FAQs

Yes, lowered speed limits will actually save lives if drivers obey the posted speed limits. Well-referenced research shows lowered travel speeds equates to lower impact speeds when crashes occur. Therefore, the lower impact speed directly relates to increased survival rates. Lowered travel speeds also add to both actual and perceived safety in areas of active users, such as around schools, town centres and busy urban environments. 

Driver complacency and driver error are the primary causes of crashes on our roads; even the most skilled drivers make mistakes.  These mistakes shouldn’t result in loss of life or serious injury. The speed you are driving has the greatest influence on the severity of a crash, which could be the difference between life, death or serious injury. We do our best to educate drivers about the risks of speed; however, education and enforcement alone will not make our roads safer. 

Our roading network is at an age where it requires significant work to maintain, especially given the substantial increase in vehicles and kilometres travelled in the Selwyn District. Statistics show that despite the community perspective, the actual road is seldom the cause of the crash or a factor that impacts the severity of the outcome. 

We are listening; our initial priorities are where we can make the best safety gains and potential lives saved across our network. This starts with schools, activity areas, and high-benefit routes. We also need to consider reductions in a consistent rollout that is easy for drivers to understand. We aim to reduce the instances of singular streets at lowered speed limits. When the time comes to reduce further speed limits, we will aim to reduce speed limits by geographical area rather than street by street. 

We have opted to be strategic with our rural road speed reduction, targeting high-risk routes, based on crash risk, vehicle volumes and local knowledge. We have assessed these reductions, giving consideration to neighbouring routes, reducing the chances of alternate routes being used. There will be wider rural road reductions in later phases of reductions, to progressively align our rural routes to Waka Kotahi’s Safe and Appropriate Speeds. 

We had the option to make District wide reductions to our urban (30kph), rural (80kph) and unsealed (60kph) road speed limits. Making large scale reductions without the means in place to ensure driver compliance with the lowered limits would induce a level of driver complacency. Drivers would be selective of what road rules they obeyed. Which would increase the safety risk on our roads.  

The community as a whole needs to be ready to understand and comply with wide scale speed limit reductions, we can’t engineer and enforce compliance across an entire network of roads, drivers need to willingly drive slower.  

Actually it does, there is plenty of research that shows the relevance between speed of impact and chance of survival. A 2% increase in speed has a 10% increase in fatality risk should a crash occur, alternatively a 2% decrease in speed will have a 10% reduction in chance of fatality when involved in a crash. 

Police do not retain any of the money from infringements; the money goes to the Government. Collection of infringements comes at a significantly higher cost to issue notices, including Police time to serve, process and prosecute.  Police would prefer not to have to issue any infringements, as this would show everyone was driving safely and not putting themselves or others at risk. This would see deaths and serious injuries on our roads significantly reduced.