Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Tuesday 12 April 2011

RURAL ROADS DEFAULT SPEED LIMIT

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - I will be making a fairly short contribution. I agree with the comments that have been made in relation to this matter. It is an important matter and it needs to be determined, I think, in the best interests of all people.

I understand the minister has taken a bit of a different approach to this now and that he is indicating that perhaps the defaulted speed limit will remain in country roads, at probably 100 kilometres an hour but there will be a close assessment done of all of these rural roads and the speed limits will be reduced where it is necessary to do so.

I understood that to be the position stated in the media, but I could be wrong. You cannot always take notice of what is in the media but I thought that that was the now position. The default speed limit was going to be reduced to 90 and on gravel roads to 80, as I understand it. The Leader perhaps might be able to clarify that point.

The matter of gravel roads was referred to I think by the member for Western Tiers. I am not so sure that there is not an argument there that these roads should be retained at either 90 kilometres an hour or in some instances perhaps even 100. Some of the gravel roads are very very good, very very wide, and do provide for I think -

Ms Forrest - Not many of them.

Mr DEAN - Not many of them but consideration could be given to that. I guess the default position there could be 80 and if there is a road that meets all of the other safety requirements I suppose it could be signposted appropriately to provide for that speed in those situations.

Madam President, Mr Gledhill makes comment in relation to the local government councils through a lot of his discussions on this. He went into some detail on the number of councils that were supporting the decrease as opposed to those that were not but I am not so sure that those councils were really given absolutely accurate information, Madam President.

It was discussed at the council of which I am an alderman and I am not convinced, and I raised it at the time, that the particular statistics that were given were portraying the right position to the members.

From an agenda item, which is on the public record, that was provided to that council a comment was made and I just quote a part of it:

'Currently 45% of fatalities and 41% of serious injuries in Tasmania occur on roads with 100km/h speed limit. It is estimated that the proposed reduction will result in annual savings of 4 fatal crashes, 13 serious injury crashes and 40 other injury crashes. The estimated value of these crash cost savings is $15.44 million. In addition to this are vehicle operating cost savings of $5.81 million. The optimum travel speed for most road vehicles is estimated to be under 90km/h. Environmental benefits include air pollution savings of $2.22 million. The main costs will be due to an increase in travel time costs calculated at around 5.7% or $22.9 million. The next impact is an annual saving of $1.38 million'.

They are interesting figures, Madam President, but I wonder how the heck they can come up with some of these findings. I am of the view they are simply figures plucked out of the air that suit the circumstances they want to apply them to.

The first part of that quote would indicate I think to anybody reading it that these crashes have occurred on rural roads where the 100 kilometre an hour speed limit has been complied with and that there had been a number of fatal accidents and a number of serious crashes. But, Madam President, is that right? No it is not.

I asked questions in this Chamber two or three weeks ago, the first being how many of the current 45 per cent of all fatalities which occur on rural roads or roads with a 100 kph speed limit, have occurred where the posted speed limit has not been exceeded? The second question was how many of the current 41 per cent of all serious injury and other injury accidents which occur on rural roads or roads with a 100 kph speed limit, have occurred where the posted speed limit has not been exceeded? The answers to those two questions are, for the period 2005-09, which was the period used in the Safer Speed Saves Lives brochure, 73.3 per cent of all fatal crashes occurring on roads with a 100 kph speed limit do not have exceeding speed limit recorded as a crash factor. The second answer given was, for the period 2005-09, 92.5 per cent of all serious injury and 97.3 per cent of minor injury crashes occurring on roads with a 100 kph speed limit do not have exceeding speed limit recorded as a crash factor.

Madam President, when you look at those figures and compare them with what was provided to some of these people in local government to debate and make a decision on, I believe it was erroneous and was not identified in the way it should have been. I am convinced that if these facts and figures were given to all of those that were required to make a decision on this, the decision and findings might well have been different. You can say anything with statistics and figures - you really can.

I quote a gentleman who has probably got it right. It was in an editorial in the Examiner that he made this comment in relation to the discussions on this matter:

'If, however, we consider only those road deaths on gravel roads by people who at the time were obeying the traffic laws, we have a total of zero for 2010, 2009 and, I believe, 2008

Yet the State Government thinks it can improve on this figure by lowering the speed limit? Are the ministers aware that a negative road toll would require raising the dead?'

It was an interesting sort of comment and observation made by that person. On reading other comments in the paper and the media in relation to this, I must admit that I have not seen too many that support the position the Government wants to go down. The ones that I have here are all opposed to that position that the Government was wanting to take.

Ms Forrest - The people who talked to me about supporting a reduction were ambulance officers who attend crash sites.

Mr DEAN - Right. I can understand probably why they would be. I think the police probably would support that as well. I do not think there is any doubt, Madam President, that lowering the speed limits would reduce probably the number of fatal crashes and serious injury crashes. I do not think there is any doubt about that but if we are going to lower it to 90 kph, let us lower it back to 60 kph and then we probably will not have any crashes at all. How far do you go?

The other comment I want to make on that is that it really does interest me that this is the track that they now want to take. If you look at the improvements over the past years, we now have vehicles much safer than they used to be with their air bags, their driving controls, mechanisms, stability control and all of these issues - our vehicles are definitely becoming much safer all the time. We have, as DIER would tell us, our learner driver processes getting better and supposedly good. So, supposedly, we really do have better drivers out there on our roads. We have improved roads out there now. Our roads are being improved all the time. We have increased policing out there all the time; we have much more policing of these roads. We have stronger regulations in relation to what you can do and what you cannot do on roads, what you can drink and cannot drink and all of those things. One would think, with all of that, if anything, we could probably be looking at increasing the speed limits on some of these roads but what we are doing is continually decreasing them. All of these things are improving but we are continually wanting to decrease. It is an interesting issue.

Mr Parkinson - Are you suggesting our roads are sufficiently safe to have speeds increased?

Mr DEAN - I am saying that some probably are. A good example, I am glad you raised that question -

Mr Parkinson - Not of the standard that I've driven on on mainland roads, if that is the guideline.

Mr DEAN - Let me raise the issue of the East Tamar Highway. The East Tamar Highway now, for almost the entire length of it, and probably the entire length once the Dilston bypass is completed, will be in a much better condition than the Midland Highway in many places where the speed limit is 110 kph and I think people who have travelled the East Tamar Highway would agree with me on that. It is a dual carriageway for a good part of the way as well, yet that is a 100 kilometres per hour road.

Mr Wing - They must have had good political representation to get to such a high standard.

Mr DEAN - They have, and it took a lot of work.

Ms Forrest - He cannot get the speed limit up to where he wants it though.

Mr DEAN - We just had a very good leader in this place who was able to push our causes and get the good roads up there. But the point there is, that is a very good road and one would think that they would look at probably an increase there to 110 kilometres per hour. It is certainly much better than a big part of the Midland Highway, if you look at that.

Just a couple of other points: the novice driver one has been covered, Madam President, but you do wonder why DIER have taken the strong action that they have, where they believe that what they have got in place is right. Very clearly there is a lot of evidence suggesting that is not the case. I just wonder what they did with the recommendation that came out of our Road Safety Select Committee inquiry report. I wondered whether they had even looked at it yet, considered it -

Ms Forrest - We haven't had a government response yet.

Mr DEAN - We have not, have we? How long ago was that tabled? A long time ago.

Mr Wing - Probably about six months.

Mr DEAN - At least six months ago. A long time ago, so one would have thought if they were going to respond, they would have responded by now.

Mr Wing - The convention is that they need to respond within three months, so it doesn't indicate any real interest in the subject.

Mr DEAN - Knowing that, I just wonder what the position is there and I suppose what we need to do is to raise some questions on that in the right circles to find out just what is going on and when they will make a reply in relation to that report, Madam President. It is concerning. These issues are raised, yet it seems as though it is placed on some shelf -

Ms Rattray - October last year it was tabled.

Ms Forrest - That is right, Madam President, the report was signed on 13 October, so it would have been tabled soon after that.

Mr DEAN - So that is seven months almost. It really does make you wonder just what they are doing and how much notice they take of these reports, because many other people took great notice of it - our chairman, and rightly so, was congratulated on the way that he delivered that report.

Mr Wing - The whole committee was.

Mr DEAN - The whole committee was.

Ms Forrest - Driven by the chair.

Mr DEAN - I know the chairman was too.

Mr Wing - Only as head of the committee.

Mr DEAN - Yes, as the head of the committee. So people out there, Madam President, recognised this report as a good report, as addressing all of those very important issues and I would have thought that DIER would have at least taken some consideration or some notice of them and would have provided us, the Parliament, with their response in relation to it. That is a matter that the honourable Leader might want to pursue to just see where it is and what is going on.

Madam President, there are lots of issues and lots of concerns about the rural speed limits, and I know of a number of roads out in the rural communities that do need lower speed limits on them, there is no doubt about that. Currently they are 100 kph, that is how they are taken and they need to be lowered.

Madam President, these are really the only issues I wanted to raise; the others have been raised and there is not much point in reiterating all those comments already made. I believe the honourable minister is now reconsidering that position, but the honourable Leader may be able to inform us of that matter.

Mr Parkinson - I don't know.

Mr DEAN - I support the motion.

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