Australian speed limits could be increased if infrastructure was improved to make higher speeds safe, says a senior road safety director.
Australian speed limits currently max out at 130km/h on highways in the Northern Territory and 110km/h on some freeways in other states, but the national highway limit remains 100km/h.
But those speeds could theoretically be raised without adversely affecting the safety of motorists, says the director of road safety at Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Samantha Cockfield.
"We can design infrastructure to withstand higher speeds," Cockfield told carsales.com.au.
"But it's very expensive to do and you really need to make sure you cannot have any intersecting roads. Where cars are crossing or merging, that is where the biggest problems happen at higher speeds."
The TAC's director of road safety said that with the current road infrastructure, higher speed limits would be "a bad idea."
In some countries such as Germany, motorists can drive or ride at whatever speed they like on certain derestricted stretches of freeway -- as was previously the case on a section of the NT’s Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs.
Despite no reported speed-related fatalities on around 300km of the road during derestricted speed limit trials between 2014 and 2016, the Top End government reduced the speed limit to 130km/h in 2016.
There have been calls from some quarters for a 140km/h speed limit on the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne to reduce fatigue-related fatalities .
If the speed limit between Australia’s two largest cities was increased from 110km/h to 130km/h, drivers could save more than two hours on the 878km journey, which would theoretically take less than seven hours.
While Aussie highway speeds are unlikely ever to be unlimited, Cockfield said Australian drivers could be safe at higher speeds.
"It doesn’t worry me itself because we know we can design infrastructure and vehicles to cope [with higher speeds],” she told carsales.
“It's how quickly we can do that and how much it would cost communities to do it.
"To design roads in Australia that don’t have those cross intersections or crossroads or good long merge roads, it's very expensive to build."
The TAC's admission that higher speeds can be safe directly contradicts the ‘speed kills’ mantra that’s been pushed by Australia’s state governments, police forces and road authorities for decades.
The number of road fatalities has spiked this year in some Australian states -- especially in Victoria, despite the increase of speed cameras on the roads.
Asked about her views on unrestricted German autobahns, Cockfield said fatalities still occurred on them and that open speed limits are coming under increased scrutiny everywhere they exist.
"Those autobahns have been built more specifically for those speed limits. People think they're incredibly safe. They still have crashes.
"When you say they're not that much different to ours, you're right. But when you look they're not doing so well, they're starting to enforce speed limits where, to be fair, they hadn’t been that well enforced in times gone by.
"We know we have to prevent road trauma. Speed plays a big part. And I think that's what Germany's seeing and why you're starting to see speed limits looked at. It's not just Germany, the whole world is looking at it,” said Cockfield.
"So it's not impossible [to increase speed limits] but the higher the speed somebody is travelling when something goes wrong, the lower the chance of surviving.”
What are your thoughts on Australian speed limits? Should road authorities look at increasing them on some roads? Or do you support Western Australia's Road Safety Commission, which believes cutting all WA speed limits by 10km/h will half the road toll?
Have your say in the comments below.