding fine revenue is channeled back into road safety measures.

In 2013-2014, the Queensland government spent $65.9m of speed camera revenue on road improvements, with a further $8m on road safety aware-ness, and a little under $5m on other hospital and injury programs. In the same period the state's revenue from fines was estimated at more than $300 million.

There is no silver bullet to reducing the road toll, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that governments’ ever-increasing focus on low-level speeding has been successful only in one area — increased government revenue.