NZ Politics

Just in case you've not driven in NZ before - I figured it might be worth sharing footage of one of the roads where the speed limit is being increased by 25% as a bit of context. Coming from the UK you'll understand how our rural roads can be narrow & windy, but maybe its different where our main roads are only a bit upgraded from that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pez0z3VquvI

It was reduced from 100 -> 80km/h on the steep and windy parts because its very remote so accidents in this area are difficult to respond to. The weather conditions over the road can also be quite challenging a sit gets snow & ice closures and given its height going over a dividing range can get very wet with visibility difficulties due to low cloud cover. Because so much of it is very steep, or very windy, or both there are a lot of vehicles that through this stretch can almost never do 80km/h, especially during holiday times with the number of boats and caravans traversing it.

Its also quite a busy road as its the primary route North-South out of the Hawkes Bay a relatively populated area, and even though its only single lane each direction it counts as one of our main state highways.

I've driven it plenty of times when it was 100km/h, and then when it was reduced to 80km/h and the difference in total time over the road really feels pretty negligible. The main reason for ending up going slower than you want over it is when you can't take advantage of a freight truck or campervan pulling into a slow bay because there's already a line of 30 cars trying to get past and then you have to wait another couple of kms until the next opportunity. At those points you're often doing barely 50km/h anyway.