It's a speed limit, not a speed goal!

Let's all stay at home just in case then.

Same old same old holiday weekend stuff. Idiots on parade on a holiday weekend and the usual agonising to come afterwards. Of course if the toll is down the Police will crow about their 'speed iniative' and if it fails it will be an excuse to always have it.......and over time the road toll will continue, mainly because we are a country of macho meatheads with a chip on the shoulder driving on rubbish roads.

Oh, Dave " when every speedometer is either accurate or set to show higher numbers than the real speed, I don't know" is more an illustration of you not knowing than knowing. Not everyone drives cars less than a year old. But I guess new car testing world could make you like that.

lets make this national "pull over if you have more than 10 vehicles behind you weekend". No matter what speed you think you should be going. Watch the road toll and roadrage plummet.

A very well written piece Dave and I cannot agree more about driving with headlights / fog lights. I find myself in constant disbelief at the people who drive the open road in less than ideal conditions without their lights on. As far as passing goes, this will always be a sure way for a head on collision.

And with the 4km/h tolerance being enforced, I would be most interested to see the % of total tickets issued this weekend by cops who will use passing lanes as their hunting ground… Until it can be proved that speed is the greater evil in comparison with simple driver inattention and stupid/short-sighted passing maneuvers I’ll be forever in the mindset that they are focusing their resources on what is widely regarded to be the easy fix, issuing tickets.

Couldn't agree with you more!! The people who cause the crashes are the 20kph below speed limit on busy highways; those who even travel through fog without lights and the 'caterpillars' --- one minute at 80 then at 95 then back to 75 etc. etc. and who speed up on passing lanes so you can't get past. Having had my share of 7km over the limit tickets and travelling 60,000 km per year I can only say there are a lot of lottery ticket licenses out there.

I am a truck driver. Most of my working life is spent on the road, and I see so much craziness there. A mum, taking her children to school in Matamata a few years ago trying to pass my b-train in a pea-souper almost drove into another truck going the other way. I hit the brakes, she hit the brakes, so we're still side-by-side; I hit the gas and she JUST managed to get in behind me. People passing on double yellow lines on the Taupo-Napier road. People passing on SH1 on single lanes with no vision beyond about 50 metres. People passing at the very end of passing lanes, as the road is running out for them. Me sliding sideways weighing about 40 tonnes because some moron is hell-bent on dying. Ask any truck driver and they will confirm that your average Kiwi becomes an idiot as soon as he/she closes the driver's door. Why do I do it? well, it's a living...

I am always astounded by people bleating on over not being able to speed. The law is the law. 100km per hour, full stop. Just because you've gotten away with doing more than 100, doesn't make it right. You are still breaking the law. If a cop lets you off, be grateful. If you get a ticket, suck it up, as you have broken the law. Here's hoping that zero tolerance will make a difference to the road carnage!

The real problem is Driver Attitude, as you've alluded to. Attitude is difficult to measure, so we use the barometers of speed and alcohol.

If you've had a couple of drinks you're a menace on the roads, right? What about all the sober people who drive like total morons? But you can't measure how much of a moron someone is being, so you use alcohol instead.

Same applies for speeding... and I predict a lot of angry people will result from this weekend's speed-blitz! People who were over the speed limit by a few K's while coasting downhill or passing, but otherwise traveling entirely safely.

I'd like to see a statistic on injury or fatal crashes where the at-fault party was NOT speeding or drunk... bet it'd be a lot of them!

In my view the main problem with reducing the margin to 4kph is that overtaking vehicles will be on the wrong side of the road for longer and that will be a far greater danger than a few k's more when on the correct side of the white line.