29 August 2013

Public want brakes put on Hamilton speed limit changes

Hamilton AA Members have voiced serious concerns over the speed limit changes taking place in the city.

To inform the AA’s submission on the latest proposed speed limit changes under Hamilton City Council’s Safer Speeds Areas project, the AA surveyed our Members in the city for their views.

The survey came back with an unprecedented level of comments from residents of the city.

Out of 1555 respondents, 855 took the opportunity to write additional comments at the end of the survey, showing there are extremely strong feelings in the community about changing speed limits.

The survey results showed that:

• 67% of AA Members opposed most streets in Hamilton becoming 40kph, with only 28% supporting this idea.
• 64% of AA Members say they have been more confused by speed limits since the last changes in March
• 78% of AA Members want Hamilton City Council to either delay or stop making any further speed limit changes, or put things back the way they were.

The comments from AA Members showed many people have been completely unaware of the changes and that there is a lot of confusion among drivers about what the speed limits now are on different streets. Many people also do not see any need for lower speed limits apart from around schools.

“The AA supports making our roads safer and lower speed limits may well be appropriate in some areas,” says AA Vice President Trevor Follows.

“But it is clear from our survey that a huge number of Hamilton people don't understand or agree with what has been done so far.

“We have never had this level of comments to any other survey. We had numerous replies from people saying the first they had heard about the changes was from the AA survey and they often lived on streets that had had their speed limits lowered.”

The AA is urging Hamilton City Council to listen to its residents and not roll out any further speed limit changes in the current form.

“It is time to pause, fully evaluate how the earlier changes have worked or not worked, and to rethink the wider roll out of lower limits,” says Mr Follows.

“People are not happy with the way these speed limits have been implemented. The council needs to improve the signage and other methods of letting drivers know what the speed limit is on the roads they are driving on. They also need to better inform the public about what they are doing and why.”

The AA wants to see more work done to change the look and feel of roads, so there are obvious differences between roads with limits of 40kph or 30kph compared to 50kph or higher speed roads.

Research has shown that drivers notice only a small proportion of road signs, particularly if it is on routes they regularly travel, and best-practice modern road design aims to achieve ‘self-explaining roads’ that allow people to understand at a glance what speed is appropriate.

“Merely adding some signs on the side of the road will do very little to reduce people's speeds unless the public know what the speed limit is and understand and support the changes.

“The huge number of tickets issued within a few hours on Dinsdale Road recently showed what happens when the roading environment does not match the speed limit, people will be caught out and see it as a speed trap.

“That doesn’t mean drivers were deliberately ignoring the lower speed limit on Dinsdale Road. Many will have been travelling at what they think is the legal speed completely unaware that the limit had been reduced.”

ENDS

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